The Lubavitcher Rebbe,ZT"L said sheitels are preferable to hats or headscarves because with the latter hair sticks out. The Gerer Rebbe concurs. If you notice Rav Ovadia's followers most or half their hair stick out. Those Ashkenazim that wear headscrarves shave their hair off & according to both. Both Lubavitcher & Gerer Rebbes hold that women shaving their hair off is ugly & demeaning.

HaRav Eliyashiv is not the only posek in the world & is only posek for the Litvish world. The chasidim have their own poskim,Disaspora Jewry has it's own poskim. BTW,HaRav Menashe Klein who is the major posek in America holds wigs are okay as does HaRav Landau in Bnai Brak.

Look, my son went to a Shas school for grades 1-6. Its not true that Shas people dont know anything about math or other secular subjects. The kids learned all the subjects according to the requirements of the Ministry of Education. The level was higher than the public school he goes to now, two years later. Furthermore, all of the teachers are religious and believe in dressing modestly. Once the school secretary remarked to me(with a hat on her head) that women should be modest. They are doing what they believe in in their heart of hearts. So you all, see, this is not Iran where people are forced to pretend they are religious. Its a free country where people can practice their religion as they choose.

To those who think this is discriminatory and the government should not fund Shas schools because of head coverings. Yes, the schools are government funded but privately run, sort of like charter schools in the USA. They follow the national curriculum, but as for religious studies they set their own agenda, which is normative othodox Judaism with Sephardic traditions. I previously worked in an Amit school(modern orthodox) where married women teachers were required to wear the head covering of their choice and a dress and male teachers had to wear a kippa. It's not such a big deal. We teachers are role models for the kids and how we dress is part of it.

Modest dress is not the question. No thinking human being wants the lady to make a spectacle of herself. This requirement to wear a schmatta has nothing to do with modesty especially since the married orthodox lady covers her hair with a wig normally. If you really believe that should a lock of hair peek out of the ladies wig that it represents immodesty on the part of the lady, then you are no different than the rabbi with his inane demands. It's people such as he who call for modesty patrols.

Rabbi David Yosef told me not to break my shiduch because my wife wants to wear a wig. Showing me in his father's halachic works that his father writes this in black and white.

I had a nice conversation with my Islamic friend from Afghanistan. We were discussing the Burka and the Chadur outfit for the ladies, when he related that as a young teenager in his native country he once saw a young lady with the top button of her Chadur open to reveal a bra strap. This minute event led him to have erotic dreams for the next several months. this only illustrate that if you are repressing all differentiation between the two sexes by artificially obstructing all contacts between them, then you are setting the stage for dysfunctional males and females in your communities. 'Tis a mighty dangerous and psychotic move to isolate the females by forcing them to wear a degrading attire. especially since the lady's hair is her glory. Lest you forget, the Nazis were well aware of the importance of the hair to the image of the person and therefor immediately upon entering the concentration camps, the women were shorn of their hair and their own children could not find them in the crowd. The forcing of women to wear these outfit is a crime against humanity.

Not that it is correct to wear wigs. No Sephardi Rabbi of any status has supported the wearing of wigs and a very high portion of Senior Ashknazi Rabbi's are against it. It is like when Rav Ovadia was asked whether it was preferable for women to wear short skirts or trousers. Most Sephardim do not worry too much about a little hair sticking out , and With due respect to the Lubavitcher and Gerer Rebbes, they are great in their own way like The Baba Sali. But neither are Halachic authorities in the class of Rav Ovadia. If a wig is so good to look at , you worry about a litlle hair sticking out. Then you are missing the point here.

I agree with you on the repression part- having 'nightmares' for months- how sad..... re shaved heads: prisoners- and soldiers used to have their heads shaved until fairly recently- so it wasn't just the Nazis...why do you think the hippies in the 60's let their hair grow? In protest..... Anyway: I don't object to the wearing of whatever women like- but I object to rules that are set by repressed men........ I don't buy the divine inspiration bit- somehow it is always the women who get to wear the weird clothing to make them look ugly- very few of those garments are the least bit flattering (I am not talking about sexy outfits- just nice looking would do...)

Thanks for your remarks. I appreciate it. Re: Shaved heads for women and Nazis. It was more singularly de-humanizing to the women, as the hair is far more important to their image than men. The shaving of female prisoners was never as wide-spread therefore as that for men. The personal humiliation was far more devastating to the "self" of the survivors than any other form of humiliation imposed by the bastards.