Semitic Revelation: Exploring Biblical Dress and How It Shapes Diasporic Identity

“Clothing is intended to cover our bodies, but it also uncovers. To what extent is our choice of dress freely made, and how do our surroundings affect our decisions?” This statement appears in the Jewish Museum 2018 exhibition on Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress, from the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The exhibit highlights the ways in which diverse communities throughout diasporic times have used clothing as forms of self concealment versus revealment, and assimilation versus distinction. This practice, however, dates from far before the nineteenth century to ancient biblical times. 

Upon watching Jean Paul Gaultier’s F/W 93’ runway collection of Rabbi Chic, I was mortified. Watching models dressed in what only could be described as Hasidic Jewish “costumes,” satirically twirling Kabbalistic peyot (curls) and performing strip teases down the runway felt like defamation of my religion. Jean Paul Gaultier himself thanking the audience in a pair of striped pajamas at the end surely topped it all off. While I certainly maintain my stance that the intention of the collection was culturally caricaturing and tone-deaf, I soon developed an appreciation for its outcome. A widespread spectacle illustrating how traditional modest Jewish dress actually serves as the most vulnerable form of inner revealment is just what western culture could use! This point was the impetus for my exploration on how clothing has been used as both a form of self expression and of protection from the time of the Tanakh or the Jewish Bible, until present day.

The first case of clothing (or lack thereof) illustrating reality lies in the first ever recountal of body coverings. This depiction is found in the book of Bereshit or Genesis when the first ever humans, Adam and Eve receive the entirety of the world and commandment not to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve, however, is tempted by the serpent to indulge in the fruit and shares it with her husband. It is upon this consumption that “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves girdles.” An interview with Rabbi Lawrence Hajihoff, Judaic Studies Professor at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University, recalls the vast array of artists whom included fig leaves to cover their subjects, including Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 1427, and Michelangelo The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden, 1512.  It is in this moment of sin and darkness that humans gain the enlightenment of self, launching an eternity of concealment and revealment. 

The word clothing in Hebrew, directly translates to begged, coming from the root “bagad.” This is the same word that means “to act in deceit” or “to fool.” One of the first biblical examples of this effort takes place in Toldot when forefather Isaac (who is visually impaired) plans to place his blessing on his first born Esau. Isaac’s wife, Rebecca sees the holiness in their second born, Jacob. She disguises him in Esau’s fur coat and urges him to claim the blessing from his brother. Upon Jacob’s visit to Isaac exclaims, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like the hands of his brother Esau, and he blessed him.” 

In Bethany Wagstaff’s scholastic journal, Redressing Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: Material-Cultural Approaches she expands on the text and explains that “In this text these garments play a secondary role in ritually transforming Jacob’s personhood by clothing him with Esau’s materiality. Still, it is through these garments that Jacob is able to manifest Esau’s personhood and in many ways becomes Esau himself.” Upon this deception, clothing expands from a tool of  covering to an agent in personality and social discourse. 

The function of clothing and its role in personal, social, and political identity broadens upon the story of Megilat Esther in Ketuvim or Writings. Upon the death of the Persian Queen, King Ahasuerus calls for the selection of a new one, and unknowingly chooses a Jewish maiden by the name of Esther to take the throne. At this time, Jews are an oppressed people in ancient Persia, so “Esther did not reveal her nationality or her lineage.” Upon King Ahasueru’s decree to eradicate the Jews as proposed by the King’s advisor, Haman, however, Esther sets out to assure their redemption. “Esther clothed herself regally, and she stood in the inner court of the king's house… ‘for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish…for the adversary has no consideration for the king's loss’… And Esther said, ‘An adversary and an enemy, this evil Haman!’" This act of bravery gains the Jewish people their salvation, and, importantly, Esther primarily achieves this by dressing the part. The name Esther comes from the word nistar meaning hidden. When dressing in a regal manner, Esther emerges from hiding as the powerful heroine of her people, overcoming her name, and actualizing her legitimacy as a bureaucratic leader. This practice has been carried on throughout government negotiation until today.

