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What I don’t get is the following: Sometimes I write a post to the Moderators that a particular thread is Motzi Shem Ra and should be deleted or closed and they just ignore me and delete my post. But other times, posters will post to the oilam that they think a thread should be closed and then they close it.
Is that the way to get a thread closed – by posting to the oilam and not to the moderators?
And why is it that they sometimes delete or close motzi shem ra threads but not others?
Sparkly – that’s true, but my original advice to HGG wasn’t meant as a psak halacha – it was meant as advice.
“You begin by quoting what a poseik told you, namely, “Hashem doesn’t want us to be depressed,” in a discussion about text messaging. Then you extrapolate from this statement what your Rav would say about eye shadow.”
You quote me completely incorrectly:
1. I never referred to him as a poseik.
2. I never said anything about what he would say about eye shadow.
What I said was that he would tell her to wear makeup. And yes, I do know that he would say that.
Golfer – I wasn’t poskening halacha. I was giving personal advice, something I am qualified to do at least in certain circumstances. As someone who has been learning and teaching for many years, I can often sense when advice is needed as opposed to a halachic psak.
The Rav whom I quoted is not a posek – he is someone who is qualified to give advice as I am, only he is slightly older and more experienced than I am. When I am in a situation where I think it is important to give someone advice and I have to decide what and how to say to them, I often do think about how my mentors have advised me and the hashkafic worldview that I have learned from them and use that as a basis for deciding how to advise others. This is what anyone in a teaching/mentoring position should be doing.
I was not “having fun” when I answered her question. I answered her question because I felt that it was extremely important that I answer her in the way that I did. I thought very carefully about every word that I wrote and there were reasons for every word.
Enough said. I can not explain any further.
GAW – I have heard of such an opinion, although I wasn’t sure who said it.
Rav Ellinson quotes the Minchas Yitzchak who speaks very strongly against girls wearing pants in order to ski.
L’maaseh the opinions allowing pants in general or just for skiing have not been accepted l’halacha. And it certainly would be hypocritical for someone to rely on Rav Vosner for this if she doesn’t go by him in general.
My point was that if pants are not technically assur, then I could see there being room to say that if someone’s skirt goes above her knees, it’s not a problem.
Additionally, even according to the majority opinion (which is what the oilam holds by today) that pants are completely assur, the question would be which part of the pants are assur. I left out part of the Yaskil Avdi; the next words were “to the very top” which could leave room to say that the part by the knees is not a problem.
DISCLAIMER: This is all my own conjectures and should not be applied by anyone l’maaseh!
HGG – I’m sure you have your mind on other things right now, but when you feel in the mood, I just wanted you to know that I posted an important comment on your makeup thread.
HGG – I care. I hope everything gets better IYH soon!
Funny – the moderators wrote that my post was edited, and I’m not even sure what was taken out! I can’t remember writing anything else!
Sparkly – psh…amazing!!! So proud!
“I’m looking for a source one way or the other. Also, if it is OK for a Tiyul, it is probably acceptable for the street as well (as far as the Halacha is concerned).”
I wasn’t differentiating between a tiyul and the street as much as I was differentiating between a skirt that comes just above the knees and a long skirt that may momentarily rise above the knee during the tiyul.
The difference is that when a girl walks around with a knee-length skirt over pants, she looks like she is mainly wearing pants and she stuck a skirt over them. When she is wearing pants under a skirt in case her skirt momentarily goes up, this is not the case (one has the look of pants with skirt over it and one is skirt with pants under it). According to R’ Ellinson’s understanding of the reasons why it is a problem for a girl to wear pants, it would make sense to differentiate between the two.
However, R’Ellinson is not a poseik and his understanding may be inaccurate (I can see a flaw with it).
A: Sources for covering knees:
1. Pri Megadim, Orach Chaim 75; Mishbetzot Zahav, letter 1, and Mishnah Berurah, letter 2: The shok extends from the knee upward, hence below the knee poses no problem wherever women customarily leave it exposed. (quoted in Women and the Mtzvot, volume 2 by Rabbi Getsel Ellinson, P. 187-188)
2. Hazon Ish, Orah Hayyim 15, letter 8: ….Hence the shok of Berakhot 24a must connote the thigh. The Talmud would then not be dealing with below the knee, and its laws would hinge upon custom, as P’ri Megacim wrote. It is difficult to rule conclusively. (ibid).
We see from the above that from the knee upwards is assur regardless of minhag hamakom. According to the Mishna Berurah, below the knee depends on the minhag hamakom. The Chazon Ish is unsure if below the knee depends on minhag hamakom or if it’s always assur.
