Peyos

In terms of shaving there is difference between the peyos on the side of the head and the beard. We treat the former as asur even with k’ein tar. The latter is mutar with k’ein tar. See Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 181:3 & 10.

This is why all Orthodox Jewish men will have sideburns (peyos of the head) but not all will have beards.

I think there are some people whose peyos just constantly puff out into two large clouds of hair and they constantly have to fix it.

I know someone who cannot grow a beard (afaik the facial hair is very thin and only grows in small light patches). This person is MO.

The Kaliver Rebbe cannot grow a beard due to medical experiments in Auschwitz

I know someone who cannot grow a beard...

What happens to a guy in a long peyos &

beard community who cannot grow peyos?

Peyos aren’t facial hair; I don’t think anyone has trouble growing them.

(My own beard, on the other hand, isn’t working out too well.)

“There are two types of chareidim: the yeshivish wrap the peyos behind the ears while the chasidish let the peyos hang in front of the ears.”

I’ve been trying to figure out for years now whether or not I’m Chareidi.

I guess I have the answer now. 🙂

Well that’s better than what a friend of mine told me once. She told me that I’m not Chareidi because the definition of Chareidi is someone who sends their kids to Chareidi schools.

And a shadchan once told me that I’m not Chareidi because I wasn’t living at home.

LB – what happened was that the shadchan called me up and told me she had a shidduch for me. She told me that she thought he was matim for me for 2 reasons:

1. His age (he was about 10 years older than me)

2. Even though he thinks that he’s Chareidi, he obviously isn’t because he works.

So I said to her, “I’m not sure that working makes someone not Chareidi, but if your basis for the shidduch is that he is not Chareidi, that’s not a good basis because I am Chareidi.”

So she asked me, “Where are you living now?”

Since I had previously been living in at home in a not-Chareidi neighborhood, I thought that she was going to tell me that I’m not chareidi because of where I live. So I davka told her that I’m not living at home anymore, I am living in ______. Since ________ was a Chareidi neighborhood, I thought that would prove that I’m Chareidi, but instead her response was, “If you don’t live at home, that means you’re not Chareidi”.

This conversation happened many years ago in another lifetime and doesn’t really matter anymore. You are right that if someone is self-confident about the fact that they are Chareidi, these things will be less of a problem. The problem is that at the time, I wasn’t sure what category I fit in, not because I didn’t know who I was, but because I didn’t know what the categories meant.And that made things very hard for me. I don’t recommend moving to Israel if you don’t know what the categories mean and what category you are. I used to be very anti-label, but over the years, I have come to realize that they are necesssary in society today.