Beginning with the Basics

[gnomi]

This is the first in what I'm planning to be a series of posts about my religious beliefs and practices. I'm calling the series "Flying my Frumkeit." So, I'll start with some basics.

Things that are true about me:

-- I have always kept both kosher and Shabbat to some degree.

-- I've covered my hair since 1996 and haven't worn pants (in other words, worn only skirts) since 1995 or so, but I wear short sleeves (well, to my elbow) and sandals in the appropriate season (short as that season may be in the Boston area).

-- I prefer to daven where there's a mechitzah (a physical separation between men and women), and have since I was a teenager, but I can lein (recite with cantillation in front of the congregation) Torah and Haftarah, and I've taught others how to lein Haftarah.

-- I went to Orthodox day schools from Kindergarten through 12th grade, but I made a conscious decision to go to Israel with an unaffiliated Zionist organization instead of going to one of the girls' yeshivot that many of my classmates attended.

-- I often feel like I fall in between categories. I'm not really "frum from birth" ("FFB"), but neither am I a ba'alat teshuvah. I've been observant to some level my whole life; it's the exact level that's changed over time.

-- People frequently make mistaken assumptions about me/my life based on how I dress; sometimes I shock them by proving them wrong.

Comments

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Is there a continuum of modesty, or is the concept sort of an absolute point (this is modest, this is not?)

(Naive question #2,356...)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

There is, kind of, a continuum. There are people who fall along it at all sorts of places. There're guidelines of "this is modest, this is not," but the interpretation of those guidelines is where you get variation.

(does that make any sense?)

The pants-wearing/not-pants-wearing thing, for instance. The concept on which it's all based is the idea that women should not wear men's clothing. But in this day and age, where pants for women are designed specifically for women, do they qualify as "men's clothing"?

(This reminds me of one of my favorite "West Wing" quotes:

NANCY
It says the Secretary of Defense will be the principal assistant to the President on all matters relating to national security.

C.J.
And what does 'principal assistant' mean?

NANCY
It doesn't specify.

TOBY
Of course it wouldn't, 'cause that's an area of federal law where he'd want to have as much ambiguity as possible.)

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

AIUI, it's not a matter of men's clothing, since there certainly are pants that all agree are distinctly feminine. My understanding is that it's a matter of modesty -- not seeing the space between a woman's legs, or some such.

pants as men's clothing

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite one date is all you'll get moments:

He said something about me wearing jeans (we were going out for pizza), so I asked him where his skirt was - after all, if we're going to define men's and women's clothing by what has been worn in the past, the earliest descriptions of Jewish men's clothing describe robes/jumpers (in the American sense) over bloomers.