Lgbg, I should stick to making chulent.
Bowzer, I found your last post very hard to read and understand. But I do agree that there are many positive aspects of chareidim. However, those aspects are the ones that come from halacha. However, they have tacked on many layers of culture which have nothing to do with halacha and shulchan oruch onto the Torah. By doing this they are in the geder of kol hamosif gorea. They make it seem like keeping the Torah is such a terrible burden when it doesn’t have to be.
Let me give an example from the book Miracle Ride by Tzipi Caton (Shaar Press). The book is about a 16 yr old girl with cancer. Because of chemo, her hair fell out. She got a sheitel, but was uncomfortable wearing it sometimes, since she didn’t want to look married. She liked to wear a bandana. One motzaei shabbos she went to the store to get some things (Lakewood, I believe). A frum woman confronts her and says the bandana is not appropriate. She says to the woman that she has a disease, and it should be rather obvous why she is wearing it. The woman tells her, I don’t care. It is setting a terrible example for other girls. They get into an argument in front of the whole store.
Can you imagine the horrendous midos of this woman? To fight with a girl who has cancer in public??? Furthermore, there is absolutely no halacha whatsoever involved here. Just some stupid conception of some stranger that she doesn’t particularly like the style of a certain head-covering, and invents some frumkeit on the spot. Literally makes up a new Torah right out of thin air, and has the chutzpah to impose it on someone else.
This is chareidi culture, which has zero to do with shulchan oruch. Wearing black and white only for men is another example. A mishnah even says that one who thinks hashem won’t answer my tefilos if I wear colored clothes, must immediately be removed from being a baal tefila, and we are choshesh that he is an apikorus.
I hear that in Kiryas Sefer, boys may not play any team sports after a certain age (well below bar-mitzvah, I believe). Men may not jog. Correct me if I am wrong.
When you add on things that have no real halachic basis, and despite the fact that exercise is healthy according to the Rambam, (uses word mitamel, just like modern word hitamlut), you turn the rest of the klal off even to matters of real halacha. They just assume that everything the chareidi does is untraorthodox chumros, so they will not listen even to the halachic matters. I gave example of movies. Why should they listen, when you also tell them ball-playing is ossur. They rightly assume you have a different culture and upbringing. Again, kol hamosif gorea. If we want to bring the klal together, we may have to shed some excess baggage. Why not use the shulchan oruch as a nice compromise. The entire klal will keep the shulchan oruch, no more and no less.
I have many close friends and chavrusas in the chareidi world, and they are ehrlich people. I never was bothered by that world until I started reading some of the posts here by certain hotheads, who I am trying my hardest to convince myself are not representative of the chareidim in general. But unfortunately, I do believe that their hashkafas do reflect the chareidi leadership, although not necessarily their behavior.
As far as terrifying and primitive, I was referring to the pedagogical tactics of some, but not the chareidim in general.
Getting back to the original Tznius topic. Let me say that I don’t believe a Vaad Hatznius is the way to go in Lakewood. I predict a few things things will happen:
1) Bnai Torah will resent being told that they of all people don’t know how to keep tznius on their own. But because of the terror of getting a friendly letter or knock on the door from the Vaad which could mean that their kids may be taken out of school, or hurt shidduchim prospects or cause embarrasment, they will in turn terrorize their wives and children about how they dress.
2) This will lead to a spike in shalom bayis issues and people moving out of Lakewood.
3) The takana will be repealed, as was Takanas Ezra many years ago.
Have more to say (as if I didn’t already say enough), but another time.