Fur flies over threat to Hasidic headwear.
Hasidic Jews wear a shtreimel, a hat. It would seem that the hat is made from animal fur, and some poor mammal has lost its tail so it could hang around the head of an observant jew on his way to the wailing wall for Friday night prayers.
The hats can cost up to $4,000 (for a hat!) and many animals must suffer and die for this. It’s not even a religious thing, the history of the shtreimel seems to be embed in 18th century Europe where jews were expected to wear the hat (or a tail) as a way of identifying that they were not working on the sabbath.
With the proposed law carrying a punishment of a year in prison, Rabbi Moses asks who will pay for the prisons to house all the law-breaking Jews who import the wrong kind of fur
You can’t be serious. I think the idea here is that the law would be passed to protect the animals from unnecessary and cruel deaths, why on earth would you let yourself be locked up because of it.
Another example of the craziness of religion. My suggestion would be to get a nice polyester hat with some cotton mixed in and perhaps a lovely wool blend… unless you have trouble wearing different kinds of material. It’d also be good if some of the die hards could take a really good look at themselves and realise just how silly the hats look.
Traditions are great things, but really, this one has had its day and its time to let it go, just like we let go of women belonging to men, or singing the national athemn at the end of a film or wearing animal fur as a way of keeping warm.