Saturday, October 29, 2011

Bnei Brak and its modesty Madness


To all shops selling clothes: Selling immodest clothing is like selling unkosher meat !



Enough with the haredi immodesty. Meaning, immodest haredi clothing such as shorter skirts, too much make - up or women's clothing in shiny colours causing too much male attention. The graffiti has been in Rashi Street for quite a few years now.



Even if a woman just walks a few meters to the grocery, she should be dressed as modest as our foremother Rachel and not sloppy or causing negative attention.



The Edah HaCharedit and the Satmarer Rebbe (Rebbe Aharon Teitelbaum, I suppose, as Bnei Brak is full of his followers): Selling immodest clothes is like selling unkosher meat !

Photos: Miriam Woelke

2 comments:

  1. B"H

    I'm sure you have noticed that shawls are very commonly worn in many communities including my own. As of lately it seems those women whom are commonly referred to as the "Taliban" within within the Charedi have a warped view of tznius.

    Of course some clothes which are too bold and too bright are avoided.

    But then you have some people who want to push the boundaries of what they feel is tznius.

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  2. B'H

    Without justifying them, many Jewish women wore such clothes in pre-WWII in Chasidic communities of Eastern Europe. Who knows, for instance, that even in Lubavitch communities, women wore a chador-like veil (there are many pictures of Lubavitch Chasidim with their women wearing such chador-like veils), while nowadays Lubavitcher women mostly cover their hair with sheitels (some of them being too fancy. I must admit that despite being a Lubavitcher myself, I am not a supporter of covering one's hair with sheitels), or that in the Lubavitch of old, women shaved their head after marriage, which is no longer practiced nowadays.

    What I want to show by that is that eventhough they are going very far and are exagerating, it does not mean that what they're doing was not practiced in the past among Jewish communities. There is a general phenomenon of Charedization of the Charedi communities, and among them, there are those who want to go as far as possible in the Judaism which was practiced in the prehistoric period. They are looking for an authentic Judaism without all the changes which were adopted. Are they wrong? I don't know, and I don't want to judge them, but they are just looking for "authenticity", to feel connected with the Judaism of old.

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