The Fault in Our Tznius

I've been working my way through Naomi Novick's Temeraire series. It's of the fantasy genre, taking place during the Napoleonic Wars. Novick's premise is this: What if history took place just as it did, but with dragons? 

What makes the series stand out, in my opinion, is Novick's ability to grasp the language and sensibilities of the time; the tone is practically Austenian. It doesn't always make it an easy read, but it can still be an arresting one. 

There was one scene in Book 3: Black Powder War that made me laugh. Temeraire—the dragon—and his crew are traveling across the world, and have currently stopped in Istanbul. The are currently the "guests" of the Sultan, meaning they cannot leave the compound. Since they have been traveling heavily thus far, the dearth of female companionship has been keenly felt by some of the crew. 

Two of these fellows are excited to see, out the window, a woman! Mind you, she is wearing six layers of shapeless robes, and her head and face is veiled, revealing only her eyes, but the men fight over the spy-glass to be able to get a better look, and even try to wolf-whistle. 

For all they know, she could be as old and shapeless as their mother. But men are . . . men. 

It made me think of our community's irritating emphasis on tznius. Don't get me wrong, I think tznius is important—but not the current translation of tznius, which focuses on wardrobe, as opposed to behavior and comportment. The rabbanim in the Gemara were tzniusdik—in the bathroom. Do we even know what that means? 

My mind then jumped to the story of Dina. In school, we were always told the story of Dina in judgemental tones, that it was "her fault" for "going out." In the pasuk, it says that "Dina went out to see the daughters of the land." 

We were told Dina should have stayed in the tent. Wow, what a fun life for a teenager, to be stuck indoors all day with four older women (and no Netflix!). Would any of us quietly accept such an existence? The text says, quite simply, that she wanted to meet other girls, her contemporaries. She wasn't trying to invite male attention. But a privileged young man, the prince of the land, abused his position and took her.

That was how the world was then. It was not so different until, well, recently. It has nothing to do with how women dress. Dina, I'm sure, looked pretty close to the woman described in Novick's book—all robes and veil. But that didn't stop Shchem. 

When teachers would awkwardly approach the topic of tznius, using phrases like "attractive, but not attracting," frankly, it is all subjective. My own judgement is painfully biased. I have that embarrassing default that if anyone is dressed "more" than I, then they must be "overdoing it," while if anyone dresses "less," their values are in the toilet. It's all relative. 

And when a matter is as relative as that, there is no point in making it an issue, when halacha has much less shades of gray. We should be focusing there. Keeping our mouths, our speech, tznius, is a far loftier goal.