Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, is a trained “shatnez checker.” His expertise — in Torah and textiles — ensures that the Torah prohibition against mixing wool and linen in the same garment is observed thread by potentially offending thread.
The eighth-grade teacher at Hillel Academy examines clothing with the zealousness of a Sherlock Holmes in pursuit of a murderer — except Berkowitz’ mission is fulfilling G-d’s law.
Shatnez first appears in Leviticus 19:19, then in Deuteronomy 22:11 — passages prohibiting the mixture of wool and linen in the same garment, the blending of different species of animals and the planting of different kinds of seeds together. This prohibition of mixtures is known collectively as kilayim.
The laws of shatnez “are chukim,” says Berkowitz, 46. “Some laws in the Torah are logical, and some are not. There’s no logical reason why we can’t mix wool and linen together.
“We observe the law because G-d told us to observe it.”
Shatnez, not widely known outside the non-Orthodox world, has been a constant among Orthodox Jews throughout the millennia with one historical exception.
“Interestingly, Jews didn’t realize there were problems about wearing certain garments earlier in 20th-century America,” Berkowitz says. “They didn’t realize it was wrong to mix wool and linen.”
Joseph Rosenberger, a Holocaust survivor who spent five months in Dachau before arriving in the US in 1940 and settling in Brooklyn, is regarded as the father of modern shatnez checking — that is, inspection of new garments for their textile makeup.
A garment worker by trade, Rosenberger studied the laws of shatnez and founded the first shatnez laboratory in America.
He singlehandedly convinced the Orthodox community, then in various stages of adapting to their new home, to practice this mitzvah.
“In Europe, Jews either made their own clothes or had tailors make them,” Berkowitz says. “Now that people were buying clothes in stores, they didn’t notice whether they were getting shatnez. Rosenberger really raised awareness.”
Berkowitz, a Brooklyn native, studied at the Mirrer Yeshiva in his youth and later attended the Rabbi Aharon Zelig Epstein yeshiva for three-and-a-half years. He married, moved to Baltimore with his wife and was in the Ner Yisroel kollel program “for five years and change.”
The family — which now has seven children — moved to Denver in 2003, when Berkowitz was selected for the yeshiva’s kollel program.
He left the program early when Hillel Academy hired him.
“I’ve been teaching at Hillel for 16 or 17 years,” he says. “I love teaching. It’s a wonderful profession.”
The mitzvah of becoming a shatnez checker entered his life as a tentative tap on the shoulder.
Over 12 years ago, Berkowitz’ Hillel Academy colleague and resident shatnez expert Shlomie Abraham, who was leaving Denver, asked Berkowitz whether he would consider taking over the position.
Berkowitz, untrained but committed to learn, accepted. “I went to Lakewood, NJ, and took a course,” he says. “It was an incredibly intense week.”
Although discerning the difference between wool and linen sounds relatively simple, he quickly discovered that this is far from the truth.
At Lakewood, Berkowitz learned about the composition of fabrics; the challenges of men’s suits (notorious) vs. sweaters (simpler); differentiating wool from linen by touch, feel, and through a microscope.
“When you identify fabric under the microscope, you clearly see whether you’re looking at wool or linen, or rayon, polyester and other fine synthetics. All textiles are allowable except the coupling of wool and linen.
“It’s really about getting to know your fabrics.”
Resolving the prohibited mix may require outside assistance or more extreme measures, depending on the garment.
“For example, there’s a line on a man’s suit jacket that goes up from the pocket called a dart,” Berkowitz says. “This is a high-stress area. And right behind it, there’s an area that’s prone for checking shatnez.
“The most common place to find linen is behind the felt in the suit collar. You want the collar to bend, but you don’t want it to be cardboard, either. Linen is the perfect material for this.”
Once Berkowitz removes the prohibited collar and replaces it with a shatnez-free neckband, he takes it to a trusted Cherry Creek custom tailor for an expert reattachment.
“The last thing you want is for me to fix your garment,” Berkowitz laughs.
Sweaters are usually friendlier to set right. “We might find random threads in the seams, usually resulting from the manufacturing process,” he says. “Those are easily pulled out.
“The complicated part is making sure we pull out every single thread.”
Surveying for linen in multi-colored or intricately patterned clothing — imagine Jacob’s coat — often presents the ultimate challenge “and can take all night.”
Berkowitz, who charges a flat fee for his efforts, says it might take him five minutes or 45 minutes to evaluate a suit for shatnez.
“Once you know what you’re looking at, you can finish it quickly,” he says. “Other times, it’s like, ‘where did this thing come from?’
“So it depends. Sometimes I make $50, and sometimes I make minimum wage.”
Sometimes a garment is beyond help. There’s no way to remove all shatnez. The owner then has two choices: destroy the garment, or return it to the store.
Store returns can be apprehensive for anyone. What if they don’t believe you? What if the manager is called over to conduct a terse inquisition?
Berkowitz says honesty is the best policy when it comes to returning a garment with shatnez.
“You say, ‘There’s something in this suit or skirt that I can’t wear for religious reasons — in this case, the mix of wool and linen.’ Returns are usually accepted if they align with store policy.”
Out East, shatnez is a known quantity. Mention the word and managers are happy to oblige.
The prohibition against shatnez is also a familiar concept at several Denver-area stores, Berkowitz says.
“Someone I know went to Macy’s a few years ago and asked the manager to fix a garment,” he recalls. “The manager said, ‘I can’t fix this! First you need to have this checked for shatnez!’”
Berkowitz advocates that buyers check the label before buying a store-bought garment.
Male shatnez checkers may examine female clothes, and women in the same position can search for shatnez in male garments.
The biggest change in shatnez checking over the past 25 years is that “we accept payments over Zelle,” referencing the app that instantaneously transfers transactions between banks.
“Other than that, additional changes have made problematic garments less problematic,” Berkowitz says. “But shatnez has pretty much remained the same. It just depends on which garment you’re looking at.”
Contemporary Jews confused by shatnez’ purpose in Jewish law might dismiss the original intent, which is obeying the word of G-d.
For Berkowitz, this prime directive motivates his dedicated shatnez precision. It’s not about personal admiration or praise or even doing the right thing.
“Shatnez is a mitzvah, which gets back to the chukim that we talked about before. If it’s written in the Torah, we are required to keep it.
“There is a deeper meaning for why we observe this.
“Shatnez is the same as all the mitzvot we are told to observe on the holidays and throughout Torah,” he says. “And each mitzvah brings us closer to the holiness of G-d.”
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