I'm getting really annoyed with the posters going up in my shopping centre telling women to dress modestly.
Firstly, I understand that men wish to sensitise themselves and do not wish to be faced with immodestly-dressed women - but posters up, no matter how tactfully put, ostracise non-religious people that come to shop. I have seen a few people wearing jeans and low-cut tops and I am sure they will not feel welcomed to Judaism by these posters. This is another example of forcing people to do what they naturally would not and does not bring people to Torah. In fact, I believe it is a Chillul Hashem as it creates bad feeling towards religious Jews.
Secondly, I know the shopping centre is in a more ultra-orthodox area, but this neighbourhood is religiously mixed and this is the only shopping centre! If the ultra-orthodox are so sensitive they should go and live in the more ultra-orthodox neighbourhood down the road...
Thirdly, I don't believe anyway that men should be SO sensitive - this causes more ghettoisation and although in non-Jewish countries this may have been necessary, in a country filled with Jews, mixing and promoting tolerance will bring more people back to Hashem.
Fourthly - why don't the posters mention what men should be wearing? I mean, I know it's not usually an issue but just to show that the laws of tznius also apply to men - the passuk - you should walk modestly with Hashem - is not women-only! Modesty means more than just clothes as well.
Anyway, that's my rant.
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3 comments:
The thing that I've always wondered, is why are these tzniut-patrol type things are always run by men?
1. There something UNTZANUA for men to be overly obsessed with this topic - on a practical level, the less a man sees immodestly-dressed women, the more sensitive he would become to it and therefore it's surely inappropriate for such a man to be calculating exactly how many inches wide a skirt should be or how wide a shirt should be so that it doesn't "accentuate the upper body" etc. Also, on a spiritual level, we know that the greater someone is, the greater their yetzer hara so again, it's surely inappropriate for such men to be so involved in promoting and policing tzniut.
2. Surely it would be more productive if tzniut campaigns were organised by women. For example, a dati girl I once met told me that a woman who she saw on the bus every day gave her a letter telling her very nicely that it's not fitting for a bat yisrael to have short sleeves etc. Something like that is more likely to be effective than some crazy guy on a bike riding round the old city who feels it his duty to tell girls to sew up the slits in their skirt (This happened to me, as one's instinctive reaction is "Pervert!" rather than "hmm....let me think about this".
I think we met the same crazy guy on a bike when I was obviously heavily pregnant and chas v'shalom holding hands with my husband in the street!
sounds like rbs
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