[Avodah] Why Jewish Women should NOT wear a Burka

[Ken Bloom]

On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 12:19 -0500, Micha Berger wrote:
> I would suggest that the story highlights the fact that the word
> tzeni'us has two meanings. Originally, it referred to not calling
> undue attention to oneself, trying to avoid the spotlight. Because sex
> is such an attention getter, that grew to include covering ervah. But
> whether or not my suggestion that covering ervah is a derived, non
> primary meaning of the word, the basic point stands: not drawing
> attention to oneself and covering ervah are distinct ideas, both
> called tzeni'us.
> 
> Here is a case where people go to such extent to cover ervah that they
> do draw undue attention to themselves. Ironically, by being tzanu'os,
> they are violating tzeni'us (switching meanings of the word
> midsentence).

I doubt that the word tzeni'ut has two meanings. More likely, covering
erva is only tzeni'ut to the extent that it eliminates an
attention-getter. Once the covering would becomes an attention getter in
and of itself, it would no longer be tzeni'ut in *any* sense of the
word. Does this seem more correct?

--Ken

-- 
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20080210/f4ed1513/attachment-0001.pgp>