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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>From: "Prof. Levine"
<llevine@stevens.edu><BR>5"<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>>> Moving from the neck to the feet, one sees the tznius
requirement<BR>that a woman must wear stockings (and not "see through
stockings").<BR>However, this is not universally accepted. According to some
poskim if<BR>a woman is wearing an ankle length skirt or dress, then her ankles
and<BR>feet need not be covered. I once asked R. Avigdor Miller if a
woman<BR>had to cover her feet, and he replied, "We are not noheg this
way."<BR>According to this, a woman who wears an ankle length skirt or
dress<BR>could wear sandals without wearing stockings. <<<BR><BR>Yitzchok
Levine</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
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<DIV>There is no /requirement/ for women to wear ankle-length skirts.
In some communities, stockings are not required. Nothing to do with
skirt length.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It doesn't matter what you find in books or teshuvos, I'm telling you
reality -- whatever they base themselves on, this is what women do:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The RW community tends to davka avoid ankle-length skirts, considering them
too trendy and too eye-catching. They wear skirts a little below the
knee. They always wear stockings, but the stockings are not necessarily
non-see-through. The degree of thickness varies with the community, the
Satmar being most stringent: they require not only very thick stockings, but
also a seam up the back of the leg, to make it even more obvious that the woman
is wearing stockings. In Meah She'arim, it has to be black tights.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>RZ in Israel and some Lubavitchers and some borderline RW in America
often wear ankle-length skirts, but mainly for fashion. Most MO don't
consider stockings to be a halachic requirement and truth to tell, neither do
I. (I could tell you of at least one other RW rav besides R' Avigdor
Miller who permitted sandals without stockings, though he didn't necessarily
think it was the most preferred or eidel look.) The only halachic
requirement is that you not dress in a manner that your community considers
un-tzniusdik, and for this reason alone, a woman has to wear stockings if she is
part of a community that considers that normative. In contrast to the
requirement to cover elbows and knees, the requirement to wear stockings is only
a "das Yehudis" kind of thing -- community-dependent.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In the past ten or twenty years, there has been a kind of fashion
movement among certain groups of RZ in Israel who have been influenced by
the chareidi community. Their conscience no longer lets them go
bare-legged, because of the way chareidi women and chardal women dress, but they
don't want to wear stockings either, so in this group you do see the pattern
you've mentioned -- long skirts with sandals, no stockings. In America
you rarely see this at all. MO don't wear stockings, period.
They don't wear long skirts, either.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For myself, anywhere I go where women are expected to wear stockings, or
where what I wear were to affect my children's shidduchim, I wear
stockings. You may wonder what kind of standard is this? All I
can say is, yesh raglayim ladavar....</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><STRONG>--Toby Katz<BR>================</STRONG></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>_____________________</FONT></DIV></DIV>
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