Jewfro Hairstyle for Guys

A Jewfro refers to a curly hairstyle worn by people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Its name is inspired by the afro hairstyle, which it vaguely resembles.

The term has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s when many prominent figures were described as sporting the hairstyle. The Los Angeles Times called college football star Scott Marcus a flower child with “golden brown hair…in ringlets around his head in what he calls a Jewish afro style”.

The New York Times in a 1971 article on Harvard’s “hairy” basketball team, wrote that Captain Brian Newmark, “hasn’t had a haircut since last May and his friends have suggested his hairdo is a first cousin to the Afro…in the case of the Jewish Junior from Brooklyn, though, the bushy dark hair that is piled high on his head has been called an Isro.” Novelist Judith Rossner was described in a Chicago Tribune profile as the “grown-up Wunderkind with an open, oval face framed by a Jewish Afro.”