New York rabbis have banned Jewish women from wearing tank tops and short skirts - even as the state is gripped by a heatwave that has sent the mercury touching 100F.
The Central Rabbinical Congress has placed posters everywhere in trendy South Williamsburg demanding women dress modestly despite the roasting weather.
The posters, written in Yiddish, tell women to avoid wearing tank tops, T-shirts, and clingy dresses.
New Yorkers have responded furiously to Rabbis' demands. Wpix.com spoke to one Williamsburg woman wearing yellow short shorts and a T-shirt who said: 'Now they are telling us what to wear? This is New York.'
As the state has been gripped by a heatwave over past days, many New Yorkers had been seeking to shed even more clothes.
Strict Orthodox Jewish women follow a dress code meant to preserve their modesty and deflect unwanted attention from men.
They often wear skirts that fall well below the knees, shirts with long sleeves and blouses that cover the neck. Jewish law also requires married women to cover their hair.
A Hasidic father of two who helped translate the poster for wpix.com said: 'In our religion, that's what people should look like.'
But the Orthodox Jews' strict requirements have put the community at loggerheads with their gentile neighbours.
One Williamsburg woman, already dressed in a short floral dress, said: 'It's too hot to cover up - I'm trying to take more off.'
It isn't the first time New York's tightly knit Orthodox community has clashed with the outside world.
Elsewhere in Williamsburg, a neighbourhood modesty group has been pressuring women not to spoke on mobile phones.
They have also asked women to cross the road when a man comes walking in the opposite direction to prevent them from scandalising the Hasidic men.
Last month a Hasidic newspaper erased Hilary Clinton from one of the most historic moments of the war on terror by editing her out of a photo of the White House situation room
She and other officials were there watching the special forces attack on Osama bin Laden.
A lot of their rules seem to be based on the fear that MEN will react inappropriately to a woman showing too much skin. Perhaps the rule should be changed to men not looking at women or thinking/behaving inappropriately about them no matter what the women are wearing.
ReplyDeleteI realize that there are many modest free flowing dresses out there that can be just as comfortable during the heat as typical summer clothes. But really, women need to spend their money on "modest" clothes so that the men don't go into a frenzy after they see a woman's knee?
More anti-religious reporting by the media. Did anyone ever suggest that the Rabbis edict was speaking to Gentile women; if it was it certainly would not be written in Yiddish. It was circulated as a reminder to Orthodox Jewish women about how their religion expects them to dress - modestly - regardless of the temperature
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