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The Tikvah Podcast

Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll on the Virtues and the Excesses of Jewish Modesty

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6620 Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There was never an explicit announcement to men that they no longer needed to wear bowties and could wear neckties instead, just like there was no announcement that they didn’t need to wear ties at all. Those cultural norms shifted gradually, and are understood even as they do so.

In Orthodox Jewish communities, the way cultural norms work are a bit similar and a bit different. They come both from unspoken social cues and from explicit instruction, including from religious texts. The latter approach reflects the insight that how a person dresses isn’t a purely superficial matter, but communicates something of substance. Is the human form public or private, should it be open to the gaze of all or only to select people within a circle of trust or family? What should be covered, and how? Such questions involve reflecting on men, women, and human sexuality too, of course.

This week, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver sits down with Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll to explore the virtues of Jewish modesty, and how those virtues can be radicalized, grow excessive, and—like all virtues—transform into vice. Jaskoll is the director Chochmat Nashim (“The Wisdom of Women”), an organization dedicated to the healthy depiction of women in the Jewish public square that opposes removing pictures of women completely, while still supporting modesty. They discuss what modesty is, what it’s for, why it deserves protection, and how it can be exaggerated and abused.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Most listeners will have the common experience of arriving at a given social situation,

0:13.0

a meeting, a party, a dinner, a sporting event, a concert, and spotting there, another

0:19.1

attendee who is not dressed the right way. Overdressed, underdressed,

0:24.0

inappropriately dressed. This is one of the things that parents work on each and every morning

0:29.0

with young children. And when you stop to think about it, it is remarkable how social attitudes

0:34.2

toward clothing converge in such widespread agreement in a given culture. In our culture,

0:40.4

the clothing that is appropriate to wear when a person mows the lawn is not the same clothing

0:45.6

that it is appropriate to wear when attending synagogue. Now, everyone just understands that there is a way

0:51.6

to dress that is fitting to time and place. Like all organic

0:56.2

inherited traditions, the edges around what is fitting and what isn't are blurry, and they are adjusted

1:02.3

in each generation. But there's remarkable consensus. And most of the time, the guidelines are just

1:08.4

absorbed through the culture. There wasn't a specific day,

1:12.4

or time, or conscious decision that announced to the Western world that appropriately dressed

1:18.5

gentlemen no longer need to wear a bow tie, and can wear instead a necktie. That just sort of

1:24.8

gradually grew into a cultural norm. Now, of course, there are men who still

1:29.3

wear bow ties, and there are men who wear no ties at all. But you can see that the norms just evolve

1:34.3

as a function of the culture. Now, that sense of what is appropriate, what is fitting, is in

1:40.8

traditionally religious Jewish communities, even raised above the subconscious, and

1:46.2

actually reflected through rabbinic and biblical law, for the donning of appropriate dress

1:51.8

communicates much about us. For instance, do we believe that the human form is public or private,

1:58.9

that it should be open to the gaze of all, or only to select

2:02.6

and intimate relations. What on our body should be covered, and how? And of course,

...

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