Yes, I was wearing jeans, but wasn’t I modest in ways many other girls in skirts were not?
And now I was stuck.
The rabbis at Neve put me in the beginner’s classes for hashkafah, but because I spoke Hebrew well, they put me into Advanced, the fifth level, for text-based classes.
Every girl in that level was frum, inside and out, complete with skirts and socks and long sleeves and high collars. I was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and the ubiquitous Nimrod Israeli leather sandals. Definitely no socks. It didn’t bother me. I wasn’t there to change my wardrobe; I was there on a dare from Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller to check out a school I’d defined as “black and anti-Zionist.”
My introduction to Jewish texts was Chumash. Parshas Ki Seitzei. The eishes yefas toar. If that didn’t send me and my feminist upbringing fleeing on a plane to Nebraska, I was probably there for the long haul.
And yet.
Only girls in Mechinah, the first level, wore pants. But I was in Advanced, where no one dressed anything like me. I didn’t care. I’ve always been comfortable swimming upstream. But I hated being judged based only on externals. I felt like I already was tzanuah. Felt like I’d always been tzanuah. I had been the teenage girl who wouldn’t wear shorts into town. The girl who never felt comfortable in sleeveless shirts. The girl who wasn’t loud or ostentatious. So, yes, I was wearing jeans, but wasn’t I modest in ways many other girls in skirts were not? And didn’t jeans cover you up best?
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