Thanks for the reply Oomis.
Here are my thoughts:
“He is also trying to preserve MY religious mind, by thinking that I am not dressing up to his higher standard, and am in need of “fixing.” What he really wants is to see ALL Jews dress like he does, and if they do not, he thinks (as apparently now do you) that he is on a higher madreiga.”
First of all, how do you know that? Has he told you that or do you just assume so? Second of all, who the heck cares? I honestly don’t care what level anybody else thinks I am on. I am comfortable in the place I am. I know I may need to grow more, but I am sure God knows how much effort I put to stay in the place I am, so what do I care what some guy in a black hat thinks?
“It is an external manifestation and nothing more.”
Are you sure about that? When I wear a short skirt, am I not subconciously showing off my legs? When I am wearing a fitted top or whatever, would I do so if I thought I didn’t look good? Clothing is who we are, there’s no denying it, as much as I would like to.
I am not saying that we should be labeled for it, but I do believe that we dress a certain way because that is the person that we either are, or are trying to be. Our outsides tell about our insides. That’s not to say that we are bad people if we don’t dress in a tzniut manner. It just means that we are lacking in tzniut. (I don’t mean you, personally.) Somebody who dresses in a Yeshiva way, which he feels is “better”, is not better because of the color of his garments or the style of them, but because he is doing something to try to make himself better. And he is not necessarily better than you or I, as a Jew, but he is better than he was beforehand. He is better for the fact that he is trying to better himself, even if it isn’t necessarily better than say, wearing jeans and a nice shirt or khakis, or a blue shirt with black pants…or purple or pink… If he is doing it to work on himself and try and become a better Jew, why should we care? (This is of course assuming that his dress and his insides are on the same page.) Those who judge you by how you dress lower their own goodness by the fact that they are judging you, but I don’t think that every guy who tries to dress in the Yeshiva way is judging others and assuming that he is better than everyone else. I know guys I’ve grown up with that were regular (modern?) guys and now they are black hatters…I respect them for their growth. I don’t think they’re crazy for dressing like Yeshiva guys everywhere they go. And I most definitely don’t believe that they are looking at my own brothers and thinking that they should be that way too.
I love that you are so open minded and I wish more people were too. I’m just surprised that a person who seems so non judgemental would care about how another dresses.
Now I do wonder if anybody has gotten a heat stroke from wearing a suit in the park…