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Among the negative commandments in the Torah, we find that Jewish men need to be careful about the way that they cut their hair. According to the Torah (Lev 19:27) – lo takifu pe’at roshkhem ve-lo tash’ḥit et pe’at zekanekhah – a man cannot round off the edges of his head, nor can he destroy the growth of his beard.
The Mishna on our daf teaches that the prohibition against rounding off the edges of one’s hair applies to the two sides of his head, while the prohibition regarding the beard relates to five different points – two on each side and one on the chin. The former forbids cutting the hair at the temples so that the back of the ear and the forehead are “evened out”; the latter forbids the points on the face where there is an accumulation of hair.
It should be noted that these are among the few negative prohibitions in the Torah that do not apply to women.
We explore shaving and the modern day dispensations thereof.