It seems to me that, as usual, you tried to make an argument disguised as a question.

In any case, on what basis did you connect head-shaving with the “right of the first night”?

Second, the Wikipedia entry on the “right of the first night” says as follows:

"An examination of the historical documentation has not uncovered evidence for its existence in the Middle Ages… The popular perception of the right of the first night as a widespread custom in the Middle Ages is apparently connected to political motives aimed at attacking the old regimes in Europe"…

My dear Aharon, I know very well what is written on Wikipedia.
In addition, this indeed was the custom for the reason I wrote, and I also emphasized in my question: “an effective custom meant to prevent concern” — concern specifically!!!
I did not ask whether the “right of the first night” actually existed in practice, or whether it was merely wild Hasidic imagination; that is really beside the point.
Of course, in later generations, when Hasidic brides asked why on earth they had to go through such a thing, their mothers squirmed uncomfortably and chose not to explain and describe things as they really were, and instead attributed it to lofty Jewish laws founded in the highest sanctities rather than to the lusts of the local lord under whose rule they were born. See at length and in detail in “The Marriage of Figaro”…

I’m asking again:

On what basis did you connect head-shaving with the “right of the first night”?

Several explicit Torah prohibitions are being violated:
“And he shall make his wife happy”
“If a man is found kidnapping one of his brethren among the children of Israel and making a slave of him”
“And she shall shave her head and do her nails” (the word means she cut her hair; she decides how to cut her hair and beautify herself)
“They shall not make a bald patch”
“And he shall uncover the woman’s head”

Benjamin,

I’m asking again:

On what basis did you connect head-shaving with the “right of the first night”?

Did you see this in some study? Article? Hear it in a lecture?

Where on earth did you get this from?

In Sha’ar HaMitzvot by the Ari it is written that a woman who has become purified should remove the hair that grew during the days of menstruation because of impurity.
The Hasidim understood (correctly?) that the hair that grew is the part closest to the head, and therefore it should be removed.
The Sephardim understood that the Ari meant the length of hair that grew, which should be cut from the ends far from the head, because that is where the impurity attaches itself (at the tips).
Also, the Ari explicitly writes that there is a kabbalistic need and obligation for a woman to have long hair, in contrast to a man, who may not grow his hair for more than thirty days unless he is a nazirite.

With God’s help, 25 Iyar 5780

In Hasidic circles, the men too used to shave their hair and leave only the beard and sidelocks, for kabbalistic reasons. For women there was the additional issue of preventing an interposition, or of a hair emerging outside the immersion water.

By the way, the women of Beta Israel in Ethiopia also used to shave or shorten their hair before immersion, as testified by the emissary Moshe Bar-Yehuda, who worked among them in 1958 (in his article: “The Falashas”). In 1976, when the emissary Meir Cohen worked there (and described the customs of Ethiopian Jewry in “Yalkut Minhagim” of the Department for Torah Culture), the women’s custom had already changed, and they began braiding their hair in the style of the local women.

Best regards, S. Tz. Lewingisto

I’m simply appalled that a person can put forward a thesis with no support whatsoever, claim that it is well known (“as is well known”), and refuse to answer what inspired the bizarre invention.

This without taking away from the arguments regarding this disputed custom.

With God’s help, 26 Iyar 5780

Material on the subject can be found by the interested reader in the responsum on “Shaving Hair of a Married Woman” on the Din website (dated 18 Iyar 5774), and in the comments there.

Best regards, S. Tz.'