Not dressing like other fundies is a "sign of instability"

[RR88]

Read it and weep: books.google.com/books?id=MY4xtbRlxWIC&pg=PA75&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

[ladypuglover]

Well I dress like a fundy half the time and they still think I'm unstable. :lol:

[RR88]

Here's another book of his, in which he writes that engaged couples should meet only once a month and may not discuss personal matters. Makes Josh and Anna's constant "I love you"s seem positively risque! books.google.com/books?id=8hj1xUXk4d0C&pg=PA138&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

(Edited to add: The books use a bit of Yiddish and Hebrew jargon, which I am happy to translate upon request.)

[geniebelle6901]

Some of that I didn't quite understand because I don't know any Orthodox Jews. But I will say that wearing a frumer isn't necessarily a fundie thing. Where live I see a lot of non-fundie women wearing frumpers

[Sola]

Well I wear frumpers and long skirts nearly all the time and I am as far away from fundie as you can get.

Why the hell do they get so het up about clothes? The Jewish fundies this refers to; did the Jews in biblical times wear the type of clothing we see the ortho Jews wearing today? What about Christian fundies? Look at the Seven Sisters, those frumpers didn't come from the bible!

If you feel modesty is an issue for you, fine dress modestly. But to complete prescribe what a person can wear right down to the colour of their socks is legalistic and quite ridiculous.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I'll try to find the thread I posted on this book a few months back.

Basically, every single page is snark-worthy.

Beyond the standards themselves, the language and tone are atrocious. I've been part of online discussions where people will at least admit that this is not the book to give to the newly religious - but that doesn't explain why there's a need to treat girls and women who are already religious so badly.

[ilovetchotchkes]

Some of that I didn't quite understand because I don't know any Orthodox Jews. But I will say that wearing a frumer isn't necessarily a fundie thing. Where live I see a lot of non-fundie women wearing frumpers

My mother is NOT a fundie and she has a closet FULL of frumpers because she is a woman "of a certain age" and since she became that age, her body basically... how do we put it, they don't make cute, stylish sharp clothes for her body type. :( (a damn shame if you ask me)

I'll have to look. I think this is the book that says that pregnant women should basically wear a mu mu...

ETA: yes it is!!! It says that pregnant women should wear a "tent like top". Pg 314.... *snort* as if I didn't already feel huge....

[MamaJunebug]

Oh does this resonate with me!!

Back when there were 13 Duggar kids I was on a cosmopolitan, urban university campus daily. The bearing of thestudents & professors intrigued me & I started Google'ing in my spare time to research Christian women's head coverings. Got on a messageboard & everything.

Being in a different place spiritually at the time, I thought it over & proposed that I would not wear a kapp nor kerchief of any sort with my office-professional wardrobe (even when I'm plump, I rock a nice skirted suit) -- I said that for my daily reminder of " Whose I was," I would add a coordinating "Alice band" -- very similar to what the women at Garlands of Grace sell (though I hadn't seen their site).

The reactions were swift and vicious. No real covering Christian woman would wear just a headband. Kappa or kerchief or it didn't count! I wish I still had the responses.

I was actually pleased with the fact of the force with which they condemned my plans, because it snapped me back into my expression of my faith, which doesn't have to do with being immediately identifiable fro

my appearance.

But yes, I can testify -- there's not much leeway given in

matters of dress and while I wasn't called unstable, my commitment and "trueness of faith" were boldly (rudely) questioned.

[RR88]

The Duggars' slitted skirts, pre-marital "I love you"s, short sleeves, and unstockinged feet are quite immodest. :lol:

[RR88]

Page 322 teaches us that it's a good idea for men to rip women's clothes off if they are publicly immodest.

[ellerigby]

Page 322 teaches us that it's a good idea for men to rip women's clothes off if they are publicly immodest.

I just read that page. That's seriously disturbing. :shock:

[RR88]

Is it incitement to violence?

[ellerigby]

Is it incitement to violence?

If you mean in the freedom of speech context, I'm not sure. He says that the man in the story was praised, but doesn't explicitly state that all men should follow his example. Instead, he vaguely says that men should "remark" or "react" to a woman dressed immodestly "to ensure that the kedusha of the society is maintained." (Full disclosure, I have no idea what kedusha means.)

So, yeah, it could be argued both ways. On one hand, by showing approval of the actions by the man in the story, he is inciting other men to do the same. On the other, he doesn't explicitly tell them to follow that exact example.

