The Games Girls Play and Why I'm Not Married....

Over on Frum Satire's blog, discussions have heated up about tzniut, mostly skirt lengths. It started when the blog owner, Heshy Fried, had embedded a you tube video on his blog with an FFB couple from the five towns getting engaged. He called it "awkward shomer negiah moments" because it's a little weird to get engaged without any hand holding and a kallah who is putting on her own ring. I'll spare you all the link, because that's not my point.

The girl in the video was wearing rather SHORT skirt. I mean, it must have been at LEAST four inches above her knee, probably more. So, various discussion ensued in the comments over at FS that she probably wasn't REALLY shomer, after all, this was an "awkward shomer negiah moment." The fact of the matter is whether she is or isn't when it's just them two, she's still, "shomer when people are watching" and they were.

One of the mini discussions I want to hone is was when the men said repeatedly in the comments, as I've heard before, "if ONLY these women KNEW how hard they make it for us by dressing like that."  I'm sorry but these guys must be so stupid. These girls DO know. That's exactly WHY they do it. Even one of my rabbis told me, "you women have the power to marry any guy you want to because you women know what you're doing." Nevertheless, I don't see these men putting their money where their mouth is. Who are the men dating and marrying? The "frum" girls who dress provocatively. What does the community say? NOTHING.

I have discussed this people before. Most people just start trying to explain things to me because after all, I as a convert must know NOTHING. In reality, I'm steps ahead of them. As I explain to people, the rules are technically that you are to cover the knees and elbows but really the rules are that it's very important that the girl wears a skirt and NOT pants. It REALLY doesn't matter what length the skirt is or if it covers the knees or not. See, this is where people interrupt to me and start telling me what the halacha on the books is. What they don't realize is that I'm WAYYYY ahead of them. I understand full well that if you ask what you're supposed to wear as a Jewish woman, you will be told to cover your knees. However, I also know that women are usually asked if they wear skirts and no one stops to add that said skirt should cover the knees. A man will refuse to date girls who wear pants before he will refuse a girl with a high hemline. In Queens, a BT guy got engaged to a BT girl who wore pants and his entire group of friends tried to convince him to break it off or give her an ultimatum to stop wearing pants. When that didn't work, they STOPPED speaking to him. We're talking about a man over 40 and he's supposed to do what people tell him to?

NO WHERE in the Torah does Hashem say that women should only wear skirts. When you ask why women are supposed to wear skirts, you are told that either A) it emphasizes the butt too much, not tzanuah or B) it's man's clothing.

A) why do we care about emphasizing the butt but one must not DARE speak up about those who emphasize the knee? (Someone will undoubtedly get nasty at me for what I say.)
B) Women's pants are not men's clothing and many women are wearing skin tight stretch pants. The straight men are not exactly flocking to the stores for those. Now you can argue that stretch pants aren't tznius, but let's be fair. If want to attack them, you should attack the short skirts, as well. However, no one does, but people on the fringe like me. Furthermore, the argument is ludicrous because religious women (ok and Asian women) are really the only ones wearing skirts regularly these days. As such, pants are no longer exclusively man's clothing. In NYC, women wear skirts more because people are more shallow here than any place else but maybe LA and skirts are dressier. Nevertheless, that could be it's own post.

What this all boils down to is a desire for men to be macho and keep gender roles as close as possible as they were in the 1800's. Men aren't trying to keep women in skirts to keep them modest. If they REALLY were, then the community would react to slutty short skirts. In the Xtian community I used to be in, you would be pushed out if you wore a skirt above your knees. You would be asked to leave church and not to dress like that again. People claim this isn't done in the Jewish community because we don't want to lose these girls on the fringe. The fact of the matter is that we have no trouble doing it to women who wear pants. If you wore pants to my old church, you wouldn't be asked to leave, but no one would talk to you that day, not even your friends, or they would ask why you're wearing pants and give you a "look." At least, the reactions matched the order of preference of attire. We play games about in the Jewish world. Although, the xtians have other issues I'm not going to get into here.

In conclusion, if wearing a skirt above the knee is REALLY against the rules, then people need to act like it's wrong. The truth is that wearing pants is the absolute worst thing in the world an Orthodox woman is to do. It's better to go about in her panties than pants. In fact, a girl I once heard snap that she didn't own pants went on the "no pants subway ride" this year. She's not afraid of people knowing, either.

Judaism and the Almighty Skirt

I’ve thought about this topic a bit and I’ve been wanting to blog about it for a while. It’s a touchy and sensitive topic, too. As my Orthodox Jewish readers are surely aware, and many Jews not Orthodox and non-Jews are aware, the skirt is a hot topic of the question to be or not to be tznius.

In most Orthodox circles, the official tznius dress code is one that includes a skirt which covers the knees. Another accepted item in the dress code is that the elbows need to be covered. This is accomplished by wearing a “shell” or fancy undershirt under the t-shirt. Ok, it sounds easy enough, right?

Well, why, then, do I see women with their elbows covered but they wear short skirts? Even better, I often see married women with their hair carefully covered, their shell covering their elbows, then they wear a really short skirt-ok maybe just short by Orthodox standards.

