[Avodah] mixed swimming,

[SBA]

From: "Meir Shinnar" <chidekel at gmail.com>
me > but there is little basis for forbidding, for example, mixed 
> swimming, and  > allowing walking on the boardwalk next to the beach....

RSB> Which poskim are mattir walking on the boardwalk next to the beach?
>  > AISI it is clearly Assur. See Aruch Hashulchan EH 21: 1, 2 & 3.

RMM> I think R' Shinar was being rhetorical. To prove the point that it  
> isn't swimming per se, but rather the un-tziut-ness (for which mixed  
> swimming is paradigmnatic but lav davka), he pointed out that walking  
> on the boardwalk is as prohibited as the actual swimming.

I wasn't being rhetorical.  The question is, what is halacha lema'ase psak
of most poskim about tzniut and the need to be mafrish.
One could be machmir, as RSBA would want.
>>

I want???
I cited what the Shulchan Aruch wants!

>>>... it was quite the norm for people - including prominent rashe yeshiva
- to walk on the boardwalk, either in Long Island or in Miami Beach... one
of our former chaverim confessed that he knew the rashe yeshiva who walked
on the boardwalk, ..
>>

There is nothing wrong with walking along a boardwalk when there is no one
on the beach or the weather is too cold for sunbathing.

>>>This position was given to my father by a prominent (MO) rav, as they
were together in the swimming pool in a hotel at Miami Beach - the rav would
understand the basis for being machmir, but not the basis of those who
walked the boardwalk, where the level of zniut was far worse than in a hotel
swimming pool of elderly Jews...

The taaneh of this MO rav is 100% correct. But meanwhile, he personally is
being oyver a serious aveireh. 
Maybe your father should've heeded Chazal and told the rabbi of this.
"Bemokom sheyesh Chilul Hashem ein cholkin kavod larav".

>>>WRT to RMB's point about changes in swimming attire, while this may be
true of the garb of the 1890s, it was not true of the swimming attire of the
1920 and for sure 1930s - and people kept coming both to marienbad, as well
as the beaches at Trieste - the swimming attire of the 1930s was not very
different than that at a family friendly pool or beach today.

Very possible. And you can be sure that not a single recognized rav/RY/rebbe
in Marienbad EVER went to the mixed waters.

SBA