Short Skirts – No Excuses

aries2756:

“So is kibud av’vem, so is not to have kinah, so is al tignov, so are the other 7 which are the top 10. So I think we have taken this discussion to the limit and have made it sound like the worst aveirah sitting on the shoulders of women which it is not.”

I was always under the impression tzniyus was the defining mitzva, if you will, of a bas Torah, (much as learning Torah is of a ben Torah) and therefore deserving of special attention and caution.

“There are many mitzvas in the Torah and WE are all not perfect and WE don’t get to point our fingers at others for their lack of adherence and WE are all at fault somehow and somewhere… WE all have a mitzvah to work on ourselves BEFORE we point fingers at others and point out their errors, as long as there are areas in our own selves that need improvement we have no right to point fingers on others imperfections.”

As I mentioned before, this is simply not the case. In case you missed it, I repeat:

There is a passuk that says “ho’chaich tocheach es amisecha v’lo sisah alov chait”: “rebuke you shall rebuke my people, and there will not be a sin on you”. However, if you could have stopped an aveira and CH”V did not do so, the aveira goes onto your cheshbon as well. If you see somebody doing something wrong, you are mechuyav to correct them. Now, obviously this must be done in a way that will not push them away, but first and foremost it must be done. Li’mashal, if you saw somebody unintentionally drinking poison, would you say “it is not my business” and walk away?

This whole “mind your own business concept” is of western origin and completely foreign to yiddishkeit. We say “kol yisrael areivim zeh la’zeh”, in both gashmiyus and ruchniyus. There is a famous mashal of a person who is on a cruise ship and hears a loud sound in the room next door. He walks into the room and sees a man drilling a hole into the floor! He screams “What are you doing, you’ll kill us all!” The man calmly replies “Excuse me, but this is my room, and I have the right to do whatever I want here!”

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oomis1105: For future reference, if you begin a comment with a quote from somebody, that person will probably assume you addressing them unless you state otherwise.

“I would wait until another time when it is NOT Shabbos, and then simply talk about the Shabbos-approved lipsticks (in a casually brought up way), and how pretty they are, and how nice it is that someone came up with a way to wear lipstick on Shabbos that did not have any halachic problems associated with it.”

That also works.