The Cosmetics Question

Apparently, perfume and make-up isn’t appropriate to the mind of some in the Jewish world. Jerusalem Post is carrying a story regarding a New-Pharm chemist that opened six months ago in Bnei Brak.

It’s interesting from a marketing perspective that they worked with the haredi leadership all the way through to ensure that religious sensitivities were taken into account – no use of scantily clad women to sell products, no selling of condoms, positioning of various items in the store. The plus out of working directly with the citizens is that you gain excellent information on cultural priorities and the like, leading to more effective physical orientation of products in-store, ostensibly leading to increased sales.

Is there something wrong with perfume and cosmetics? Isn’t there a precedent set in our history where sages even encouraged their use? In Egypt, the Israelite women are said to have saved the nation by making themselves extremely attractive to their worn and wearied husbands, after a hard day’s crushing labour building Pithom and Raamses. We are told that the mirrors the women used were donated to the bathing station in the Mishkan/Tabernacle, the focal point for holiness in Judaism.

Later, we see that in Ezra and Nehemiah’s time, in an effort to steer the assimilated Babylonian returnees away from their gentile wives which were leading their hearts from Judaism, an order was given that the Israelite women should be given make-up and perfume, if I’m not mistaken, in order to encourage intra-marriage.

On the one hand, then, perhaps the distaste towards make-up is based on the expense - a concern for the poorer societal strata. The girls from well-off families will be able to afford make-up and expensive perfumes, while the poorer girls will not, and their feelings come into play because of this. On the other hand, this may be an opportunity to extend the concept of the gemach (communal pool of expensive items such as clothing for use on loan for dates, wedding gowns, etc).

Alternatively, there could be another argument made in favour of this seemingly strict haredi line. We know that we don’t prize external looks first in terms of reasons to marry (although it is recognised as important as a necessity), we look primarily to the internal, intrinsic character and quality of the individual.

In time for Hanukkah, this is the Jewish worldview versus the Greek, Hellenist worldview which still exists today, in Dennis Prager’s words as mentioned before: to the Greeks what was beautiful was holy, and to the Jews what was holy, was beautiful.

So one could argue that the examples of encouragement of cosmetics in Jewish history arose from the dehak hasha’ah – the pressing needs of the time, and that it is a temporary state of affairs, rather than being reflective of Jewish values. But what if it makes a girl feel good about themselves? It’s certainly not forbidden, and denying the availability of these products could cause distress to those girls who feel they need it, for themselves, or to help them find a partner in life?