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Leaving the Sideburns (Pe’os Harosh)

Regarding the commandment not to round the sides of your scalp: What is the permitted minimum length of sidecurls required to fulfill this mitzvah.. My thoughts were 3 inches. Does a Jew who shaves the sides of his head violate this mitzvah?

Answer:

It is forbidden to make a hair-free line from behind the ear to the forehead. This means that the top part of a man’s beard (his ‘sideburns’), reaching down (according to Shulchan Aruch) to the point on a straight line with the bottom of the earhole (where the upper jaw meets the lower jaw), must not be shaved. The length at which the hairs must be left is the length that is sufficient to bend individual hairs back on themselves. This would be approximately half a centimeter.

Sources: See Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 181:9; Beis Yosef and Bach, 181; Rambam, Laws of Idolatry, chap. 12, no. 3 (Rambam has a different definition of how many hairs must be left); Chasam Sofer no. 139.

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