B: short skirt with stockings:
Responsa Yabia Omer, Vol. VI. Yoreh Deah 14, letter 1: Nylon stockings do not constitute coverage because they are transparent and the skin is visible through the fabric. (R’ Ellinson, p. 190)
C: short skirt with socks/tights that cover the knee:
1. R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rav Elyashiv: “to cover the knee whether standing or sitting and not to rely on the fact that the socks are covering” (Mesila, 5730, p. 97 quoted in Halichos Bas Yisrael, chapter 4, footnote 24) (note: It uses the word “garbayim” which I am assuming means socks or tights and not sheer stockings but I may be wrong about that.)
2. I believe that Rav Moshe Feinstein has a teshuva on this as well. I don’t have an Igros Moshe, but if the place where I will be for Shabbos has one, I will bli neder try to look it up.
D: Wearing Pants (without a skirt):
1) Responsa Avnei Tzedek, Yoreh Deah 72: “…1)There is no intention to resemble men, and 2) they are different from a man’s. Both here and in Poland, even pious,modest women have long practiced this, without a complaint being heard.” (R’Ellinson, page 261-262)
In footnote 126, R’ Ellinson, writes: “Clearly, Avnei Tzedek is not dealing with the kind of trousers worn by women in our day, but with special loose-fitting work trousers, devoid of any fashion significance”
2) Rav Eliyahu Henkin also poskened that it is muttar for women to wear loose pants.
3) Responsa Yaskil Avdi, Vol V, Yoreh Deah 20: “…For a different reason, however, they should be forbidden to women. Trousers are a wild, promiscuous and immodest garment for women, since the legs are separated from each other…: (R’Ellinson, p. 263)
4.”In any event, we may distinguish between tight and loose fitting trousers. Avnei Tzedek saw nothing immodest about the latter, and Yabia Omer makes such a distinction as well. Another factor that must be taken into account, however, is the existence of a community of modest Jewish girls with their own standard. The fact that they are careful to wear only skirts, affords significant weight to this stricture. By wearing a skirt, a Jewish girl identifies with this group and separates herself from other more permissive circles.
To a certain extent, in the last few decades the skirt has become a sort of “yarmulka” for the scrupulously observant girl who strives to follow our sages’ ethical guidelines, as refelected in their halakhic rulings. By her refusal to wear trousers, she demonstrably declares that she is unwilling to resign herself to the dictates of modern style, and that she takes exception to the immorality so rampant these days in society at large.” (R’ Ellinson’s footnote 129 on p. 263. Please note that R’ Ellinson is not a Poseik and I don’t know how accepted his seifer is although it does have a haskama from Rav Ovadiah, zatsal, so his take on things does not necessarily constitute daas Torah – this footnote is his own opinion.)
E: Skirt above knees but knees covered by pants:
I don’t know since I never saw any sources on it (it’s a pretty new issue, I think) and I never asked. My svaras that on the one hand, one should not walk around with pants with a knee-length skirt over it, but on the other hand, it is okay to wear a long skirt with pants under it if her knees might show while bike riding, etc. were based on logical conclusions from the above sources on the issue of wearing pants in the first place.
However, they were only my own svaras, and I do not know what the poskim say and no one should rely on them for a psak halacha, and I might be wrong. (but I brought these sources because I wanted to show where I was coming from).
edited
Sparkly: “lilmod ulelamaid – its kind of obvious that its NOT tnius for the skirt to go above the knees whether shes wearing pants or not.”
Sparkly, but if she’s wearing leggings it’s okay????
ZD- that has nothing to do with what is going on in this thread.
And yes, I would say something.
Would you say anything if you heard someone speaking loshon hara? If not, you are almost as guilty as the perpetrators?
Just to clarify some common misconceptions about the halachos of Loshon Hara. It is assur to read lashon hara in the news. If you have read it, it is assur to believe it. It is certainly assur to repeat it.
Benignuman – there are certain areas of tznius that depend on Minhag hamakom (for example, the bottom half of the leg after the knee), but there are certain things that are always assur regardless of what everyone does. The leg through the knee has to be covered no matter what.
Sparkly, I said that leggings are more tznius than tights, but I don’t know if they are muttar either (even if they are less of a problem than tights.) After all, it is assur to wear leggings w/o a skirt over them, so why should this be okay?
Catchyourself- the problem is that Motzi Shem Ra is also assur, and many posts on this thread are motzi shem ra. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“LU I guess in 5 minutes someone would have told you it wasn’t tsnius for a woman to drive a car at all.”
In my neighborhood, the women wear burkas (while a few of them anyhow).
Person1 – lol. In my neighborhood, that’s probably true. I doubt there are very many women in my neighborhood who drive.
