MISC-----upsherin

alex123 Posted - 02 May 2001 16:22

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Where did the minhag of Upsherins come from? What's the idea behind them?

MODERATOR Posted - 02 May 2001 21:11

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It's totally Kabbalistic. We keep his hair to confuse the Satan into thinking he's a girl.

alex123 Posted - 03 May 2001 21:23

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Why would we want to do that?

MODERATOR Posted - 03 May 2001 21:44

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If the Satan doesn’t know who he really is, he cant really attack him. its kind of like a disguise from the Satan.

Beautman Posted - 04 May 2001 2:54

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Doesn't it have something to do with orlah?

MODERATOR Posted - 04 May 2001 15:15

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There are many explanations given. What I presented was the Rokeach's opinion.

loveslearning Posted - 07 May 2001 15:03

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Beautman, the thing with orlah is that there's a pasuk "Adam k'eitz hasadeh" man is like the trees of the field. So just like we don't eat from the produce of a tree for the first three years, we don't cut a boy's hair for the first 3 yrs.

Moderator, if the pasuk says "Adam" and not ish, then why don't we have this minhag for girls also?

MODERATOR Posted - 07 May 2001 15:05

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Because none of these reasons are the whole explanation. It's not really like Orlah, obviously. (Is the hair asur to use before 3 years?) The Minhag is mostly al pi kabblah, and these are just "surface level" explanations. As such, they are not expected to explain the details of the Minhag.

alex123 Posted - 07 May 2001 15:06

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That doesn't make sense to me. Why does the Satan need to know if it's a boy or girl? He would attack anyway, no? What's the source for this??

MODERATOR Posted - 07 May 2001 15:07

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The Satan attacks diff people in diff ways. If he thinks person type A is really person type B he attacks the wrong way. The source is the Rokeach.

ptgard2281 Posted - 08 May 2001 20:28

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Don't you think the Satan would catch on when so many boy's hair are being cut?

MODERATOR Posted - 08 May 2001 20:46

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It's like not blowing the Shofar on Erev Rosh Hashanah - which is also to fool the Satan, even though one would think he'd catch on eventually.

The answer is that the "Satan" is not a human that has a memory by default. He is given power by Hashem only to do what his job is, no more no less. In some ways he is much smarter than us, in other ways the opposite. Depends on what he needs to do his job. If Hashem does not want him to catch on, he will not.

alex123 Posted - 09 May 2001 14:32

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Are there any other reasons that you know of, or places I could look up the reasons behind Upsherins?

Why don't girls grow their hair till they're 3 also?

MODERATOR Posted - 09 May 2001 16:17

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Yes. See Taamei HaMinhagim.

If girls would grow their hair till 3, then the "tricking the Satan into thinking he's a girl" thing wouldn't work, right?