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A Modesty Proposal
As you’ve probably heard, France is in an uproar about burqinis. Three French mayors have banned them. A brawl reportedly broke out in Corsica last Saturday over women swimming in burqinis.
The word is a portmanteau of “burqa” and bikini,” but it’s is a misnomer, because the garment in question, unlike a burqa, doesn’t cover the face. France banned the burqa and the niqab six years ago. I wrote about that decision here — I was reluctantly in support of the ban. “Reluctant” for obvious reasons:
Let’s be perfectly frank. These bans are outrages against religious freedom and freedom of expression. They stigmatize Muslims. No modern state should be in the business of dictating what women should wear. The security arguments are spurious; there are a million ways to hide a bomb, and one hardly need wear a burqa to do so. It is not necessarily the case that the burqa is imposed upon women against their will; when it is the case, there are already laws on the books against physical coercion.
But in the end, in favor of it:
At its core, the veil is the expression of the belief that female sexuality is so destructive a force that men must at all costs be protected from it; the natural correlate of this belief is that men cannot be held responsible for the desires prompted in them by an unveiled woman, including the impulse to rape her. …
A woman who has been forced to veil is hardly likely to volunteer this information to authorities. Our responsibility to protect these women from coercion is greater than our responsibility to protect the freedom of those who choose to veil. Why? Because this is our culture, and in our culture, we do not veil. We do not veil because we do not believe that God demands this of women or even desires it; nor do we believe that unveiled women are whores, nor do we believe they deserve social censure, harassment, or rape.
I was careless about my nomenclature in that article. By “veiling” I meant using garments that cover the face. We can’t pretend that a garment that makes it impossible to see whether a woman is smiling, afraid, or sad — a garment that erases her face, her identity and uniqueness — is just another fashion choice.
But the argument over the burqini has nothing to do with face covering. According to the ruling, women must wear swimsuits “that respect good morals and secularism.” The ordinance says that “beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are currently the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order, which it is necessary to prevent.”
Needless to say, this has prompted international ridicule and outrage. The language of the ruling is weirdly reminiscent of dictates from the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The British media, especially, is delighted at the opportunity to mock the French:
Nothing says “losing the plot” to me more than demonising what is, let’s face it, a wetsuit. Is full-piece swimwear really more offensive than seeing a middle-aged bum crack? Is it really going to terrorise your Mr Whippy into a total meltdown?
Non, they say, we must ban the burqa. Ban the burkini! Ban the bikini! Oh no, wait, the last one is OK because it’s not related to religion or politics. Apparently. Let’s not forget that back in the 50s, the itsy-bitsy bikini was not so welcome in wider society either: in addition to censure from the Catholic church, it was banned in Spain, Portugal, Australia, Italy and many states across the US. It was even banned from beauty pageants after contestants in the first Miss World scandalously wore the two-piece swimwear.
Politicians talk constantly about integration and inclusion, and then proceed to kick out to the fringes the very women they claim are oppressed and excluded from society.
On Saturday, French courts upheld the ruling, saying the move was legal under French law forbidding people from “invoking their religious beliefs to skirt common rules regulating relations between public authorities and private individuals.” The judge noted that the Cannes ban had been declared “in the context of the state of emergency and recent Islamist attacks, notably in Nice a month ago,” and “The wearing of distinctive clothing, other than that usually worn for swimming, can indeed only be interpreted in this context as a straightforward symbol of religiosity.”
Some background: I’ve never been to Cannes, but from what I understand, the influx of Saudi tourists has in recent years been a sore spot:
Tensions have been high in the French Riviera ever since it emerged that a Saudi king has been allowed to commandeer a public beach all for himself.
King Salman is expected to arrive in the Riviera on Saturday, where he and his family will stay at his plush villa which stands just metres from the Mirandole beach in Vallauris.
Local beachgoers from nearby Cannes and Antibes, however, have been protesting against the fact they will be barred from the beach for the entire duration of the family’s stay.
Saudi royals further inflamed relations with local hosts when they were given the green light to build an elevator down to the sand to make it easier for them to access the beach from their villa.
A regional councilor took the matter a step further and launched a petition against the privatization of the beach, gaining over 50,000 signatures of support, reported the BFM TV channel.
Locals are infuriated by this, but business-owners need the money. “Clearly this is good news,” said Michel Chevillon, president of an association representing hotel managers in Cannes.
“These are people with great purchasing power which will pep up not only the luxury hotel industry but also the retail and tourism sectors of the town,” he told the AFP news agency.
Anyway, France is clearly determined to say, “This is France. We don’t wear garbage bags to the beach in France.”
But I think there’s a way to make this point that isn’t needlessly mean to women who’d prefer to dress modestly at the beach. Ban black burqinis.
