My tichel party

So first things first: a tichel (pronounced with the gutteral 'ch' sound, as in chutzpah) is a hair covering.

Most orthodox Jewish women cover their hair in some way after they get married. It comes down from the Torah that a woman married in accordance with Jewish law should cover her hair.

The way women choose to cover their hair depends on what their community standards are. Some women wear wigs, others wear hats, others wear scarves... there are thousands of possibilities, but mostly it depends on their communities.

At the moment, I'm not going to go into all the details of hair covering, except to say that although I find it to be a beautiful concept -- saving a beautiful part of myself for only my husband, as well as a clear symbol of being married -- I also find it very difficult.

During my ugliest years, and due to life circumstances, I felt there were many of them, the one thing I always understood was beautiful about myself was my hair. I remember liking getting my hair cut -- not just because of the head massage, and definitely not because of what my hair looked like afterward (it has a mind of its own) -- but because the hairdressers would always ooh and aah over my hair.

But as of yesterday, I was one week away from beginning this special mitzvah, and some of my amazing, holy and beautiful girlfriends came together and brought me scarves and scarve and scarves... and told stories, and laughed, and sang, and experimented with how different scarves look on my head.

It was an amazing and special evening, and I felt really blessed to have such awesome people in my life.