As a convert, I can’t even tell you how many women, who tell me I need to know what tznius is and that tznius is more than just how I dress. Meanwhile, some of these women aren’t dressed so modestly. I know one shadchan was telling me an example was that she wouldn’t call a guy hot, because the word “hot” is not modest. Meanwhile her skirt was above the knees.

I probed for some input on my Facebook page. The most intuitive comment was that it’s halacha for women to cover their knees, but, minchag trumps halacha, and the minhag is for skirts above the knee. Now, I pledged that I would uphold **ALL** minhagim. So, perhaps this is what I should tell someone the next time I’m nagged that my knee length skirt is too short is that I’m just following the minhag and apologize that my skirt is a little on the long side.

Of course, they will just decide that I’m not Jewish anymore. Whereas, with the FFB who shows half her thigh, they wouldn’t dare for fear she would fall off the derech. Actually, I could write a whole ‘nother post on just THAT topic alone.

Thou shalt not oppress the ger, or should you?

This letter from an anonymous gyoress is going around some conversion blogs and online discussion groups.

http://www.jewishideas.org/anonymous/thou-shalt-not-oppress-ger

A certain rabbi commented on this very harshly. However, I'm seeing he seems to be a little more reasonable about it now. One of the highlights from the article and his response is:

She writes: "The basic problem a convert faces in the Orthodox world stems from
the following mind-set: If you observe one mitzvah more than I do you are a
fanatic, and if you observe one mitzvah less you are an apikores, or heretic."

rabbi: This is most unfortunate. Does this mean that where she lives the
"Orthodox" Jews specifically do not keep all Mitzvoth? I've actually written a
warning about marginally Orthodox in Gerus Steps. We've occasionally run into
people like this. If this is her idea of "Orthodox" then her synagogue does not
have an Orthodox minyan. I would like to make it clear (I know that I'm being a
bit redundant) that merely living in a place without a community may not
invalidate a conversion but it certainly is far from the ideal and can lead to
many problems. What sort of education is her son receiving? Is he exposed to
true Orthodoxy (and I include Modern Orthodoxy as true Orthodoxy) or something
less?

Michal: If the author is using the term mitzvos as the rabbi does, as in mitzvos, then yes, his rebuttal is perfectly fine. However, it seems to me that when the original author said mitzvos, she didn't mean the precise 613 mitzvos, but the chumros (stringencies) that people glue upon themselves as a loud and proud statement of, "I'm frummer than you are." One kollel wife told something like real Jews wear the black velvet kippah and if you wear suede, you were never on the derech.

I would hear Heshy Fried make fun of this stuff on his Frum Satire site and I thought I was removed from this narishkeit. "Surely, my friends wouldn't think like this." I was wrong. So, perhaps the author is pointing out the people that think someone who drinks cholav stam milk is an apikores or those who think that you have to wear a certain kind of kippah to be frum.

As I understand it from the bubbies and zaidies that in their day there was no requirement to wear black and white. However, I had man tell me he is frum because he wears black and white.

I also know of another story. An FFB man was in the parshah and a prospective shidduch turned him down because he was wearing a dark brown suit on the (first) shidduch date. He did marry a wonderful girl. However, why is it that no one sees this as riduculous. Also, people like this see "dressing Jewish" like this as a mitzvah. I like to joke that things are the 614th mitzvah. I started doing this before I really knew the extent to which these kinds of mitzvos are added.

Finally, will somebody please tell me, where in the Torah it states that men must wear a black velvet kippah. Why is a black kippah of another material assur? How about velvet of another material? Why can't a man wear a dark brown suit or a dark blue hat and still be accepted?

beef on American shallowness

This started as a post I was putting in the Yeshivah World News coffee room about Purim costumes and if they are tznius or not, it morphed into more and I decided to put it here.




The goyim use their holiday in October for the women to dress inappropiately and just say it was a costume. I don't see the big deal if it's low key. Last year I was a ketchup bottle. I'm sure the people who object to costumes, would flip out because I was wearing red. However that's really the only issue. I only wore it at the shul and really I took the hat off because it kept falling off. The "hat" was an upside down funnel, painted red and had a "Heintz 57" label on it. It was pointy so it was really Purim-ish.

As for one other thing about tznius, I'm sick of hearing about how it's hard for men to handle looking at women. They need to get self-control.

That's a major issue in America today. NO ONE seems to value self-control or hard work. It's all instant, plastic, McNOW and "What do you do? Do you have a good enough job?" Everybody is so shallow. I wish I could say observant Jews were above this. Unfortunately, I don't think that's accurate...

Modest is the best (poem)

A women looks best
When she is modest

It won’t hurt us
To be shomer skirtus

It’s very tzin-us
To cover your knee-us

A good Jewish girl knows
She must cover her elbows

It would be a wreck
If the collar was too far from the neck

I must confide
My body, do I hide

It’s not a goof,
Some like stockings bullet proof

Married Jewish women wear
Something to cover their hair

So, the way to be
is modest, you see...