What Is It With Jews And Beards?

Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik has an article in the February issue of Commentary Magazine on the Jewish view of beards and how that contrasts with Egypt, Christianity and today's society--and how it reflects the Jewish view of life in general:

Writing in a similar vein of our culture of “perpetual adolescence,” Joseph Epstein observes on the basis of old newsreel films that even baseball games used to be attended by adults dressed “in a suit and a fedora or other serious adult hat.” Now, “informality has been institutionalized” to the point where captains of industry dress like children. If, Epstein writes, it was once assumed that life had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that “the middle—adulthood—was the lengthiest and most earnest part, where everything serious happened and much was at stake,” today “the ideal almost everywhere is to seem young for as long as possible.”

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tag: Beards and Judaism.