I actually really do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. There’s something disturbingly entertaining (that is, when it’s not utterly painful and entirely enraging) about reading the lamest, stupidest essentialist apologetics for women’s traditional role in Judaism. For a project I’m doing on hair-covering for my Poskim class, here are two nuggets I’ve come accross from my new favorite, Modesty: An Adornment for Life by Rabbi Pesach Eliyahu Falk. Pages and pages on exactly how opaque your pantyhose has to be. Anyway, here goes:

It should be noted that in the times of Chazal [the sages] even non-Jewish women covered their hair (Sanhedrin 58b). This demonstrates just how deep-rooted the need for tnius [modesty] is in the constiution of the married woman, and all the more so in the nature of the Jewish married woman. It is, therefore, an unnatural state of affairs that some women no longer feel a need for special modesty once married. Segregation, which is the cornerstone of kedushas Yisroel [the holiness of Israel]…is particularly indicated for a woman after marriage, as she is an eishes ish. [A man’s woman.]

Here’s the other one, which I have taken to quoting often:

What Torah does for men, tznius [modesty] does for women.

Isn’t that fabulous? The boys get, you know, God’s word, Revelation, a whole system for living in connection with the Divine and holiness. All I gotta do is get dressed.

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