'Reclaiming Dignity': A look at 'misunderstood' Jewish modesty - review

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: RIVKAH LAMBERT ADLER
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Reclaiming Dignity: A Guide to Tzniut for Men and Women is something completely different. Comprised of two distinct sections, it is presented from an Orthodox perspective, yet contains much universal wisdom

The first part, some 200 pages long, is divided into a few dozen personal essays on the general topic of tzniut (modesty). Taken as a whole, they demonstrate that tzniut is a Jewish value more about the nature of one's soul than about one's external appearance.

Almost all the essays were written by Jewish educators such as Sivan Rahav-Meir and Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller-Gottlieb, as well as lesser-known personalities. They cover a much wider range of topics than skirt length, such as the current social implications of tzniut in the Jewish world.

Examining tzniut in the modern day

A few essayists take on the issue of tzniut in a culture where oversharing, particularly on social media, is commonplace.

Educator Shevi Samet focuses on how social media trends, left unexamined, can lead to breaches in tzniut: "Over-sharing is so rampant on social media that the line between appropriate dissemination of personal information and too much sharing isn't just blurred, it's often indistinguishable."

Essays about teaching tzniut to the next generation include this gem from Rifka Wein Harris, mother of four teenage daughters: "My proposal is that we teach 'tznius' (Yiddish variation) not by shining a spotlight on the way teens present themselves to the outer world, but by building up their inner sense of self, until their feeling of intrinsic worth is so bulletproof that they do not need constantly to broadcast status updates to the world, whether in texts or fashion choices."

Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky echoes this emphasis when he quotes Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe's teaching that a Jew who is working on spiritual growth must focus on building an "inner world." The current focus of Western culture on externalities and making our lives public on social media operate against the goal of spiritual growth by emphasizing the wrong things.

"When our approach to tznius focuses primarily on the length of women's skirts or sleeves, we are missing the deeper issue," Karlinsky claims.

Rabbi Yitzchak Shurin of Midreshet Rachel v'Chaya in Jerusalem acknowledges that some of the added strictures that have been introduced in recent years are because "Orthodox society tries to push back at what it views as 'a society that is promiscuous and...