On a residential street in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Rachel Levitan begins her day not with scissors but with prayer. Before she opens her business each morning, she stands alone in her home salon and asks for help.
“I ask Hashem [God] for [livelihood] for my family, but more importantly, I ask Him to help me make His mitzvah beautiful,” she says. Sometimes she recites Tehillim before a client arrives.
“There is a sacred trust in this work. I rejoice when they rejoice, and I carry their burdens with them when they grieve,” she says.
Levitan is one of Israel’s many sheitel machers (wig stylists), serving married Jewish women who cover their hair as part of religious observance. Outsiders often imagine glamour: glossy hair, high-end clientele, and luxury price tags.
But the women behind the wigs describe something far more complex – a profession that is part artisan, part therapist, part entrepreneur, and part spiritual caretaker.
“It’s not glamorous,” Levitan says plainly. “It’s a lot of standing. A lot of chemicals. Bleach. Sewing for hours alone. You’re working with pieces worth thousands of shekels. It’s draining.
“I love it, and I hate it at the same time,” she confesses.
Searching for truth
Levitan’s path to the sheitel world began far from Israel. Born in Poland and raised in a non-religious home with Christian roots, she describes herself as “a seeker of truth” from childhood.
“I always felt there was a missing piece,” she recalls. “I remember searching archives for family documents, searching for a history that seemed hidden.”
Eventually, her search led her to Judaism. She volunteered in Israel in 2017, converted through a beit din in Bnei Brak, and married in 2018. Like many newly married religious women, she began covering her hair immediately. And she struggled.
“When I got married, I sent a picture to my family wearing a bad sheitel,” she laughs. “It inspired me to learn how to improve.”
What began as a necessity became her calling. She trained wherever she could, often working essentially for free just to gain experience. “I wanted to understand the ‘glow’ that happens when a woman feels like herself again.”
Nearly a decade later, she runs a home-based salon. She rarely advertises.
“Hashem keeps my chair full,” she says.
The sacred trust of the chair
A typical day is quieter than most imagine. Most days, Levitan sits alone for hours sewing. Clients arrive mostly in the afternoon and evening.
“It’s very delicate work,” she explains. “Fixing it. Dyeing it. Sewing for hours.”
But when a woman sits in her chair, the atmosphere shifts. “Women are not just looking for a style,” she says. “They’re often looking for connection.”
Over the years, she has shared in the full spectrum of her clients’ lives: engagements, weddings, births, and losses. “I rejoice when they rejoice, and I carry their burdens when they grieve.”
One client, a Chabad woman for whom Levitan created a custom sheitel from scratch, became something more than a customer.
“She invites me to her parties. I go to her [Torah] classes. I was nervous around her at first. She’s like a rebbetzin to me. But we became very close. When I was struggling a few months ago, she was there for me.”
The work is intensely personal. “Every snip of the shears and every set of curls is done with the prayer that the women walk out feeling not only beautiful on the outside but seen, supported, and strengthened on the inside,” Levitan says.
She pauses. “When I put a sheitel on a woman, and she looks in the mirror, I can see the energy switch instantly. She looks 20 years younger. Beautiful, strong, and confident.
“It’s even proven that hair carries energy,” she says. “That’s one reason we cover it after marriage. We protect that energy.”
Whether or not scientists would explain it that way, the emotional transformation is undeniable.
The false conflict between beauty and modesty
A common critique of wigs surfaces repeatedly: If modesty is the goal, why wear wigs that sometimes look better than natural hair?
Levitan answers simply. “Technically, my hair is covered. That’s the mitzvah.”
Others expand.
Daniele Sullivan, founder of Daniele Sullivan Hair (danielesullivanhair.com), has spent 24 years in the industry and has trained thousands of wig makers worldwide.
Born in France, Sullivan made aliyah at 16 and later moved to Lakewood, New Jersey, as a young mother of five seeking income. She answered a newspaper ad to “ventilate” hair, only later learning that meant hand-tying individual strands into wigs to create natural hairlines.
“That was my only formal training,” she says.
Years later, while raising children, she began repairing wigs from home. She analyzed each one that came in, studying its construction, weak points, and hair quality.
“I loved the challenge,” she says. Within months, she was earning more than her husband.
Eventually, she began producing custom wigs and sourcing factories overseas, a financially risky, painstaking process she describes as a “painful, heart-exhausting” process. That experience inspired her to teach others.
Today, she has trained students in 10 countries and in five languages.
When asked about the beauty-modesty tension, Sullivan is unequivocal.
“The prohibition isn’t about limiting women’s beauty,” she says. “Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Abigail, Esther, and Batsheva are all women in the Bible who were praised for their beauty.”
