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It has made people much ruder, but it has given me greater peace of mind, knowing that I can easily reach people when necessary. the key word is NECESSARY.
Now, for some venting:
If someone is visitng a friend or having a conversation with them, PLEASE don’t answer phone calls all throughout the visit. And don’t speak so loudly that the nice dinner I am having with my husband in one of our rare forays into a nice restaurant, is ruined by your extremely private and irrelevant conversation. I was having pizza with my daughter only to hear a PHYSICIAN discussing a patient’s personal business (called her by name as well) on his cell phone. He violated several HIPAA laws by doing so. And did I REALLY have to hear about his patient’s gallstones while I was eating a slice of pizza?
I absolutely HATE when people call me Mrs. SJSinNYC. I have a name people, please use it. I’m not a big title person.”
I have to agree with you. I was (my name) before I was ever Mrs. (last name). In the Midbar, Jews were not known as Mr. or Mrs. I feel much closer and friendlier to people who call me by my name (with my permission, of course). There are SOME people whom I will not allow to call me by my first name, but that is because I generally sense a chutzpahdigkeit in them and feel the need to keep some distance. Otherwise, I find it disrespectful when someone calls me Mrs. when I specifically requested they call me by name. I am not referring to certain types of frum men who feel uncomfortable calling any woman by name. I respect that they feel it is more proper to say Mrs.
Look at road rage – that stems from lack of respect also. In fact, I believe, and always have, that ALL the ills of society stem from a lack of respect in some manner.
Maybe we should also try to figure out how to mainline a burger with fries, while we’re at it! I suspect this was a “klutz kasha.”
In the same way you dont need a rav to tell you that you haveto follow the mishna of not speaking to your wife too much.”
So when you get married, don’t talk too much to your wife. See how long that flies.
“Secondly, if someone saves your life- you should show them hakaros hatov and thank them and NOT complain about the fact that you can’t have anymore children. “
Health, that is truly unbecoming to say such a thing. May Hashem spare you and yours from ever going through such a devastating nisayon. You have NO idea what a trauma it is to a woman to elarn she can never ever have another child. there are women who regularly go through life-threatening procedures and pregnancies, in order to have a child. I would agree that a woman who already had several children, should thank Hashem for her healthy kids and accept His gezaira, but how could you make such an appalling statement about someone who has obviously had such a tragic emergency? I am frankly very surprised at your apaprent lack of empathy.
R’ Chaim Kanievsky to switch her name to Sarah, as Shira is not really a Jewish name – it’s just a Hebrew word that people decided to use as a name. Many names we use now have no basis in Judaism. “
I wonder what he would say about Gila, Rina, Ditzah, and Chedvah!
Still, it’s better to take a word from the Torah and call someone’s name by that word, than to use the German word for that same word. “Gittel” is Tova, and Tova is LOSHON HAKODESH, not Gittel, in spite of what some of us may think. The fact that a lot of Torah was learned and disseminated in Yiddish, as well as Yiddish being a unifying language for European Jewry, is not as compelling as it once was, IMO, as a great great deal of Torah is now learned in ENGLISH, the new Yiddish, and most Jews in the USA today speak English. Just ask anyone who learns with an Artscroll Sefer, if English has not become their “heilige” language. Perhaps people should start naming their children Brian, instead of Boruch, by the same logic that compelled their grandparents to opt for a German/Yiddish name versus Loshon Kodesh. Just a thought…
“The fact that the way a woman dresses will cause certain reactions in men should be taught to the girls so that they understand what they are doing so that when pure yiras shamayim isn’t enough to deter them from dressing a certain way, perhaps the physical reactions that they are causing will”
THANK YOU! That is what I meant.
What I meant was. Hatznea Leches is between me and Hashem. not between me and you”
I totally agree then, but the fact is that the people who surround us might have a different notion about that.
I agree with all of you, but we also need more humility, and less feeling of entitlement. A strong work ethic wouldn’t hurt, either.
Where is a good dungeon when you need one?
WOW! I have nothing to say, and that’s a first.
