BS”D
I just want to say that I used what turned out to be understood as very harsh language when I said grub and prust. When I use those words in Yiddish or “heimish” speech, especially to describe something abstract like a style of dress, they don’t convey the contempt that people perceived in my posts. Maybe the closest word I can think of to what I did want to convey is the Ivrit “rechovi”, or the English “common”. Prust is from or at least reminds me of the Russian “prostoy” which means simple, as in simple folk. Whatever it is, I certainly did not mean to convey that it is the equivalent of something which is truly unfit yet perhaps not specifically ossur, like listening to gangsta rap that does not actually contain gutter language.
Also, I may have said that a particular mode of dress is grub and prust but I did not say that those who dress that way are. “Do we want to be grub and prust” was bad wording as what I meant is “do we want to appear or be perceived as grub and prust”. I had ten windows open when I wrote that and I should have been more careful. We all need to grow in some way, and this is just an area where there is a potential for growth.
If the topic is still open when I return I will comment more clearly on Sunday 12 Menachem Av, but bekitzur what I did want to convey is that while baseline halacha is of course fully mutar, there is a matter of elevating ourselves and our surroundings that is best accomplished by going a bit further, especially in these times when (y)our neighbors are not “die shkootzim in Ookraina” (MBD: A Shabbos in Mezhbizh, lyrics like that could only be and indeed were written by Lipa Schmeltzer) and we have to always remember that Hashem is “hivdilanu min hatoyim” even if these toyim are people who are not out to kill us and who we interact with pleasantly in the workplace and as neighbors.
Just by virtue of having been on Har Sinai, we are more than Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, and Laura Bush will ever be, and we should proudly show it. (One of those three, namely the one who wears 500 dollar sneakers, is frankly a disgrace to her position, and another is a populist politician who appeals to the simple voter with her mode of dress and presentation). And when the non-Jews around us do generally act aidel and civilized, or at least appear to, we should go one step further and act and look more aidel and more civilized.
But all of this is possible only if we internalize the reason for why we are going the extra step, which is that we are mamleches kohanim veam kadosh. Kadosh means special, or as our friend Lipa sings – geantzigt iz der Yid – geantzigt, set apart, special, from an (more standardly pronounced ein), meaning one. In numbers as well as in mission, we are like one among the many – we are what, 14 million among 6 billion, and look how we are noticed!
And once we internalize it, we’ll dress the way we do to reflect who we really are inside instead of because of societal pressures or, chas vesholom, out of fear of ending up like the fictional Revital Avraham (or the most definitely real…I mean most ridiculously fictional Shprintzy Landau).
Then, we will do it besimcha, and when we can’t do it for whatever legitimate reason, such as heat or having a sack of garbage in our hands, we’ll feel the difference and appreciate even more that we can do it in more usual situations.
Otherwise, indeed, all we see in front of us is a dry, technical book of rules that sometimes seem stifling, and that we rationalize away as being for a certain community and therefore not for us. That indeed could be the case with Rav Falk’s book, and maybe it was meant to be or should have been presented more like the guides Rav Blumenkrantz AH issued over the years, but regardless of some of the technicalities, once we (men and women) know WHY we should present a certain image, we will go out of our way to do it.
Anyway, oy, vey, again with Miss Landau and if I don’t stop thinking about Lipa lyrics during the Three Weeks I’ll succumb to the yetzer and turn on the music :(. Gotta go, see everyone 12 Menachem Av in Yerushalayim Habnuyah.