The first time I was ever told the way I was dressed was inappropriate I was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and a skirt that covered my knees. Having been raised Modern Orthodox in a Jewish day school, I thought that as far as the guidelines of modesty went I was pretty well covered. However, this world was different from mine, my father explained to me patiently as I sulked through my suitcase in our Jerusalem hotel. I was eleven, and we were going on a day trip to Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem.
I’d seen ultra-Orthodox women and girls going about their daily activities in ankle length skirts and long sleeve t-shirts and wondered, aren’t they hot? it’s boiling outside! why don’t they just wear shorts, they would be so much more comfortable. However, I’d never stopped to consider that the way they were dressed wasn’t a reflection of their own choice so much as that of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Their outfits were dictated by convention, and if I was to enter their territory, my father said, I would have to respect their rules. And what if I don’t, I queried, sullen pre-teen that I was. Then, my father’s patience neared the end of its rope, they would be angry at me. They might even throw rocks at me. For my own safety, he said, would I please just cover up.
The United States State Department recently released new tourist guidelines for Israel and the West Bank, encouraging visitors to adhere to the same standards of dress my father talked me into honoring all those years ago. Certainly it’s about respecting other cultures; on holy ground custom, rather than convenience, dictates social etiquette. It is also a matter of safety, as my father and the State Department are right to point out. However, deference does not mean submission, and we should be careful of allowing these values to supersede our own.
