One Day in a Pizza Shop

I went home to visit my parents in Philadelphia yesterday - a pre Rosh Chodesh BBQ was in order - and had a wonderful visit. This afternoon while running errands with my mother we stopped in a Pizza Shop in the North East (not hard to figure out which one if you know Philly) to get some lunch. I looked over at the community bulletin bord and noticed a Tzeddaka campaign for a chasid whose dying and has ten children to take care of. It's a heart-wrenching tale in a beautiful brochure with full color pictures of the children*.

However, eight of the children have their faces blurred out. Which eight? All of the girls. Much like the recent Feldheim scandal, Charedim have decided that pictures of females are completely assur even if they are newborns (check out what the Shulchan Aruch says about clothing your children) and dressed tzniusly.

What is the point of our tzniut standards if they are not good enough? We are telling our women that we really want them wearing burqa's if they ever need to show their faces. But why stop there? It should be assur to take pictures of women even if we can't see them, because men will imagine them and that's assur - even though it's not written anywhere it's still assur. But that's okay because our women don't learn anything but how to pray, read a chumash, cook, and maybe a few necessary mishnayot; so they'll never learn the difference.


*- It occurs to me that maybe the money spent on this brochure could have been better allocated to the children in need.