It doesn't make it any less gross, though... :(

[ilovetchotchkes]

If you mean in the freedom of speech context, I'm not sure. He says that the man in the story was praised, but doesn't explicitly state that all men should follow his example. Instead, he vaguely says that men should "remark" or "react" to a woman dressed immodestly "to ensure that the kedusha of the society is maintained." (Full disclosure, I have no idea what kedusha means.)

So, yeah, it could be argued both ways. On one hand, by showing approval of the actions by the man in the story, he is inciting other men to do the same. On the other, he doesn't explicitly tell them to follow that exact example.

It doesn't make it any less gross, though... :(

Kedusha=holiness. O_o

[ellerigby]

Kedusha=holiness. O_o

I figured it was something like that. He sounds like a real peach. :shock:

[2xx1xy1JD]

I can't get some of the pages to show in my preview. 322 won't show, but 321 is also pretty bad.

There's also an example around 333 (again, won't show for me now) of Falk completely missing the point. IIRC, he tells the story of how the Klausenberg Rebbe (a Hassidic religious leader, who lost his wife and most of his children in the Holocaust) met a girl in the DP camp shortly after the war. She was barefoot. He said that a Jewish girl should have something for her feet, and then took off his own socks and gave them to her. Years later, she remembered that encounter and was telling the story.

For Falk, this story is just about the importance of socks. He sees it as a license to tell women that they are destroying the world if their legs aren't perfectly covered.

For me, I saw this as a testimony to the character of the Klausenberg Rebbe. Here he was, a man who had literally lost everything, relating to a young girl who had also lost everything. She would have likely survived years of being treated as less than human, been stripped naked and searched and shaved and tatooed, been starved and beaten and terrorized. After all of that, she meets a stranger who is concerned about her, who sees her as deserving of dignity, and who was literally willing to offer her the socks off of his own feet. I'm pretty sure it was that expression of caring and self-sacrifice that moved her, not the feeling that feet are obscene.

[ilovetchotchkes]

I can't get some of the pages to show in my preview. 322 won't show, but 321 is also pretty bad.

There's also an example around 333 (again, won't show for me now) of Falk completely missing the point. IIRC, he tells the story of how the Klausenberg Rebbe (a Hassidic religious leader, who lost his wife and most of his children in the Holocaust) met a girl in the DP camp shortly after the war. She was barefoot. He said that a Jewish girl should have something for her feet, and then took off his own socks and gave them to her. Years later, she remembered that encounter and was telling the story.

For Falk, this story is just about the importance of socks. He sees it as a license to tell women that they are destroying the world if their legs aren't perfectly covered.

For me, I saw this as a testimony to the character of the Klausenberg Rebbe. Here he was, a man who had literally lost everything, relating to a young girl who had also lost everything. She would have likely survived years of being treated as less than human, been stripped naked and searched and shaved and tatooed, been starved and beaten and terrorized. After all of that, she meets a stranger who is concerned about her, who sees her as deserving of dignity, and who was literally willing to offer her the socks off of his own feet. I'm pretty sure it was that expression of caring and self-sacrifice that moved her, not the feeling that feet are obscene.

I definitely think your interpretation is more in line with 99.9999% of Jewish thought.

[Cannelle]

Well I dress like a fundy half the time and they still think I'm unstable. :lol:

No kidding! Half the time, I dress like I'm the lost Duggar daughter, and I'm so incredibly NOT fundy. I'm not even Christian. I just really love long skirts.

I may have told this story here before, but I used to work in a fabric store, and since they kept the temp at something like 97 degrees in the store, instead of the required khaki pants, I wore a long khaki skirt. I also had very long hair at the time, I looked really young (I still do, it's ridiculous), and I was homeschooling my then 5 year old son. Thus, the customers who were fundy assumed I was one of them. (HA!) We had this one family that used to come in- I think they had 9 girls and 2 boys, and all of them had biblical names (I remember one of the younger girls was named Esther). The mom was always SO over-the-top nice to me, just gushingly so...until the day she came in and I had cut my hair short. OH, the dirty, filthy looks she gave me. Told me an awful lot about her character right there.

[ladypuglover]

Page 322 teaches us that it's a good idea for men to rip women's clothes off if they are publicly immodest.

:? And somehow ripping a person's clothing off would make them modest? Is the birthday suit more modest?

...until the day she came in and I had cut my hair short. OH, the dirty, filthy looks she gave me. Told me an awful lot about her character right there.

As clear as glass it did. :think:

[gardenvarietycitizen]

...Rabbi Falk? *clicks link* Totally Rabbi Falk!!

Thanks for finding this online. I've read people complaining about this book and snarking it forever, nice to see the actual thing! (in the sense of picking up a rock and looking under it, which is of course why I'm here...)