While dressing for status is an age-old tale, the Tanakh emphasizes the significant intricacies of priestly garments. In Tetzaveh, the materiality, structure, and details of priestly garments are described for thirty-six verses. The commandments descriptions include  “a choshen, an ephod, a robe, a tunic of checker work, a cap, and a sash… they shall take the gold, the blue, purple, and crimson wool, and the linen, and they shall make the ephod of gold, blue, purple, and crimson wool, and twisted fine linen, the work of a master weaver.”

 As elucidated by Shlomo Zuckier in his article on Priestly Garments as Atoning Agents in Amoraic Literature, The ornate beauty of priestly garments, and especially those of the High Priest, serves “to highlight the distinct concept of priestly leadership” in the Bible and to reveal their status and confer legitimacy upon them. ​​” However these garments also signify spiritually, as “The bells [on the robe] attract the sense of hearing, the stones on the ephod and the breastpiece awaken the ‘sense’ of memory, and the diadem on the high priest’s forehead evokes the ‘sense’ of grace,” invoking divine attention in a variety of ways.” Zuckier’s interpretation assigns not only economic and political prestige upon the high priests’ dress, but an added layer of spiritual and religious anthropomorphization to the garments. 

In the age of diasporic Judaism, spiritual dress is ever changing. It is because of the constant evolution and adaptation of the Jewish people, that Rabbis created new laws and establishments as safeguards in the age of Jewish exile. Here, the garments of the Tanakh  translate to modern day practice. While customs of dress differ based on the geographical location of the Ashkenazi (of Eastern European descent) and Sephardic (of Spanish descent), interpretations of foundational adornment laws can be found in various biblical and Rabbinical texts. Eric Silverman explores this concept in his book on A Cultural History of Jewish Dress, where he unpacks the commandment of tzitzit. He expands that “Consequently, devout men dress all day, every day, in a tasseled undershirt. But most Jews wear fringes only in the synagogue, when they slip on a prayer shawl…these fringed undershirts represent Judaism and in an irresolvable dialogue between tradition and modernity.” The choice to wear one’s tzitzit out or tucked into their pants is based on geographical heritage, denomination, and safety and is custom based. 

An additional example of this arises in  Zvi Ron’s article on Stripes, Hats, and Fashion, where he cites Rabbinical arguments on the practice of wearing a black hat while praying in diasporic times. He states that “The nineteenth-century Mishna Berura (91:11) states that, ‘in our times during tefillah (prayer) one must put a hat on his head in the way he walks in the street,’ and that this is the manner of standing before ‘important people.’” Ron then recounts that when hatlessness became all the rage at the turn of the nineteenth century, “some Orthodox Jews… retain this article of clothing even when the fashion trend has been basically abandoned by the rest of society.” It is important to note here that while Jews have adopted various clothing norms of their respective diasporic countries, distinctive semitic garments proudly revealing ones Judaism are also included in Jewish law.

“At the turn of the (19th)  century… Jew and Non-Jew alike were swept up in the momentous moral, social, and economic transformation. The modern world enshrined the novel principles of citizenship, free choice, social mobility, and consumerism. But in a world untethered to tradition, it was easy to lose one’s self, as many did, in modern desires. You could dress like anybody, or nobody.” Silverman’s excerpt depicts the intense reality that Jews of the nineteenth century experienced before being told to “doff their distinctive attire and to pull on the same garments as everybody else.” The freedom to conceal Jewish dress soon became a necessity for survival, as the striped pajama replaced the blue and white fringe. 

While I have observed the Jewish people’s home where they can proudly reveal their tzitzit and black hats, I have also encountered places where a Jew’s Star of David is aggressively ripped from their neck, or Yarmulke is concealed in the streets, only placed on their head in the safety of their own home. It is because of this harsh reality that I find meaning in the depiction of how Jewish dress can and has shaped political, economic, social, geographical, and spiritual identity for millenia. 

I also find significance in the ways in which semitic dress has undergone alterations throughout centuries of Jewish diaspora. Whether it be my Moroccan grandmother’s traditionally muslim Jellabiyas with a star of David embroidered on them, my mother’s daily “semi-modest” (as she likes to call it) outfit of a skirt overtop her Lulu Lemons, or my all-black ensembles with little jewish influence apart from my star of David necklace, bringing the semitic revelation of dress to light allows the contemporary wearer to celebrate the rich and vibrant legends and tradition of Jewish adornment, and reveal (or conceal) their identity through their own daily adornment.