Talk to the teacher first, then the supervisor of that teacher if there is still a problem. Always go to the teacher first, though, in a non-confrontational manner. When my son was in fifth grade, his English teacher gave the boys an assignment due after Succos, that could not in any way, shape, or form be done by the boys without EXTENSIVE help from Mom and Dad. In many cases, the parents DID the work, because it was taking so long for them to oversee their sons’ work AND prepare for the yomim tovim. My husband literally sat for hours with my son, explaining what the teacher was asking him to do, and starting him off, then watching him do the work. It was torture for ALL of us.
We had open school night with the teachers, and many, many of the parents verbally attacked this teacher. (I am not maskim to such a tactic, but I could not really blame them for expressing their anger in unison). The teacher simply misjudged the assignment’s level of difficulty vis a vis these students. She should have started out with them all working together in class, to better understand exactly what was expected of them. She also should have been more realistic about a) the truly enormous amount of work she had assigned and b) the fact that the parents would not want their kids to be doing written assignments during chol hamoed. In the end, the best thing to do is approach the teacher privately and reasonably, see what the expectations are, and explain why you believe it might not be doable. There is always a place to compromise.
Thank you PY for a timely warning.
Perhaps I misunderstood your meaning, APY. I took it to mean that you need to be objectively tzanua in your life, because the people around you have very subjective conceptualizations of what tznius means. You were saying that BY girls should not have explained to them the workings of a man’s mind because it is not the ikkar. I believe it IS ikkar and there SHOULD be plain speaking to girls upon whom you want to impress those concepts. They SHOULD understand that Hashem designed men to have specific physiological responses to visual stimuli, and by them dressing in a certain way, they are encouraging those responses inappropriately (as opposed to when they are married to the man and not in niddah). I was disagreeing more with the idea that they should remain in the dark about thee things. It is the equivalent of “Because I said so!” and that does not fly with girls old enough to be getting married.
APY, I respectfully disagree with you. Hatznea leches is subject to interpretation. What one person finds tzanua, another may not. There are certain arbitrary rules upon which any clear-thinking person can recognize tznius or its lack thereof. But the fact of the matter is that MOST guys in the modern world of today, will not think twice about the exposure of a girl’s elbow, though by our own standards that might be considered by many as not tzanua.
There is an old Gershwin song that states, “In days of old a glimpse of stocking, was looked at as rather shocking, now Heaven knows – anything goes.” This was written about a time when women by our standards today might look tzanuos, but were considered not to be because their ankles were showing.
Certain aspects of tznius do not ever change with the times, but many attitudes about what constitutes modest attire, do. There are people who believe that even showing a little of the skin above the wrist is not proper, or that any color other than black, is inappropriate. That has very much to do with the subjectivity of the people around us.
There is one solution to the therapy issue. Before ANY child may enter the shidduch parsha, it should be a gezaira that ALL children must be seen by a therapist/counselor/whatever you want to name it, while in high school, as part of their education process. Those who need more therapy can continue to get it, and those who don’t will only speak to the therapist a few times. Thus ALL kids will be in therapy to a certain extent, and the issue will take on less of an ominous status.
APY, I also thought of your point of not buying a kibud, but rather earning it (and that WAS the point of my post). As to the fairness or unfairness of the fact of life that some are rich and some are not (I, being in the latter category), that’s true. Life isn;t always fair – but it doesn’t mean that the people who sit on the boards of Yeshivahs or get honored at dinners, or are looked to like Tevye “If (he) were a rich man,” for guidance, are the ones who deserve to be thus treated, simply because they have a fatter wallet than other people. Because if that is true, that money makes you automatically more worthy of honor, then there is no logic as to why so many reshaim have it.
MW13, my “accost” remark was directed at the person who has already admitted he and his good friend, the other tznius police officer, are already DOING just that. If you thought I meant you, you were mistaken, and I am sorry that it caused you discomfort.
