Has the concept of tznius changed over time?

Merrymom

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 12:52 am

cassandra wrote:

A piece of ironic family history that I just discovered:

From the pictures I have seen of my great great grandmother (in Poland) she wore sleeves and necklines that people today would think is inappropriate. She was married to my gg grandfather who was a well-respected Rav and mechaber sefarim. I have never had a problem reconciling those things, but the story got more interesting. The other day I was reading the "dedication" page in one of his sefarim and the adjective he found most fitting to describe his wife was.... "isha tznua". So yes, I completely agree with the premise that we've gotten much more bogged down with the details.

Every time there is a tznius thread here I contend that tznius is fundamentally a concept rather than a set of laws, since the actual halachos of tznius are very limited (R. Falk notwithstanding.) Yet people seem to get very caught up on the halachos and sometimes the other things are forgotten. Hence the Hot Chani phenomenon that extends to all communities, not only in terms of tight clothing but also sheitel styles, makeup application, and overall demeanor.

Well, Cassandra I really do agree with you here I'm happy to admit. I have a friend that wears what would not be considered tzanuah and yet she appears so much more tzanuah than so many women that send their daughters to my children's Bais Yaakov despite them supposedly following the rules. That being said I still can't throw out the baby with the bath water, I think most of the rules do make sense but people can pervert the laws of tznius and turn it into something quite the opposite.

It seems to me that there are several groups of people

1-Those with their noses in Rabbi Falk's book who worry obsessively over a stray hair
2-Those that cover their knees and wear shaitels but have every Hispanic and otherwise male person leering at them.
3- Those that don't follow the laws necessarily but use their own judgement about what would cause a man to stare at them and avoiding those styles.
4- Those that could care less, and would wear a bikini at the beach or short shorts to a shul picnic
5- Those that follow the laws but not obsessively, taking things with a grain of salt and using their own judgement about what causes men to stare and avoiding those styles.

Imaonwheels

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 1:23 am

But we cannot set up the either/or premise that says that one can be either externally tznius or internally and I choose x. Keeping one does not excuse not keeping the other.

From what I saw in looking at my family was that there was a lot of ignorance on this in Eastern Europe. The rabbonim basically knew and were living within halacha but women lagged behind. The less their mothers knew the less could be passed down. It was a spiral until Sarah Schenirer realized that something had to be done. Especially with the institution of compulsory education laws.

I have an elderly Holocaust survivor friend who was raised by her mother alone. She had 2 sisters. In Germany she went to the Nazi schools until they left. In the US they had public school in the morning and Hebrew school in the afternoon. She thought she would do the same in Israel until she realized that Israeli public school in the 60s was not objective but anti religious. Then she moved her dd to mamad.

merelyme

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 2:29 am

amother wrote:

But one thing I do realize is that so many women today are walking around without pantyhose in the summer and I dont remember it being acceptable when I was growing up. That is def a trend from the last 2 years thats become way too common.

There is a machlokes whether a woman must cover her legs between her knees and her ankles/lower calves. (Everyone agrees that a woman need not cover her feet from the ankle/lower calf down. The question is when it says, "Shok be'isha ervah," what exactly is the shok.)
Since it's a machlokes, even people who cover their legs (between the knee and ankle) do so with a form-fitting covering, e.g. socks or stockings. If this is your derech, great - but please be aware that other people have really reliable poskim to rely on.

hadasa

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 3:54 am

merelyme wrote:

amother wrote:

I was under the impression that the heel is for sure ervah, and the machlokes is about from the knee to the ankle. I may be mistaken, though.

Mrs Bissli

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 5:37 am

Just my 2cents here... What average secular/non-jewish women wore 30yrs ago would not be directly comparable with the kind of clothing accepted nowadays. I don't think you saw that many women in the 60s or 70s exposing midriffs or with jeans worn so low you can see the undies. One piece swimsuit was the most common swimsuits (methinks until mid/late 70s?) though bikinis are dominant in our days.

