feif un:
If someone wants to live life following Satmar standards, fine, go ahead. It doesn’t bother me. But don’t expect my wife to dress to your standards, with 3 different layers buttoned up to her chin, bullet-proof tights with seams every inch, with a shaved head and a shpitzel, while walking down a public street. You have no right to make others dress that way on a public street.
There are three problems that I have with this comment:
1. The idiom “live and let live” is not a Jewish concept. We have hisarvus to each other, the mitzvah of tochacha that precludes the ability of a Jew to act on this maxim. Whether you agree or disagree with whether you need to improve you tzniyus standard, I’m not sure that any Jew should maintain this principle.
2. The language that you use when describing a Satmar woman’s dress, suggests to me that, as much as you don’t appreciate being degraded by implication that you (or your wife) are not tzniyus, you have no such ambivalence when it comes to degrading their mode of dress (ie. bullet-proof tights).
3. I have often heard this word being touted as the end-all for arguments but I have difficulty understanding how “having a right” to do something implies that you are doing the “right thing” by exercising it. Although they are the same word in English, they do not mean the same thing. If I see a Jew doing something wrong in public I think I am obligated to correct him. You may disagree with how someone undertakes that obligation and even if this obligation is present in a given case. But I’m not sure you can say that a person acting under this obligation is doing the objectively wrong thing.
I understand why you may have singled-out Satmar as I’ve experienced some odd comments from some Satmar chassidim myself. But I think it is just an annoying side effect of something essentially positive.