Is tand by my opinion. And btw, I would not tell someone who was ALREADY wearing lipstick (and how do you know it is not the new Shabbos lipstick powder?) what you think the halacha is. I would wait until another time when it is NOT Shabbos, and then simply talk about the Shabbos-approved lipsticks (in a casually brought up way), and how pretty they are, and how nice it is that someone came up with a way to wear lipstick on Shabbos that did not have any halachic problems associated with it. She will get the message, if she is smart.
Li’mashal, if you saw somebody unintentionally drinking poison, would you say “it is not my business” and walk away?”
Not a good example, because the person unknowingly about to drink poison will presumably be VERY glad you stopped him or her from doing so. Not necessarily so with the tznius police doing their thing. There is no comparison between the reality of mamesh saving someone’s life, versus believing you are saving his or her neshama. Most people you would accost in that way would be very annoyed with you,and think you are some nut-case walking the street looking for sinners. If you do not believe that I am correct, have you ever been stopped by Evangelical Christians determined to “save” your soul?
“Oh well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be. “
Bullet, meet the guy who dodged you!
I think it is just plain wrong to sell kibudim. If our shul did that, then my husband would never have gotten neilah p’sicha a couple of years ago. The shul gives out kibudim to people whom they feel give of themselves in mesiras nefesh and avodas mishkan ha-me’at. My husband is an anav who normally refuses to receive accolades in his personal life, and he was very touched when he was asked to do the p’sicha for neilah that year. Merit is more important than money. Otherwise only people who are financially well-off would ever be thus honored.
WIY, nice one.
Make Rosh Hashana FIRST…
NOT ONE PENNY. We don’t charge for kibudim in my shul.
Our Rishonim and Acharonim did not possess black hats and suits with a white shirt. Levush changes with time. A Ben Torah is a Ben Torah, regardless of his levush. And moreover, not every young man or even older man in a suit, black hat, and white shirt, is a Ben Torah by any means. Al tistakeil blkankan…
Aries, it sounds like we possibly live in the same neighborhood. But if in fact we are talking about the same VS, the store was displayed in a mini mall/center in the very front window on the street. Yeshivah boys were bugging their eyes out as they passed by. it was not appropriate for a family-centered neighborhood to have that so “in our faces.”. The other store is merely a dress shop with possibly untzniusdig gowns by our standards, but it is not the same thing as looking at lingerie on mannequins, as was the case with VS.
“A friend of mine and I every week take a stack of index cards and write on them in large letters “Practice Modesty,” and when on the train or walking in the city, we’ll quickly hand these to a pritzusdik-dressed woman, whether frum-looking or not (goyim get the English, and frum-seeming women dressed immodestly get the card which says “Practice Tznius”). We have never been attacked or given a hard time. People take them, and G-d willing, they hold on to it and think about what it says. “
Rebdoniel, you and your friend would be wiser to stop looking for Prutzahs in the street. You might get an undercover cop by mistake, who thinks you are hitting on her. Leave the index cards at home. It is very presumptuous if you, ESPECIALLY if they are Goyim.
“The most important thing to look for is a tznius’dik girl. Once you verify she is completely 100% tzanuah all the time, and you are otherwise satisfied with her, you can be almost sure all the other hashkofos issies with her will be okay. (Obviously generally check out, but these days a girl who is really tzanuah, is a top girl in everything from middos, etc.) “
Please cash a reality check. Tznius does not confer the status of a girl with good middos on anyone. It MIGHT, but there are lots of girls who dress a certain way to be tzniusdig, who are selfish, self-centered, pieces of work. Yes, Tznius is important, but even more than tznius is goodskeit, empathy, kindheartedness, and the desire to make the world a better place than we came into at birth.
Goes to show, this is a controversy far more complex than one would expect. I still believe MOST women dress to impress each other. we don’t show off our jewelry to guys. When was the last time a man asked a kallah to show him her engagement ring?
