This is an open note to the participants on Oranim trip 466, which concluded yesterday at the airport in Tel Aviv…

barri old cityWelcome to Jewlicious! I saw one of you already started commenting on some of our posts (Barri, you rock!), and hope that others of you will follow. Jewlicious provides us all with a chance to stay connected to Jewish life in all its forms, abroad in the Diaspora and here in Israel. Michael and I write here regularly, along with others who provide varying perspectives: if you have an opinion about Jewish life, it’s likely that Jewlicious has both similar and opposite views, because we Jews certainly exercise our right to disagree with each other, loudly and often.

tank girlsStay tuned to Jewlicious for more pictures from our ten days together in Israel, and/or feel free to visit my Flickr to see more sooner.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called birthright Oranim 466 june 06. Make your own badge here.

Want to see all the posts about our trip? They’ll all be filed under “Free trip to Israel” and “Isralicious” in the archives, so that’s a handy way to access them.Michael’s off to the States and I’m staying here for about another month. Call it a Jewlicious exchange program. Anyway, keep visiting us virtually and in real life–stay in touch!

About the author

Esther Kustanowitz

For more posts by Esther, see EstherK.com, MyUrbanKvetch.com and JDatersAnonymous.com.

10 Comments

  • how can we get more pics of the “tank girls” above?

  • isn’t the showing of skin forbidden in the Torah? is showing pictures of woman(cute cute woman) in tank tops and shorts also forbidden? aren’t you sinning against G-D by looking at these pictures and condoning their actions?

    Jon C.

  • First of all, the aspect of tzniut that regulates dress is not deorayta. Nowhere in the Torah does it say that women have to dress in a certain manner. What the Torah does discuss is the notion of humility and how it is an admirable value – in Bamidbar, Moshe Rabeinu was described as “exceedingly humble, more than any man in the world.” Thus I would urge you to be a little less self-righteous in your criticism.

    Tznius contains an element of community standards as well. Married women today are supposed to keep their heads covered because at the time the Rabbis formulated the rules, women with their hair uncovered were considered immodest. I don’t think most people these days feel uncovered hair is immodest but we maintain the standard because ithas become entrenched as a custom. But in the context of their coomunity, these women are not considered particularly immodest.

    Also, these are single unmarried women. They are usually given a little leeway in the hopes that they will attract a nice Jewish husband.

    But yes Jon C. – by some standards, their dress violates the laws of tzniut. So I would urge you not to look even though you can barely see anything.

    I’ll take my chances with God, thanks for the concern though.

  • I thought we got the idea for womens’ hair covering from Eishet Sota. (The women who was suspected of commiting adultry.) The process described there (Parshat Naso) includes an element of humiliation, during which the torah states that the womens hair would be uncovered. (Implying that married women covered their hair, and that it was embarising for it not to be covered.)

  • Did they have t-shirts back in biblical times? I hear Israelite Apparel was really big and well liked for employing Moabites at better than minimum wage.

  • look what i started, all i asked for was some more pics, and its turned into a halchik discourse

  • I guess i am still looking for clarification on how you consider your style of Judaism better than mine. The Reformed and Conservative movement at least admit their “picking and choosing” of the specific laws given in the Torah, but in my opinion you “true Jews” are having your proverbial pie and eating it too. My intention here is not to be some lil prick who causes a stir on your great site, I am just trying to get things straight and understand things better.

    Much love CK

  • Jon C. reads ck’s quote

    But yes Jon C. – by some standards, their dress violates the laws of tzniut. So I would urge you not to look even though you can barely see anything.

    I’ll take my chances with God, thanks for the concern though.

    basically the way I read it? “is this perfection? arguable not, but we’re human, we’re not perfect, we’re not trying to pass off our imperfection as “true judaism”. We try to live jewish lives, we aim for perfection, but know since we’re humans we’ll fall far short, sometimes we poke fun at our faults, sometimes we’ll excuse them as “we’re only human”, but we wont change the rules by which the game is played (how halacha works) because of those faults (though, we do change how the game is played from time to time (what we actually do in practice))

  • i love israel.now i live n pakistan but i want to go to israel,b/coz we r israelis and we love it.