I can’t afford a car anyhow, but Boruch Hashem, I live in EY, so I don’t need one!
ZD: “I am firm beliver in Or LaGoyim and IMo Or LaGoyim is not everyone adding 5 mins to learning every day, but rather in our dealing with the outside world , People need to see we are Or LaGoyim by our actions and not have to tell them that
I have zero tolerance for people who do things that cause people to think jews are abusers, tax cheats or thives and I think we should all have zero tolerance for such things”
If you are concerned about causing a chilul Hashem, you are the one causing the Chilul Hashem (and lack of ohr l’goyim) by publicizing these things on a public forum.
If you truly want to find a way to encourage people to be more yashar, the way to do that would be by starting a thread stating the halachos involved and urging people to try to follow them, but w/o including stories about people who were “over” on these halachos, but rather by including stories of people and gedolim who followed these halachos.
I heard once the following from Rav Leff: Why is it that there were proportionately more “arei miklat” on “aiver haYarden”? It is brought down that there were more murders there since the Land there had less kedusha so the people there were on a lower level.So Rav Leff’s question was, “what does that have to do with it? Arei miklat are for accidental murderers.” His answer was that people are affected by what they hear. If you constantly hear about murders, you are more likely to start to value life less and you are more likely to be negligent and cause an accidental death”.
The point is that we are affected by what we hear. So if your “taaneh” in spreading these stories is that it is l’toeles, it does not help and in fact is detrimental.
If you truly want to help, start a thread with stories of people who ARE careful in these areas.
“Your spellcheck is too judgmental.”
I agree!
“Trendy and Modern” is showing off and getting people to look at you. Although not under classical “Tznius”, it certainly comes under “Hayznaya Leches”. A fancy/showy car is the same idea.”
I was joking! I actually have no clue what a Lexus is! I wouldn’t know a Lexus from a …(I don’t even know what to fill in the blank with because I know nothing about cars!)
Catch Yourself: I have yet to meet a single person who does such a thing despite the fact that I have lived in many communities and met hundreds of Orthodox Jews of all types.
As you wrote, “Without question, most Orthodox Jews are horrified by the thought of such practices, which are in direct opposition to Torah and Middos Tovos.”
Of course, Am Yisrael is not perfect and we have to continually work on ourselves. The best way to do that is through positivity and not negativity. We can best accomplish that by speaking positively of other Jews and spreading the MANY THOUSANDS of positive stories instead of harping on the occasional possible negative story. We can accomplish this by “judging others favorably” and not jumping to assume the worst.
The Bais HaMikdash will be rebuilt when we stop speaking badly about others (or to follow my own advice and speak positively – when we start speaking positively about others)
(question: why does my spell-check like the word “negativity” and not “positivity”?)
“lu – very nice!” 🙂
“and by people, I mean men”
I found that comment very interesting!
LF: A..hem?!!!
Oh, I forgot.. everyone thought I was a boy until I disillusioned them.. so I guess you can’t be talking about me.
Golfer – I have only been on for about a month, so I don’t know what it used to be like. Care to explain?
ZD: “One story in the paper about corruption will undo Years worth of Kiddish Hashem and then it becomes the narrative and its hard to undo the damage”
So why are you spreading these stories and causing untold damage?
“Dressing too trendy or modern is also not tznius
Driving a trendy or modern car like a Lexus is similarly not Tznius.”
You mean I will have to stop driving my Lexus! 🙁
GAW- stockings and tights are for sure assur. This is brought down by Poskim.
I personally have always thought that pants were okay, but I never actually asked a sheilah, so it’s possible that I am wrong. My assumption (which may or may not be correct) was partially based on the fact that there were opinions at one time that it is muttar for girls to wear loose pants. L’maaseh, these opinions have not been accepted, and therefore it is assur today for girls to wear pants. But since loose pants may not be “technically assur”, I wouldn’t think it’s a problem for someone’s skirt to be above their knees if they are wearing pants.
I wouldn’t advise walking around with pants and a knee-length skirt, because when I see girls walking around like that, I think that it looks inappropriate – as though they are really wearing pants but stuck a skirt over it- and I think that some of these girls do end up removing the skirt eventually. However, I would think that if someone is going on a tiyul or bike riding or horseback riding, etc, and she is wearing pants under her skirt, it is okay if her skirts goes above her knees. But again, that is my own assumption, so I may be wrong.
Leggings are in-between, so I don’t know. I would think that they are similar to tights, but less problematic. Since Frum girls don’t wear leggings w/o a skirt, I can’t really see why this is any different.
We have no idea why they targeted these populations. Any guesses are pure uneducated speculation, and we have no right to be making such negative assumptions about others.
