Men! Question for you!

A few years ago I heard from a male of my acquaintance that he does not wear tzitzit because they make him look fat. Plus he also said there was no need to wear them every day, only when wearing a four cornered garment. It’s a chumra, he said, to wear them daily.

Does it really make that much of a difference?

Please enlighten me.

Signed the mother of 4 proud tzitzit-wearing boychiks.

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What is wrong with people?

Why do they have to stare? Truth is – you do feel different if it’s a member of your own sex staring at you, rather than the opposite sex. I was on the bus coming home from a fruitless shopping trip (I walked for 2 hours there, and around, and I caved and took the bus home. So sue me). I was dressed in my funkified way – ok fine, let me take a pic….the picture doesn’t show the pigtails so well, but they are there. I am actually wearing leggings as well as a skirt, pink Betty Boop socks and good sneakers. Everything that is supposed to be covered is covered.

This Jewish woman comes on the bus, and by the way she is dressed she looks outwardly more religious than I am. I caught her looking at me, and I chose not to notice. I looked up perhaps 40 seconds later and she is still staring at me. Why? Obviously because I am cute, right, and totally dressed tzanuah, and she is so impressed by the way I combine my modesty with my sense of flair…. Yeah. Right. Somehow, that just doesn’t ring true.

I stared back at her to make her look away. She didn’t. I raised my eyebrow at her, shook my head, and just ignored her. Staring is so darn rude. I wanted to be rude back and stick my tongue out at her. But I was brought up better than that! What does she think, that she is better than me? I really wanted to ask her why she was staring….but chickened out.

What would you have done / said?

Suit Shopping

I am trying to find a new suit for Pesach. I absolutely love crisp suits, simple and elegant. We don’t have Loehman’s here or I would have no trouble finding something. I looked online and the Tahari suit that I fell in love with (really cheap on overstock.com), the skirt is two inches too short. It’s 21 inches long, which is too short even for me. Calvin Klein has awesome suits, again, skirts just that smidge too short.

I have been hunting far and wide to find something that I like, that isn’t black, that’s conservative but not boring, perhaps even in a soft pink. Everything I find is too short. Of course, if I can find a nice suit I would need to make sure I had shoes to go with it.

I won’t have time to go shopping in Monsey before Pesach for clothes, so I need / want to find something here or online that won’t break the bank. The truth is that I do have Shabbat and Yom Tov clothes to wear, but I haven’t got anything new in a couple of years, and I am sick and tired of wearing the same suits all the time.

Can anyone help??

Can do better?

There is this new website that was just launched. Basically singles upload their photograph and the photographs of the people they are interested in and other users vote on whether the person is perfect for them, whether they can do better or the other person is out of their league. People actually trust this site to help them with their choice.

The CEO says

“We understand singles are searching for quality, not quantity, and CanDoBetter.com increases the odds of finding a suitable dating partner.”

Sigh, I mean, really – this is all about dating someone based solely on their looks. How is that quality? You can’t tell a person’s character just by a picture alone!! Such a shallow society we live in.

Helping not modest?

From the YWN coffee room…..a lady asks the following question :

Walking down the street today, I encountered a young father shlepping up the steps a double stroller along side of him a young child who he was also trying to help up. Is it tznuis for me to help him up with the carriage?

(Wonderful sentence structure…sigh)

There were a good many people who replied telling her it’s a mitzvah to help a fellow Jew. There were also those replies that told her indeed it isn’t tzanuah, in fact one went so far as to say that issues of negiah (inappropriate touching) or Niddah arise.

I don’t know, folks. Someone needs help, you help. You don’t stop to have a halachic internal argument about the pros and cons of helping someone who obviously needs it. It was suggested on that site that if they carry the stroller together it isn’t proper, especially if she is a Niddah. Let’s go further – what if someone saw her helping a man who isn’t her husband with a stroller and a kid that wasn’t hers. Maybe, just maybe, they might think something inappropriate about her or him. So therefore don’t bother helping anyone of the opposite sex, you know, just so that other people won’t perhaps think wrongly of you. Again, is that how people want to live their life – based on what others think of them? Should we not be living our lives to serve God not man?

As a mom who struggled with double strollers any help was appreciated, male or female. How have we got to this point that we have to be so hyper aware of breathing in case we might do it wrong??!!

ETA: apparently fanatical stupidity goes back a long way. with thanks to Rabbi Josh Yuter who provided me with the following source:

39. B. Sotah 21aWhat is a foolish pietist like? — E.g., a woman is drowning in the river, and he says: ‘It is improper for me to look upon her and rescue her’

39. תלמוד בבלי מסכת סוטה דף כא עמוד ב היכי דמי חסיד שוטה? כגון דקא טבעה איתתא בנהרא, ואמר: לאו אורח ארעא לאיסתכולי בה ואצולה

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