SJS is right. Frum women (and I believe women in general) dress to impress other women, not to attract men specifically. Men could not care less what women are wearing (in terms of style, fashionability, labels, etc. ) that is something women tend to look at. I never cared much for labels, and lucky for my husband, not much for real jewelry, either (I love jewelry that is PRETTY,but really don’t care if the stones are fake or it is goldplate rather than 14K). In the frum velt WHO is it who really is seeing women dressed in their finery? OTHER WOMEN. The men at the simchah are often on the other side of the room, they are not in shul with the women, and they don’t spend time with them – so who really is seeing them and being impressed?
OK, Oomis, now we have you cornered! This is so original, that when any of the CR folks come across this, we’ll be hot on the trail of Oomis’s true identity! “
Ask Lois Lane, she knows. (Thank you, BPT!)
Oomis. Not a single suggested reason was meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps I should use a symbol such as 🙂 to indicate humor (is there a symbol for sarcasim yet?) “
Why not? They made sense…
My father O”H did not have smicha, but certainly deserved it. His knowledge of Torah was astonishing, and he had a photograhic memory. If we asked him a question, he would immediately open up a sefer and show us the exact spot where the teshuvah was. Whenever he was asked to give a lecture, he never took up notes with him. He spoke extemporaneously for an hour, and was always well-received by other talmidei chachomim and laypersons alike. I say this, because he never wanted to be a musmach. He always said he never learned for the sake of the title. I am sure there are many such T”Ch.
APY is a guy – this is like that old joke where a child was injured and brought in for emergency surgery and the doctor
said, “I cannot operate on this boy; he is my son.”But the surgeon wasn’t his father, so how do you explain this?
(Answer: the doctor was the boy’s mother).
There is nothing wrong with a sling. If it is tzniusdig to carry one’s baby in her arms, it is no less tzniusdig in a sling. And how do we know our Bubbas did not use them in the alteh heim? I think they did! Only in those days they were shawls and big kerchiefs or aprons, not Baby Bjorns.
Booze, booze, and more booze.
Now that we got that out of the way – the best thing is to have a bedtime routine, saying Shma and Hamalach with the kids,reading a special bedtime story like Goodnight Moon, singing a special song to them… I always changed the last two line in Rockabye Baby for my kids, because I thought the originals were horrible. So I would sing, “When the bough breaks, the baby won’t fall,
Ki Hashem Elokeinu, Shomeir al hakol.”
My kids loved it, and now my daughter sings it to her daughter, and my granddaughter has even sung it back to me (she’s two, kinehora). Backrubs don’t hurt, either.
You say people should not look at. There is gemorah Tanis 24a with a story. Someone had a pretty daughter, and one day noticed a boy peeking thru the fence. He asked what are you doing? He replied I wont merit to marry her, at least let me look at her. The father asked Hashem to kill her and she died, because she was making people look at her. “
OY! SO many problems with this! If this story is true (a big if, IMO), this guy surely gets the Father of the Year Award! A boy was peeking at a girl through the fence, and SHE IS NOW CHAYAV MISA????????? AND – noch di tzie, her own father davened for her death???? PLEASE be careful not to tell this story over to our sonim. It is bad enough to see it in print here.
And Kasha, few people, if any, were executed by the Beis Din/Sanhedrin for serious capital crimes (much less their manner of dress), so please quote the exact source and the actual words of the source.
The Torah actually says that Love starts after marriage. Check out Yitzchak&Rivkah “
It is Rashi who interprets the pasuk to eman that it was after marriage that Yitzchak loved Rivka. That is not halacha, however, that it has to be that order. It is true that a more lasting and deeper loving commitment forms after marriage, and that is more important than the ephemeral emotions that couples have prior to the chasunah. But love starts when it starts, before, during, after, marriage, and even in some rare cases, after the death or even divorce of a spouse, when one realizes what one has lost.
ASF, I am truly delighted (not being sarcastic) that things worked out so well for you. Both you and your husband must be very special people. But you are among a small percentage of people who are an exception, IMO, and I wonder how many other girls in a similar situation really feel as you do, or simply cannot cop to the true feelings that they harbor after the fact.
“You can’t blame divorce on anything else but selfishness”
Aries, with all due respect to your spot-on observations, sometimes two really nice and unselfish people, are just not meant for each other. I know people who divorced and have a much better relationship than they ever did when married. it is sad, but it happens.
