Excessive Modesty

Muslim women in traditional Muslim garb

I do a 20 mile bike ride every day. I do it for 2 reasons. One is to maintain my good health (for which I am ever grateful to God) and the other is because I love doing it. I am an avid bicycle rider. 

Rabbi Marc Angel

This even though these very same men have absolutely no problem working with women in the workplace; or shopping in the same store with them. There are pictures of women in all manner of dress and undress all over the place in the public square in America. But when it comes to a picture of even the most modestly dressed women in one of their magazines, the feeling is that it is too enticing for male readers lest it become a Michshol for them.

Who pays the price for such a warped worldview? Girls and women! Because of men's supposed weaknesses, females are made to wear ridiculous clothes so as to hide themselves from view. Because men and women are deemed to be unable to relate to each other except in a sexually improper way, barriers are made to separate men and women so that they have as few opportunities as possible to speak with each other as fellow human beings. Women are victims of this philosophy--but so are men. It reduces all humans to sexual objects, unable to conduct themselves with properiety, decency and morality. It creates an artificial society that can only be sustained by building ever-more and ever-higher barriers between the genders.

This philosophy is grotesque and abhorrent. Seeing pictures of Jewish girls wearing Muslim clothes draped over their heads and faces is painful. It is a negation of the Torah values which have characterized the Jewish people since antiquity.

We need to recognize that this extreme garb did not just suddenly spring up. It is a result of the ever-increasing stringencies introduced by hareidi Orthodoxy, and increasingly accepted among the rest of Orthodoxy. 

If we do not stand up against these tendencies to isolate the genders, then don't be surprised if these tendencies continue to become entrenched within Orthodoxy. Don't be surprised if more of our girls and women start dressing like Muslim females.