How does that solve anything?
Well, just look. A beach full of women dressed head to toe in black would be depressing, joyless, and un-French. Sights like the one to the right are calculated to inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. The mayor isn’t wrong to say that an insistence upon dressing like this is a provocation. Cannes is known, after all, for its film festival, its glamour, and the young Brigitte Bardot in a revealing bikini.
That said, not everyone beautifies a beach by wearing a bikini. Everyone could probably agree about that. A beach that allowed women to dress in bright, cheerful, modest wetsuits shouldn’t offend anyone but the profoundly bigoted. The difference between the black burqini and colored ones is the difference between funereal joylessness and “a pretty good fashion choice for women with cellulite.”
But French mayors want to prove that they’re tough on terrorism, so they’re going to plump for meaningless gestures like burqini-banning. And Islamists want to prove that France is at war with Islam, so they’re going to plump for maximal outrage about it. It’s a problem that could actually be solved by goodwill and common sense, but neither seem to be available in abundance.
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I like those.
Good to know!
Interestingly, stuff they’re marketing on Amazon as Muslim swimwear often doesn’t cover women’s arms and legs completely. This getup struck me as one of the more fetching ones, though looking at the reviews, sizing and the “attached chest pads” (whatever they are) might be problematic.
Flotation devices? ha
Son,
Not that I want to rain on these two wild and crazy Hasidim’s parade but maybe we need to be a shade more careful. From the article.
Purely in terms of the letter of the law they are OK. However, tzniut (modesty) is a wider concept than just how you dress. They are engaging in an occupation that flouts tzniut and makes sport of the dignity of their own wives. Not so great. Just for the record, I went to the Chabad site and got an article on modesty.
Uncovering the Mystery of Modesty
Regards,
Jim
I agree that the designers seem to have missed the fundamental idea. Even in purely legalistic grounds I think they are mistaken. It is up to a man not to seek out scantily clad women to look at them. It certainly requires the designer to compartmentalize his religious life and his professional life. (FWIW, one reason why I believe a Haredi lifestyle is not sustainable unless it is ghettoized)
Son,
A reasonable criticism. Some of Halachah results in a self-generating community surrounding its nucleus. However, the ghettos are those communities that exist by external force or by a purely inherited existence. The whole Chabad movement is based on a Chabad Shliach couple being sent out into pure Galut to “find the lost Jews”. As they start literally from scratch there are no other Orthodox and certainly no ghetto to sustain them. Chabad is the most successful Jewish movement in the last 200 years. Thus your criticism can not be completely true. It doesn’t mean that many of the frum from birth don’t really have any deep beliefs and are just living off the conformity of the ghetto. However, Chabad proves that the Jew can survive.
Regards,
Jim
Many French citizens are of Algerian and Moroccan origin; not so much Turkish — most of the Turkish diaspora is in Germany. It’s true that France experienced massive postwar labor shortages (because so many men had been killed), and thus imported labor from North Africa. But don’t forget that France has a long history in North Africa and had been there since the Bourbon Restoration: At the time, the Mediterranean region of Algeria was considered sovereign French territory and administered as an integral part of France. There were hundreds of thousands of French colons and pieds-noir in Algeria. And Morocco was a French protectorate under the Treaty of Fez. So these are not populations that are strangers to each other at all: The idea that this is some hugely alien culture to France is nonsense. And for the most part, North African immigrants — and immigrants from all of Francophone Africa — have done well here, especially in the state sector. They speak French as a native language, and arrived already possessing a deep familiarity with French culture — which was also their culture.
The immigrant experience of Turks in Germany is a very different story. As is the experience of South Asians in Britain. But it’s glib to say that France “imported cheap labor” as if they did this to undercut the wages of the native French population or something. The native French population was dead, literally. France could not have rebuilt itself back into a developed economy after the war without immigration. France also has a long and significant history with the countries from which they arrived, and a responsibility to those countries, too.
Then there’s the bitter history of the Algerian War, which is a long subject for another day …
Chabad emissaries quite often encounter unresolvable cognitive dissonance between the values they’re taught and the way they live their lives. But even if some emissaries are remarkable, Chabad communities, from Monsey to Boro Park to Zefat to my own, are in fact quite insular and ghettoized. Moreover, they rely to a large extent on the worldliness of non-Chabad Jews who are sympathetic for much financial, political, and organizational support.