I don't think it was ignorance of women in previous generations. There was just less untznius things going on than our days.

mimivan

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 5:53 am

right Mrs. Bissli...and less of a need to separate oneself from the mainstream.

if the mainstream is walking around in the "can you see my underwear?" look, then the natural desire would be to do the opposite!
I have a story about that..I am such an old lady...! The first time I saw this look I discreetly tried to tell a girl her pants were falling down..
she laughed at me and said "I know my underwear is showing! So what!"
LOL

so that's where things have gotten to...everybody wants to dress like a plumber! Rolling Eyes

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 5:58 am

amother wrote:

first of all not all sects or groups within judaism even say you have to cover your feet with socks or stockings in the summer, just be aware of this.
I grew up wearing sandals and no socks in the summer, never even crossed my mind to put on socks, let alone stockings, so please dont be so judgemental in how you said that, different strokes for different folks.

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 6:02 am

Atali wrote:

newatit wrote:

well said fish123 where I work there are many outwardly tznuit ppl and it seems that the more covered they are the less careful they are with their middot and how they treat other ppl

I certainly don't think that is fair.

I have often noticed the opposite, that those who are more careful with tznius are also more careful with other halachos, such as shmiras halashon.

have you all not ever heard of the tzniut provocative look? I know that in my high school days I saw it a LOOOOT. those girls always wore long sleeve shirts with long skirts (not sweeping the floor) BUT, and this is the big but, the shirt and skirt were so tight that you could see the outllines of her bra and underwear, so that is very much not tzanua.

I also believe that the way you dress is ony a part of tzniut. one person may dress with long sleeves and stockings but act in a very untzanua way or you may have a girl wearing sleeves right above her elbow and no socks but act with complete tzniut, so I believe that it is how you dress and VERY MUCH the way that you act (even moreso).

cassandra

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 8:23 am

I don't wear stockings except in the winter and to weddings but I do understand where amother is coming from. Even though it may not be basic Halacha to always cover your leg there may be a community standard to do so, and when people break that standard it can be upsetting, especially since a change like that reflects and overall change in values which had become prevalent in certain communities. When I got married nine years ago and was introduced to the Flatbush "community" EVERYONE wore stockings. Now so many people don't, and trust me it is a symptom of something much larger.

princessleah

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 8:41 am

cassandra wrote:

What is it a symptom of? Maybe people got fed up.

I learned a lot of Hilchos Kisui Rosh -- I took a class in it once. And in the gemara it says that a woman does not have to cover her hair in her own chatzer-- and this meant the yard outside of her residence, which was shared with the other people who lived around the same yard. It also had a question, I can't remember exactly, but was something like, "if you are traveling to xx country, how should you cover your hair there?" and the answer was, look at the people there, and do what they are doing (even if they are non-Jews). So tznius, yes has changed, and is relative to social norms.

I have also seen pictures of my grandmother from like 1950 in NY. She was born in Poland as the daughter of a chassidshe rebbe. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder gown. By the time I was born she would have never worn something like that.

Why are floor-sweeping skirts considered not tznius now?

louche

Thu, Jul 09 2009, 9:50 am

katb wrote:

Didn't the biblical ladies basically cover everything except their eyes?

What makes you think that? ? There's not a shred of evidence that that was the case. I find it quite telling that Rivka covered herself with a veil when she saw Yitzchak--which means she was not wearing one when she was talking to Eliezer. I believe one of the mefarshim said she covered her face not out of tznius, ( she wouldn't have been untzniusdik in the first place), but because she was dazzled by the kedusha radiating from Yitzchak's face.

Mores change with the times and vary with the community. There is no halachic prohibition against exposing your ankles, but if you lived in a time and place where ankles were covered, then it would be impermissible to expose yours. You don't have to look very far--exposed ankles were considered shocking in secular Western society as recently as a century ago. There was a time when wearing any kind of face "paint" was considered "fast." If a person from those days came to life in a modern-day jewish community (note I said modern-day, as in 2009, not "Modern" as in "not charedi"), he would conclude that we are all....you know. Because in his day, wearing a skirt above your ankles and coloring your lips and cheeks meant one thing only. Mind you, this was true in an age when displaying half your bosom in an evening gown was completely acceptable in certain sectors of secular society. (But only in the evening. An equivalent display in the daytime would lead to the same conclusion as the short skirt and painted face.)