Author name: Avi Feldman

Last updated: February 2026 by Avi Feldman, Grooming Columnist

Last updated: February 2026 by Avi Feldman, Grooming Columnist

I was twelve years old when I first noticed that my peyot (sidelocks) did not look like anyone else’s. In my Flatbush neighborhood, there were boys with short peyot tucked neatly behind their ears, boys with long, tightly wound Chassidic curls, and boys with everything in between. My own peyot were…

You know the drill. It is 3:45 PM on a Friday in December, candle-lighting is at 4:12 PM, and you just walked through the door. Maybe the Q train was delayed. Maybe your chavrusa (study partner) ran late. Maybe you underestimated how fast the sun sets in Brooklyn in late December. Whatever the…

Last year, I sat in my rav’s office with a disassembled Braun Series 9 spread across his desk. Foil head in one pile, oscillating blade in another, and a printed cross-section diagram I had found in the manufacturer’s patent filing. He looked at the pieces, then looked at me, and said: “Avi, you…

I was sitting in a pizza shop on Avenue J when a Chassidish man with a magnificent, flowing beard sat down at the next table. Five minutes later, a clean-cut Modern Orthodox guy in a slim-fit suit walked in. Then a Yeshivish man with a neatly trimmed goatee. Three Jewish men, three completely…

Every year around Pesach, I get the same text from at least three friends: “It is day four and I am already itching. How do I survive this?” Sefirat HaOmer (the 49-day counting period between Pesach and Shavuot) means no shaving and no haircuts for many observant Jewish men, and for guys who…

It is 3:47 PM on a Friday in late December. You just got off the Q train at Avenue J. Candle-lighting is at 4:12 PM. You need to shower, shave, trim your nails, put on Shabbos clothes, and ideally not look like you did all of it in a panic. This is not a hypothetical. This is my life every winter…

I have a drawer in my bathroom that my wife calls “the shaver graveyard.” It contains fourteen electric shavers, each purchased because someone on a frum forum said it was “the one.” Braun, Panasonic, Philips, Remington, a random one from Costco that I cannot identify anymore. After years of…

I remember the first time I walked into a Judaica store on Coney Island Avenue looking for shaving advice. I was nineteen, freshly enrolled at Yeshiva University, and my father had handed me an electric shaver with zero explanation beyond “this one is fine.” Fine for what? Fine according to whom?…