[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 01:30:43PM -0400, Meir Shinnar wrote:
: 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 -
...

Mah beinaihu? Is not tzeni'us one middah among the set we call "having
good manners"?

...
: 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..)...

You still have me lossed. Why are you placing tzeni'us as an antonym of
kavod? Dignity breeds kavod without always jumping into the limelight.

And the whole question wasn't whether communal roles would at time
outrank tzeni'us, it was in changing the role of half the community
which would multiply the number of times tzeni'us takes a back seat.
Is that a positive change? Is a desire for that change a positive one?
Is not feminism's search for empowerement *frequently* aimed at allowing
women the opportunity to erode the concept of tzeni'us?

...
: 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

And last, I still don't see how you provide any proof that the word
"tzeni'us" means something other than "acting betzin'ah", that
vehatznieah lekhes isn't dachui by the need to have leaders. You aren't
even arguing hutrah, you are telling me to follow a different and
unprovided definition of the word without a source behind the claim
that RHS -- or actually RYBS, since he discussed it in Nefesh haRav (pg
281) -- got it wrong by translating the word literally. Tzin'ah is the
antonym of parhesia, no?

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

I am not opposing innovation, I'm opposing following desire, even
religious desire, without a weighing of pros and cons as measured in
Torah terms. The problem isn't with the concept of innovation as a
whole. (If it were, could I follow some blend of derakhim none of which
existed in 1850? Would I take the initiative, much to RRW's irritation,
of picking and choosing among nusachos for my own tefillah? Etc...)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The fittingness of your matzos [for the seder]
micha at aishdas.org        isn't complete with being careful in the laws
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Fax: (270) 514-1507      the laws of business.    - Rav Yisrael Salanter