gavra_at_work –
I heard a chasuv rosh yeshiva in E”Y say that tznius is for women like what Torah is for men. Torah is not the end all be all, but then again, it kind of is actually. Tznius is not “just a woman’s mitzvah” like lighting Shabbos candles is, it’s much bigger than that. And it should be treated as such.
It’s hard for us women to get into a halachic/gemaric discussion and debate, because we’re just not qualified, but, in my humble opinion, that is not how women tend to approach mitzvos anyway, particularly the mitzvah of tznius. How much of tznius is actually halacha anyway? Barely any of it. Cover yourself, no pants, nothing too tight. And all the rest is up to the interpretation of each woman. Tznius is not about how important the gemara says it is, it’s about the sensitivities and *personal* feelings toward the mitzvah, and respecting yourself as a princess of Hashem. We don’t look at these theoretical gemara concepts in order to figure out our view on the subject, as men might, we look at them in order to get chizuk and the desire to grow in our tznius. So in that vein, if one reliable person tells me that tznius is a crazy powerful mitzvah that can have a huge effect on the world on the klal and individual levels (and conversely hurt it if not abided by), I’ll take that and use it in my life to help me in my everyday tznius. Just like there can be more than one set of “al shlosha dvarim haolam omed”, the fact that one idea might seem to contradict another does not mean they can’t both be 100% true. You can’t go wrong when trying to pump up tznius and make it look amazingly special, but you can go wrong trying to go the other way. In my unlearned woman’s opinion, at least.