Skirts are holy and pants are sacrilegious. Everybody knows that. That’s why all across Israel you can see girls hiking, biking, dancing, and scuba diving in skirts. No longer merely a religious injunction, skirts are part of the culture, a way to declare one’s identity. Different skirts assign different labels: a long, earth-hued, pleated skirt means ultra-religious, a flowy wrap over pants indicates a woman from one of the dati le’umi rural communities, and a chic jean skirt shouts American seminary girl abroad for her post-high school year in Israel.
Last year I wore chic jean skirts for ten consecutive months. Ten. That’s a long time to go without stretching your legs to their full length because your skirt won’t let you. But I managed. I used to slide around the security fence (yes, that security fence) into the Arab olive grove near my school and, draping my skirt over a gnarled branch, exult in the freedom of shorts.
Elsewhere I respected the rules of the ultra-religious. I bought tube socks and cut off the bottoms to form sleevies so my elbows would be easily coverable. I didn’t sit beside males who wore their dress code (penguin suits and black hats, the equivalent of the pleated skirt) on buses. When an old woman chastised me at the Western Wall for crossing my legs, which is apparently inappropriate, I quietly thanked her for telling me and uncrossed them.
But something in me has revolted against the skirt as the mark of the religious Jewish woman ever since my friends decided in eighth grade to give away all their pants to Goodwill. It seems to me a mark of hypocrisy, a sort of promise to the world that you are really a devout person. Such holier-than-thou-ness upsets me (I know you’re thinking it: what could possibly be more holier-than-thou than scoffing at religious practices in a blog? The irony amuses me). I find myself angrily counting up instances in which a woman who professes through her clothing to be pious proves that she neglects true holiness.
Which is why the recent arrest for child-abuse of a woman from the ultra-religious neighborhood of Beit Shemesh who has started wearing a burka in public and accrued a large following of burka-wearers upsets me so.
It’s true that the Beit Shemesh community is slowly going crazy. My aunt lives in Ramah alef, a connected neighborhood, and I’ve spent many Sabbaths sitting outside with my cousins waiting for cars to pass so we can watch the charedim throw rocks at them. I’ve heard about women who have been shamed out of the grocery because the cashier wouldn’t serve them unless they covered their hair (religious married women should cover their hair according to Jewish law). But even the local ultra-rightwing rabbis were baffled by the burka trend.
The mother who abused her children was the leader of this cult of religious women. She refused to take off her burka in court, or speak in front of men. Such misplaced zealousness is an extreme incident, yet it represents an entire group of religious women who think it’s enough to dress the part. It’s most emphatically not. This sort of behavior raises piercing questions about the way people can twist religion to suit their own ends, or even to fuel their insanity. It disgraces those who practice it honestly and meaningfully. And it makes me absolutely certain that I want to continue to bare my elbows to the world.
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