Reply To: Going off the Derech

Sam2-Obviously, from the way you put it, it would make sense to say that learning anything (ie in jeans) is better than not learning in black and white. But my community is black and white, and a person who rejects that look for a t-shirt with jeans, is rejecting yiddishkeit. The reason I care what he wears, is bc it tells me where he’s at. Of course I’d prefer that he hang out with a crowd that respects Torah learning, wearing colored shirts…even pink shirts with green polka dots. But there’s no such thing where I live. And it’s not just me and my community that think black and white means something, and jeans mean something else. My son knows this too, and that’s why he’s rejecting the black and white, bc it’s symbolic of his underlying feeling to reject yiddishkeit. The clothes are merely a reflection of the feeling. Perhaps if we were modern, and my kids grew up in jeans, then it wouldn’t be a statement of rejection like it is growing up in a haredi environment.