Hashem told Avraham Avinu to listen to ALL that his wife says. I think that covers this issue…
eclipse, I like the way you think.
To the too tight skirt dilemma – If you slide in first, then swing the legs in carefully, it should not happen.
“Would you go OTD and eat treif if some random people told you they think something you are eating is treif?
Would you go OTD and be mechallel Shabbos if some random people told you they think something you are doing is chillul Shabbos? “
No, but I know people who would and did, for exactly that reason. I would be extremely embarrassed if they did it in public. Someone actually did that to me in college, and it turned out SHE was mistaken, the food item I was eating had recently acquired a hechsher (which I knew, which was why I was eating it!). She actually grabbed it out of my hand and flung it to the ground. GOOD JOB! Did NOT apologize or pay for the item.
If someone thought i was eating treif, or being M”Sh, I would hope they would take me aside and ask me what I was doing, and let me know their concern in a “I had heard some time ago that this item is no longer kosher – when did they announce that it was under hechsher again?” type of way. That lets me know there might be a problem, and also that the person is assuming l’kaf zechus that I know it is ok again,rather than their criticizing me for eating it. The next step is up to me.
Oomis, those you describe are definitly not zonas, but they just as definitely they are prutzas. Uncovered knees getting into a car or uncovered elbows most definitly falls into the category of a prutza. “
And I could not disagree more. A prutza is a very definite type of immoral woman (or man for that matter), who ACTS as well as dresses, in a way that is utterly contrary to the spirit and letter of the Torah.
If you believe that someone is immoral because they dress a couple of inches too short to suit your sensitivities (and I believe firmly that they SHOULD dress b’tzniyus, but I would mever condemn them for not following my standard), then you really have no concept of what immorality is. I know people who believe it is untzniusdig for a BABY GIRL to dress in sleeveless clothing in the summer.
Time to find another topic. And I think the one about people who double park, blocking cars from leaving, or people who act like bulvanim in stores or restaurants, are a much worse chillul Hashem than an exposed inch of throat, elbow, or knee.
“Zona? Hyperbole such as this simply turns people off. “
That is exactly what I think. Equating a schoolgirl who wears a shorter skirt than you believe to be tzniusdig (covers the knees, but might not when they get into a car), or slightly above the elbow sleeves, with an actual hooker, is not just hyperbole. It is exactly the thing that causes some girls to believe that tznius is all nonsense. A zona is a zona, and not a young lady who dresses in a way of which you do not approve, but is surely not slutty.
APY – ya got THAT right!
WOW!
That usually applies to Shabbos, because if you forgot to light, you cannot light again until after Shabbos. On yom tov, you could have lit at any time when you remembered that night. Surely someone would have reminded you at kiddush time. As far as the extra candle is concerned, many people light an extra candle in zechus of something. You don’t have to say why. I had a different problem. I lit my candles and within five minutes or so of Shabbos, they went out. I was told just to relight them after Shabbos. As you can imagine I was very upset that this happened.
I believe this is an inyan related to women on their leil tevilah. And even in that case, there is a heter for certain women to shower with some type of chatzizah on them, like a bandaid.
BP Totty, while I understand and applaud your idealism, in the real world bringing noisy kids to shul is not only a distraction, but is counterproductive. With people trying to have extra kavanah during the Y”N, this not only does not allow them to focus on their davening, it causes them to be annoyed and frustrated with the kids, and that surely is NOT a good thing when we are trying to get into a different sort of mindset.
The problem also is that parents who bring their kids DO NOT DISCIPLINE THEM. They make themselves nisht vissendik to the noise their children are making. That is patently wrong and unfair to the oilem. BTW, you knwo what is really annoying? When kids have all that nosh you mentioned, with them on Yom Kippur, and are rustling the plastic bags, tearing open the potato chips, and chomping noisily while the rest of us are fasting. Sorry, but you do not get my vote on this one, though I appreciate your wisdom and clarity most of the time. Have a k’siva v’chasima tova.