I
f you’re keeping score on your Jewish milestone celebra-
tions bingo card at home, there are a few squares you’ve
probably fi lled a few times over.

Weddings! Bar and bat mitzvot! Funerals! Brit milot! Brit milot
might even count as the free square in the center for men, though
that will have to be adjudicated another time.

Th ere are a few squares off in those far-fl ung corners that are a
little harder to come by. Been to a pidyon haben recently? Hmm?
Anyone’s second bar or bat mitzvah, celebrated at the age of 83?
No? What about an upsherin?
“It’s a great custom, it’s very exciting for the kids, for the family,”
said Rabbi Hirshi Sputz, who runs Chabad of Fairmount with his
wife, Shevy Sputz.

An upsherin (alternately spelled upsheren, opsherin or
upshernish) is a ritual fi rst haircut for boys upon the occasion of
their third birthday. Th e word itself, according to Chabad.org, is
a conglomerate of the German word “sheren,” which means shear,
and “Auf,” which means off . Th is practice is traditionally under-
taken within certain Orthodox Ashkenazi communities, though
some Orthodox Sephardi communities celebrate a very similar
ceremony called chalakah (sometimes spelled halaqa).

Th ough there are many individual community variants —
some Ashkenazi communities perform the upsherin at age 2, and
some Sephardi communities wait until 5 — the fundamentals are
basically the same.

In honor of a male child’s graduation from infanthood to
childhood and their newfound intellectual abilities, Rabbi Mendy
Cohen of Chabad of the Main Line explained, friends, family and
community members come and snip off most of the boy’s hair,
until all that remain are the peyot. Th e boy will say a few words of
Torah, deposit some coins into a tzedakah box and be treated to
a celebration aft er the haircut. He’ll also wear tzitzit and a kippah
for the fi rst time.

Th ough the boy’s induction into wearing the “uniform,” so
to speak, is part of the reason for ceremony, it’s also meant to
symbolize the beginning of their genuine education in the faith:
the age of chinuch (literally, education). Now that they’re able to
grasp full sentences and simple ideas, it’s time to look the part of a
Jewish male undertaking his education, too.

(As a quick aside: though there is not a similar ceremony for
girls at the age of 3, they, too, mark their entrance into the age of
chinuch, Sputz said. Th is will oft en consist of their beginning to
bless the Shabbat candles on Friday night.)
Aft er those basic mechanics, many of the practices related to
upsherin will change from community to community, even family
to family.

“Th at’s part of the beauty of customs,” said Rabbi Yehoshua
Yeamans of B’nai Israel Ohev Zedek. In Yeamans’ wife’s family,
for example, it has become tradition to donate the hair to various
wig-making entities, a wide-spread practice.

For some families, the cutting of the fi rst lock of hair is an
Photo Credit (Clockwise from the Left): Philip Gabriel Photography,
Versano Photography, Maura B. McConnell Photography
See Upsherin, Page 8
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MARCH 26, 2020
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