Walking on the streets or riding the buses of Jerusalem, as in any city, can sometimes feel like a fashion extravaganza. After almost three months here, there is one thing I can say for sure about Israeli women: the ones who know how to work it know how to work it. The style among secular, non-observant women is a bohemian look with lots of scarves, intricate jewelry and long, dark wild hair left long and untamed like the heroine in a romance novel. There more adventurous religious women will also lean toward the bohemian with lots of flowy layers, a kaliedescope of colors and patterns, and tichels (head wraps) worn high and proud, making them look like queens. Little by little, my wardrobe is looking more and more like theirs, especially now that I’m on the market for more belly-friendly threads.

It was with that in mind that Rachel, Shmuel Yaakov, Yonah and I went over to Ben Yehuda Street yesterday. Rachel, who is a very beautiful, dark-haired, green-eyed yeshiva wife whose style tends to stick to variations of basic black. While she wears her sheitl (wig) most days, she’s been inspired by my colorful headwear to start trying to incorporate tichels into her wardrobe. Our errand was primarily to help her find a unique yet staid new kerchief as a first step in her evolution.

Before I continue, I should probably explain something about sheitls and tichels to those not as familiar with them. For today, we are going to ignore the myriad of opinions about the Jewish law stating that all married women must cover their hair and just talk about the women who follow it. The universal rule of fashion dictates that you wear says something about what you are. In the case of Jewish women’s headwear, I would say this is absolutely true. Of course, one of the most important things I have learned on my spiritual journey is that what we see on the outside is not always an indication of what is really going on on the inside; everyone’s connection to Gd is between her and Gd. However, on a purely superficial level, you can learn a lot about an Orthodox woman by what she puts on her head. For example (and there are always exceptions in every case) most women who make the commitment to wear a sheitl on a daily basis tend to lean more to the right ideologically; many ultra-orthodox women will even wear hats or tichels over their sheitls to ensure that others don’t think their real hair isn’t covered. Women who wear funkier, more colorful headwraps may fall into a more spiritual/experiential camp while maintaining a firm commitment to Torah. There are other women (the popular term now is “Modern Orthodox”) who may wear hats, headbands and bandanas that show some of their hair, and some may not cover their hair at all, suggesting a more progressive approach, meaning that they honor and keep the Torah while balancing life in the modern world. Again, these are all huge generalizations and there are countless women who don’t fall into any specific category (I’d like to think I’m one of them), but I mention them only to illustrate exactly what Rachel’s and my outing was about.

Okay, back to business. So Rachel decided to spice things up by getting a funky new tichel, so I took her to the Bat Ayin store on King George St. in the center of town. Bat Ayin is a Orthodox Hippie community in the West Bank where Shuie and I almost ended up living. The population is comprised of the spiritual/experiential, earthy types I described above, and part of the way they make money to keep the community going is by making and selling gorgeous, top-quality clothes. The store is an intoxicating swirl of colors and fabrics, the kind of place where I almost never leave empty-handed (”I feel like this is your store,” Rachel said to me as soon as we walked in). One of the things the store features is two wall-sized shelving units with tichels of every color, texture and description you can think of, which I knew would give Rachel a lot of options. While she hunted, something caught my eye that I knew was going to get me into a lot of trouble: a calf-length shift of cerulean velvet and netting with a sign on it –I swear– that said, “Rea’s Dress”.

“Uh,oh.” I said to Rachel. “We have a problem”.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, thinking something was up with one of the boys.

“I can’t leave without this dress”.

So while Rachel scored a lovely black kerchief with some silver piping (although I was dying to get her into something royal purple. Baby steps…), I left the Bat Ayin store with a flowy brown chiffon tunic with cream stitching (with plenty of room for Bean), a flower-print A-line dress that is perfect for layering, and the Blue Velvet Dress, my new favorite thing in the whole wide world. And the best part? The tunic and A-line were HALF OFF. I felt like Napoleon when he conquered Elba.

I am fully aware, by the way, that I have just devoted the whole of this blog post to a shopping trip, but a good fashion extravaganza is an integral part of what it means to be a woman. Jewish tradition even holds that it is to the merit of a woman that she make herself look beautiful for her husband because it promotes healthy, happy marriages. Plus, men are encouraged to spend a significant amount of money on clothes and jewelry for their wives to make them feel beautiful and happy (pretty sweet, no?). One midrash I love takes place during the time when the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. The men were downtrodden and exhausted from their backbreaking work each day and the Egyptians, to discourage them from being with their wives, would force them to sleep out in the fields, away from their families. The women decided to take the future into their hands and would look in their mirrors to make themselves beautiful before sneaking out to the fields at night in order to seduce their husbands and conceive more children. Later, when the Jewish people were building the Beit Hamikdash (the Holy Tabernacle), the women offered their mirrors to be melted down and used as part of the building materials. At first Moses refused them, saying he didn’t want to use things that promoted vanity. Gd stepped in and told him that those mirrors were “Beloved” to him since they helped keep the Jewish people alive. Not only should Moses use the mirrors, but the brass should be used to make the laver, the washing basin the the Kohen (High Priest) used to wash his hands in the Holy of Holies. So don’t tell me that my Blue Velvet Dress is just some piece of material. If the Temple was rebuilt tomorrow, it could make a fabulous curtain in the new Holy of Holies.

Last night Shuie and I had our weekly dinner date and then walked around Ben Yehuda for a bit. We bought him some new yarmulkes and a colorful one for Yonah, too — Yonah has a new obsession with hats and is LOVING his new present (pictures to be posted on Facebook soon). Between his shmutzy face (he always has crud on him no matter how many times I clean it), his new yarmulke and his new favorite word, “Todah” (Hebrew for “Thank You”), Yonah could definitely pass for an Israeli kid. I’m so proud. — Then we headed over to Coffee Bean where we sipped our drinks and talked for over an hour. It’s an amazing thing, marriage. You fall in love with someone so deeply so that you want to spend all your time with them. So you make a commitment to build a life together which, ironically, gets busier and busier so that it becomes harder and harder to actually have time together. But when you actually manage to steal some time and get a chance to talk , it’s like re-meeting your best friend. And then he smiles just the right way and you have a laugh together, and you fall in love all over again. I bless everyone that they should find that person that they can fall in love with over and over again throughout their lives, and that those who already are married never stop seeing what made them fall in love in the first place.

Another quiet Shabbat for us. I have transitioned from stomach bug to cold and literally cannot stop sneezing, so it’s a relief not to have to play hostess tonight. I’m sending Shuie out now to buy groceries and am throwing together an easy shabbat dinner: chicken soup, crunchy chicken legs (recipe: put in pan, throw in oven at 450 for an hour, take out, eat), salad, ratatouille and brown rice. And then it is to bed for Mommy.