Sheitels, worn properly, she contends, allow women to balance modesty and dignity.
“Of course, halachic questions should be addressed to one’s local rabbinic authority,” she adds.
Jerusalem resident Andrea Simantov of Great Cuts by Andrea offers a similarly direct perspective. “Nowhere is it stated that a woman should look dowdy or less attractive when covering her hair,” she says. “The text says she should cover her own hair.”
Reinventing identity
Simantov entered the industry in 1994 after years of dissatisfaction with her own wigs, which she jokingly called “Bulletproof Specials.”
Having just given birth to her sixth child, she trained in Brooklyn, New York, before making aliyah. When her first marriage ended in 2001, and she still did not speak Hebrew, cutting hair and wig styling became her financial lifeline.
Over three decades, she has watched the industry transform.
Heavier, structured wigs gave way in the 1990s to lighter, more natural designs. Lace-top wigs now dominate, offering ultra-realistic hairlines, though she cautions they require costly maintenance.
But beyond technology, Simantov has witnessed something more subtle: the power of a wig to shift how a woman is perceived. Even in Israel, where women’s hair-covering is part of the culture, many women choose to wear wigs to more readily fit into a secular work environment.
Simantov shared a story of a rabbinic couple she knew who did outreach to exceedingly secular Jewish teens.
Sitting at their Shabbat table, she saw how thirsty these souls were for Torah, but the rebbetzin's scarf rather than a wig was off-putting to the young women. So the rabbi’s wife went out and bought a very simple, flattering wig.
“Once she had a wig on her head, the girls stayed longer. They came back the next Shabbos. They were able to look past [her religious appearance] and hear the words.
“By having your hair looking like everybody else’s, people can focus on you and hear the message that you want to impart, even in a non-observant setting,” she asserted.
Hidden labor
Despite rising prices (lace-top wigs can cost anywhere from NIS 4,000 to well over NIS 15,000), the experts bristle at the notion that their profession is easy money.
“Everyone thinks it’s glamorous,” Levitan says. “It’s not.”
Sullivan describes a market filled with confusion and misinformation. Since the war in Ukraine, she notes, Russian hair, once a premium source, has largely disappeared from the market. High-quality virgin hair has become scarce and expensive.
Women often purchase based solely on appearance, unaware of differences in origin or processing.
“Many women are not properly educated when purchasing wigs,” she says.
Simantov worries about women of modest means feeling pressured to buy expensive lace fronts they cannot afford to maintain.
But the hardest part of the job, they agree, is emotional.
“It is intensely personal work,” Simantov says. “You have to love people.”
Women confide in their stylists about aging, illness, divorce, finances, and parenting.
Simantov admits she has cried at night over clients’ crises.
“It is humbling to be an address for more than just looking beautiful,” she says. “More than a craft or vocation, for me it is a calling that demands both responsibility and compassion.”
Levitan echoes that sentiment. “You have to be a therapist, an artist, a stylist. You have to adapt. Know a bit about everything in the world.”
And then there is the quiet pressure of being self-employed. No vacation days. No sick leave. “If I don’t work, I don’t earn,” Simantov says.
Not your bubbie’s sheitel
Today’s wigs are lighter, more flexible, and more natural-looking than those of previous generations.
Today’s falls and toppers (often called kippah wigs) offer partial coverage. Women navigating hair loss find creative solutions. Secular clients sometimes seek wigs purely for beauty.
“It’s not your bubbie’s sheitel,” Simantov laughs.
Yet for many religious women, the sheitel remains deeply symbolic. It is a daily expression of their commitment to the Torah’s laws.
Behind the mirror
In the end, the story of Israel’s sheitel machers is not primarily about hair, lace, or even fashion. It is about women sitting across from women. About vulnerability and reinvention. About the delicate intersection of faith and self-image.
It is about a Polish-born convert who once searched archives for hidden history and now searches for the exact highlight that will restore a client’s glow.
It is about a French-born entrepreneur who turned hand-tied hair into a global training empire so others would not have to suffer through costly mistakes alone.
It is about a divorced American immigrant (now happily remarried) who built a livelihood and a calling, standing behind a chair, quietly absorbing the stories of countless lives.
“People assume it’s easy,” Levitan says. “It’s very hard.” And yet every morning, she stands in her salon and prays for the chance to do it again.
“Covering or not covering one’s hair does not make someone loftier,” Simantov explains. “At the end of the day, it is far more important what lies with that same head that matters.”
The writer is a freelance journalist and expert on the non-Jewish awakening to Torah happening in our day. She is the editor of three books on the topic: Ten from the Nations, Lighting Up the Nations, and Adrift among the Nations.