[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Meir Shinnar]

To complement RCL's tale about refusing food as being a model for the
shliach tzibbur - which does not reflect a midda of tzniut, but of manners -
this is not just a Sefardi Ashkenaz split, but an intraashkenaz split as
well.  my father has a similar story.  When he was a (literally) starving
student at the Technion, his one real meal during the week was if he was
invited to a meal for shabbat.  When the hostess offered seconds, there
were, depending on where in Europe (in Haifa his hosts were all Ashkenazim)
came from, two possible appropriate responses.1) Accept immediately.  For
one half this  was right, for the other half it showed poor breeding/manners
and compromised chances of being reinvited - any one well brought up knew
you had to wait for the third offer.
2) Refuse and wait for the third offer - for one half of the cases, the
offer of seconds was not repeated (important for a starving student), and
also was a partial insult to the hostess....
There was little time to make a decision, which had major consequences...

This also suggests that the waiting for the third time for being a shliach
tzibbur does not necessarily reflect the model of tzniut that RMB (n the
name of RHS) suggests - and the language used is more in agreement with the
manners/breeding issue than with tzeniut

RMB
>Again, I ask you as well to propose your definition of tzeni'us as "the
>other shitah", the one we do follow, in contrast to RHS simply running
>with the literal translation of the word and buttressed by other
>sources.

Tzeniut has not classically been understood to saying that one should not
fulfill communal roles.  It is not that the need to fulfill them means that
tzeniut is pushed aside - it means that the category is inapplicable - we
don't have the vision of someone who disappears and is invisible as the
model - because a community can not function that way.  The edict of sna et
harabbanut in pirke avot is not usually understood to be an issue of
tzeniut.  Indeed, once one gets into communal roles, one has the opposite -
the positive value of the honor associated with being the leader (eg, the
issues of the kavod hamelech and (related) kavod harav and kavod of a talmid
chacham..) .  there may be illegitimate reasons that motivate people - and
those are decried - and there is the issue of middot that people have to be
sure that they are doing it for appropriate reasons for their own self - but
it is a tremendous hiddush (or I would argue distortion) to argue that all
public roles are only permitted as a dchuya - and the only real application
of this has been to women's roles.

Does it mean that some people lack tzniut in their fulfillment of public
roles? No question  (my favorite example was from a chazzan in my youth,
who, for Hineni he'ani mimaas, would stride down in his hazzan's hat, saying
loudly three times   HINENI HINENI HINENI then softly he'ani mi'ma'as ..),
and, as matters of hinuch, yes, we should be educating that the primary role
of being a shliach tzibbur is being the shliach of the tzibbur.  Does that
mean that  a public role is inherently a violatioh of tzeniut which is only
dchuya? chas veshalom. lo haya velo nivra

It is one thing to oppose innovation - it is another to propose radical
innovations in the name of opposing innovations.....

Meir Shinnar
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