Said GAON: “Before I respond let me clear, no one denies Chacham Harav Ovadia’s Gadlus, I happen to have gone through many of his works in יביא אומר and others including this one in Vol 5, I don’t know why it should be a factor…”
Let’s be clear on something.
Rav Ovadiah permitted Agunahs to remarry. Rav Ovadiah permitted the sale of Holy Land during Shmitta. Rav Ovadiah halachically permitted Oslo. Arguably, No Sage over the last several hundred years ever ruled as leniently (while based on thorough scholarship). With regard to wigs. Rav Ovadiah wrote: “I searched and I searched and I could find no basis to permit”
So just let that sink in for a minute
All that aside. You can debate all day long what the prohibition of head covering does or does not involve. My point is you can not simply take a teshuva written in 1968 under a very different set of circumstances and realities, and refuse to acknowledge the present situation, which is very far from the situation Rav Moshe ZTL encountered and responded to, back in that time. That is not how psak works. Things change. One needs to consider whether Rav Moshe would have really permitted today’s wigs which are nothing like the straw of 1968. And if we do not know, we can not quote.
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