Son,
Unresolvable to you. Most Chabad emissaries and their families that I have met (my Rabbi included) are doing quite well. You are confusing very strongly Orthodox communities, Monsey, Boro Park,..etc., with the normal Chabad House. The average Chabad House, of which there are thousands worldwide, is just the Rabbi & his wife & children in a location that doesn’t have a large Orthodox community. There are a few regulars, a few big donors in the background, and a large number of semi-religious Jews who the Rabbi has brought in through outreach and the “one mitzvah at a time” philosophy of Chabad. This is the single largest growth in Judaism in modern times and it is still growing.
cont.
cont. from #129
My Rabbi, before he became our synagogue’s Rabbi, was originally sent as an emissary couple to New Zealand. He tells the story of being lost miles from nowhere broken down on a lonely two-lane highway. A guy on a motorcycle stops. The guy asks who they are and what they are doing there. They tell him. He tells them that he’s Jewish and my Rabbi jumps on the back of the cycle with him and goes for a tow truck. The guy who hadn’t seen a synagogue since his bar mitzvah came to the Chabad House and is still in touch with our Rabbi 20 years later. Our Rabbi was supposed to find the Jews and one of the Jews found him. Works either way.
Everybody has cognitive dissonance.
Regards,
Jim
Jim– First off, most Chabad Hasidim don’t live as emissaries, they live in communities. What do those communities look like? My original contention was that Hasidic lifestyles are unsustainable outside cloistered communities; you seem to agree that such communities (e.g., Crown Heights or Kfar Chabad) are cloistered.
Second, where do emissaries send their children to school? When the kids are young, they send them to Chabad schools. Chabad camps. For high school, they send them away to board at Chabad high schools in those cloistered communities. Then Chabad yeshiva. They rarely send their kids to secular university.
And this gets at the question of cognitive dissonance. I speak not in theory but of many, many Chabad Hasidim — emissaries and otherwise — I’ve known personally. As much as they talk of elevating the mundane in holiness, as much as they claim to engage with the best of the secular world, they do not build communities that do so. They fear the temptations of secular culture so much that they deny themselves and their children the opportunity to do art and science and culture. As much as they praise it in others, they shield their children from it. There is a fundamental conflict between what they characterize as the Godly lifestyle and the values of the wider culture. So at best, they compartmentalize.
And there is a limit to the extent you can compartmentalize. Values seep in. You can’t really pick and choose society’s messages. You can only choose to engage, or to disengage and live in a cloistered community.
Point taken, but the ‘cheap’ was not the point. Massive immigration can have unintended consequences; the fact that Tunisia and Algeria were literally part of France makes it obvious that there’s something more than racism or xenophobia at work here. I don’t think France went through Dechristianization just to replace it with Islam.
Son,
Is there no alternative to jumping into secular culture head first? Why are you holding up secular culture as the end all and be all? We go on and on about the absurdity of the modern major university and then break our backs trying to get the kids into one. We want to teach our children values and then give them up to soulless teachers who want to destroy any real values they have. Is the behavior of Chabad Hasidim evidence of their inability to get with the program or our inability to admit the schizophrenia of modern valueless secular life?
Regards,
Jim
Your comment would seem to support my claim, rather than refute it.
Even so, the part of Chabad philosophy that makes them unique among Hasidim is the Rebbe’s views on the imperative of interacting with the best of secular society in order to elevate the mundane and make it holy. But consider: A man wants a beautiful house. He will never find a Chabad-born architect. Chabadniks will not invent an iPhone that they use, design an airplane that they fly on. They do not give their children the opportunity to learn the skills, much less acquire the credentials they need. They will not write a symphony and only rarely play the beautiful music you love to post. A young Chabad lady I know wants to go to film school; her parents and rabbi said no. Even Yeshiva University is off limits in most cases, both because of the secular subjects taught there and the fact that few Chabad high schools are college preparatory.
Yet Chabad philosophy says the world is a beautiful marvel. Ultimately there is a dissonance between the philosophy and the way of life.
And this is before comsidering the disconnect from the fact that emissaries must raise large sums from wealthy (non-Chabad) donors. While they believe the wealth was created in order to enable them to spread God’s word, they have no real understanding or skills related to wealth creation. They spent all their educations learning Torah, because of the bankruptcy of secular society. But they depend on others having those very same secular educations.
Son,
Amazing. All of Western Civilization reduced to one more banal architect designing one more hypermodern house or one more high tech engineer looking for a quick buck to be made on the latest gadget or one more young women filled with her own trivial vision forcing it on the rest of us with her art.
The Haredim contributed the Gd of Western Civilization. They are the bedrock of the worship of that Gd. I still think that has value just in itself. You study Torah Lishmah.
Regards,
Jim
Jim, what’s amazing is how determined you seem to be to not read my point. I don’t care if Chabad produces architects or filmmakers. I care which forms of Judaism are sustainable, and it’s not sustainable to selectively interact with the wider society and culture. That Chabad self-ghettoizes its children while proclaiming they value Western Civ shows a dissonance that is not sustainable.