Amongst other things, the assumptions being made here are absolutely ridiculous! We are talking about a population (the Orthodox population) that has been taught to be super-careful about doing anything that resembles stealing!
The average person in the US does not have the concepts of honesty that we have.
I once took a taxi to a Shloshim. I was running late and had trouble finding the place. In my confusion, I forgot to pay the driver until I was already there and I couldn’t leave in the middle. When I got back late at night, I called the taxi driver and tracked him down. We arranged that when he was in my neighborhood, he would call me and let me know so I could go down and pay him. As I handed him the money, I apologized profusely. He said, “It’s fine. As soon as I saw you forgot to pay me, I knew that you would find a way to get the money to me. I know that YOU (this was in hebrew, so he used the plural for you, meaning that he was referring to Chareidim in general) go to the ends of the earth to pay someone back a few shekalim!
Apparently it is known that Frum Jews are exceedingly careful about honesty. Take it from a typical not-religious taxi driver in Israel who has enough experience in these matters to know!
If you want to see more about the honesty of Frum Jews, google the words, “Rabbi Craig’s list money”.
If someone is not Jewish and hasn’t been taught the things that we are taught about honesty on a daily basis from the time we are young, there would be no reason for them to be extra-diligent about honesty. The natural attitude is “if you can get away with it, why not?” I once worked for a not Jewish telemarketing company. I was concerned about the honesty of some of the things that were done. When I expressed my concerns to my supervisor, she told me that it was legal, and she couldn’t understand why that answer didn’t satisfy me. If you haven’t had a Yeshiva education, your attitude is going to be “if it’s legal and I can get away with it, why shouldn’t I do it?” Contrast that with the average Yeshiva graduate who is inundated on a regular basis with stories of Gedolim who were super-stringent about matters of honesty.
One of the most commonly told over stories is the famous story of Rav
Yaakov Kaminetzky Zatsal. When he was given a gift, he went to the pawn shop to have it evaluated so that he could make sure to pay taxes on it.
Did you ever hear of someone other than a Frum Jew doing such a thing? Do you think these are the kinds of things they teach in public schools? In public schools, the subjects taught are: History, Math, Science,etc. In Yeshivas, day schools, and Bais Yaakovs the main subjects taught are: Ethics (Middos) and Values (Hashkafa). These subjects don’t make it into the curriculum in the average public school.
My automatic assumption when reading the OP was simply that the company would like to institute this policy in general (the no return policy) but was concerned that people from other communities will be reluctant to buy if they know their only option is to make an exchange. Since they are not yet familiar with the company and are not yet regular customers, they do not yet know that there this is a company at which they will be likely to find something else they want. The company is still trying to gain these people as customers so they have to institute policies such as this in order to win them in.
This thread is becoming major motzi shem ra on Am Yisrael and can cause a lot of damage!
As I wrote above:
Some of the posters wrote that many Jews as opposed to non-Jews engage in these practices. That is motzi shem ra on Am Yisrael. It is particularly dangerous to write such a thing since it feeds into the already existing Antisemitic stereotypes. This is the Internet – the entire world can read what is written here! It is a terrible thing to malign Am Yisrael to the goyim! During the Holocaust, the Nazis took things from the Jewish newspapers and used them to spread Antisemitism, leading to more Jews being murdered. And that was even before Internet!
I once met a boy who was learning in Aish HaTorah who told me that he was upset by the fact that before he became Frum, when he passed Frum people on the street, they would say Good Shabbos to other Frum people but not to him (which led him to believe that Frum people hate not-Frum people). I pointed out to him that they probably didn’t realize he was Jewish since he wasn’t wearing a Yarmulka. He said that he was wearing a Magen David necklace, so they should have realized he was Jewish.
I didn’t point out (although I probably should have) that Frum people may not notice a Magen David necklace since it’s not what they are used to looking for!
In any case, the moral of the story is that when you see someone walking down the street, if you have reason to believe they are Jewish, say Good Shabbos to them – they are waiting for it!
A lady I know who is baalas teshuva told me that before she became Frum, when she saw Frum people around (I guess her neighbors, etc.), she always wanted them to invite her family for Shabbos. When she saw them building their Sukkahs, she always wished they would invite her to come eat in the Sukkah. Often, we are too afraid of reaching out to not-Frum people because we are afraid of how it will be perceived, and meanwhile they are waiting for us to reach out to them.
Obviously, one must use one’s seichel and sensitivity in how they go about this. You have to be normal. But a Shabbos invitation extended sincerely is always in place.
Yeshivishe kup: she asked how long they have to be.
Joseph, since they are Jewish, we have a chiyuv to be “dan l’kaf zchus”.