oy vey.
when i was in bais yaakov it was the generation after the holocaust. every child that wished to attend was accepted. the same for yeshivas chasam sofer which my brother attended. there were girls from frummer homes and less frum homes and even several not-frum homes. none of the girls from frum homes went off the derech because of their friends,. it just didn’t happen. people accepted each other. many frum girls became frummer. many not frum girls stayed that way. there was a lot more acceptance and most of the students in both the boys and girls schools grew up to have Torah homes and in many cases outdo their parents in certain levels of observance. it was like in the out of town schools even though i’m talking about new york. years later i see some of these girls who might have been less frum in high school and today they are much frummer. i understand what rebbetsin feinstien is saying. acceptance was the norm then, exclusion is the norm now. the problem is that people who are raised so sheltered actually think that if someone does something a bit different they are doing an aveirah. its not necessarily so. in our school in 1970 the skirts were supposed to reach the knees. a tefach above was acceptable if we wore dark not see through tights. out of 120 girls maybe 10 had skirts that covered the kness and i might be padding that number a bit. for many years the skirt lengths were not an issue and now its a problem again. but it is not clear cut about the knees and elbows having to be completely covered al pi halacha. as far as elbows all the sleeves had to do was reach the elbows, on the inside . and entire communities of shomrei mitzvot like the yekkish community followed rav shamshon rephoel hirsch and had a sleeve which covered half the arm tightly. its great that many pepple are more makpid on tsnius now but be aware that the halacha is not so clear cut ,so don’t say that everyone that doesn’t reach these standards is a sinner.
as far as acceptance. well some people who think they cornered the market on frumkeit think its their job to giver out points for observance to everyone else. other’ s like rebbetsin malkie feinstien understand that we only see the externals and only Hashem knows what’s really going on inside a person.
i met an old school ‘friend’ who used to look down on me because i wasn’t one of the below the knee skirt crowd. well she was was so condescending in her surprise at who and what kind of family i have now. i was so hurt and amazed. from her amazement at my yeshivishe kids and etc. you would have thought that she thought i was the biggest “shiksa’/. only based on her assumptions that if i looked like that then i must be much less frum than she was.
she obviously was so busy paying attention to everyone’s externals that she missed the “don’t embarrass a person it’s similar to shedding blood Halacha.”
Baruch Hashem i have forgiven her for her unfeeling,rude comments and hope Hashem will forgive me for my transgressions too.