You assume that the Haredim contributed the God of Western Civ. I dispute that emphatically. Not only do I not consider Haredi Judaism more true or authentic, I think the evidence is just the opposite. Modern-day Haredi approaches to text and tradition are an ahistorical anomaly within Judaism, one that resulted from the destruction of long chains of tradition in the Holocaust. I consider it practically a new form of Karaitism.
Son,
No, they have done no such thing. You refuse them the simple freedom to raise their children as they see fit. Your magical dissonance exists chiefly in your own perceptions. The Haredim are not planning world conquest. The Haredim are not violent or threatening. Haredi children have all the rights that secular children have. As we speak, ten-year-old children are being helped find their true “gender identity”. Even as far as mutilating those children for the rest of their life. Your secular values provide no warranties that next year the Hitler Youth movement won’t be showing just how sustainable they are by murdering children. That is what pure secular values have accomplished in the last 100 years. How about a little tolerance for the Haredi. I think your characterization is fantastically off the mark. You must have self-selected your sample. Every day I am interfacing with very religious Jews. I don’t find them threatening in the least. As a matter of fact, I find the more secular a Jew is the more likely they are to be intolerant. It wasn’t the Holy Roman Empire that killed six million Jews it was the National Socialist Party. You have just found a very sophisticated way to blame the victims.
Regards,
Jim
Oh, I doubt that. Spenglerson is very unlikely to restrict the freedom of parents to raise their children as they see fit just because he considers that form of childrearing ultimately unsustainable. Persuading people something is unsustainable is different from forcing them to avoid it.
Midge,
Odd, they’ve sustained it for over 2,000 years. I’d like to know who else has a better track record.
Regards,
Jim
Going back to the subject of “modest swim attire”, my husband and I do some scuba diving and snorkeling. Since I’m a sissy about diving in cold water, all of our recent diving has been in the tropics, where over a standard one-piece suit I wear a “skinsuit” of lightweight black spandex that covers me from neck to about half an inch above my dive booties. Probably too form-fitting to be a real burkini – but close. Since we don’t have a pool and gave up on the Y – too crowded to be enjoyable – most of my swimming has been done on dive trips.
Thanks to the fashion for “wearable” sun protection, I’m thinking about expanding my dive wardrobe to include a bright rashguard top and some dive capris to match. My husband and I always “buddy” and it would make it easier for him to distinguish me from all the other divers in similar black skinsuits.
You might want to consider swim capris and a sleeveless or short sleeve rash guard, Amy. Yes, it will reveal your shape, but you’ll be covered, and it wouldn’t be fun to swim with loose fabric swishing around you.
No, and neither does France, obviously — to the point that it legally mandates a form of secularism that to most Americans seems extreme, and in this case, an infringement on what we would consider a private clothing choice. But you’re right to point out that France has a rigidly secular tradition that devolves from its conflicted relationship with the Catholic Church and the horror of its religious wars. It’s not a history we share, so the French position on matters like this seems alien to us.
A whole lot of people came to America as a result of the horrors of religious wars. My family, for instance. We were thrown out of Europe for being sore losers: we lost the Thirty Years War.
Jim, now you’ve gone from refusing to engage my arguments to straw man non sequiturs to wild hyperbole to personal accusations. I don’t tell the Haredim, Chanad or otherwise, how to raise their children. I don’t fear the Haredim or believe they are bent on domination (except in the State of Israel, where they have used demographic power to take over the Chief Rabbinate and thus impose Haredi values on the country and on US conversions). I don’t advocate for secularism, but for Jewish life that incorporates the best of modern Western Civ. I most certainly don’t “blame the victim” when I observe, as per Prof. Haym Soloveitchik (http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm) that the Holocaust disrupted family and community traditions, requiring Jewish communities to effectively rebuild from scratch.
I’ll let you have the last word here. Please use it well.
Son,
Again, I am beginning to see where this dissonance is arising from. You are making some very large assumptions here. It isn’t demographics but the concept of a Jewish State itself that forces whoever is running the government to make a judgement about people’s Jewishness. The Israeli government has, in fact, been extremely secular in nature. Those values you are reacting to are just minimalist Jewish values. As American Jews don’t care about even a minimal adherence to their own religion they react to Israel as if it is some sort of tyrannical theocracy. That is an incredible joke. American Jews are irresponsible religiously. They are irresponsible when is comes to the security of the Jewish State. They are also quite irresponsible when it comes to the security of United States of America. They have maintained all their European Ghetto fantasies of secular emancipation bringing total acceptance in a post-holocaust State of Israel world.
It is the secular American Jewish community that doesn’t have its head on straight, not the Haredis.
Your turn.
Regards,
Jim
I’ve heard they do, at sequestered beaches – no men around. And they don’t need a burka. May explain the local demand for binoculars there.