E-mail from Chaim Saperstein, from The Front Page publication in Monsey, NY

(printed with his permission)

 

Hi,

I read your article, and agree with it wholeheartedly. As you probably know, we are the only “yeshiveshe” magazine in Monsey that does print pictures of women, withouth blurring them. Having said that, there are restrictions we do have to put on ourselves, or we would be put out of business.

 

One thing I do have to tell you, is that if you don’t understand the reasoning behind what they do, what you think is a logical argument falls apart. One of the points you made – “After all, if women can’t be seen on a flat printed page, how can they possibly be allowed to be seen in provocative flesh and blood at the grocery store?” sounds at the first glance like a good argument. I myself used to ask the same question. After the matter was explained to me, however, I learned that the reasoning is totally false.

 

Let me explain why: (Remember, I don’t agree with their way of doing things, but I do try to understand) Chassidshe boys are – for better or worse – trained from early on to not look at females. In fact, if they do see a woman in the grocery store, or even in their house, they will blush and look away. They certainly will be to embarrassed to be seen looking a woman in the eye, or “checking her out”. Therefore, the worry of having them stare at women will not happen.

 

However, a picture, in the privacy in their home, the embarresment factor disapears. The Chassidishe child feels no shame staring at a picture of women. Therefore, an ad with a Kallah in a wedding hall ad (with a Tznius – albeit form fitting dress, with perhaps the chest area of the Kallah a bit prominent, along with beautiful makeup) becomes almost pornographic for the Chassidishe child.

 

The matter then becomes, where do you draw the line?

 

The only way to diffrentiate between a “kosher” female picture and an “unkosher” picture where a Tznius woman with a “come hither” look that gets their children a little bit frisky is….. very dificult.

 

Therefore, they feel they must make a blanket rule: No pictures.

My response:

Chaim–

Thanks so much for articulating their argument for me. It’s true, I am from a different ‘velt’ so I am struggling to understand the opposite opinion. That’s why I tried very hard to not blame or disparage in my article–just explain why it upsets me.

 

I guess what’s also frustrating is because of ‘their’ chumrah, that they have taken upon themselves, then the ramifications are that me, and Hillary Clinton, and the Choshevah women that I want my daughter to be exposed to,  have that chumrah imposed onto them. No choice. That starts to blur things into Taliban land. It’s one thing if you want to be a Nazir–but to expect everyone else to stop drinking wine too is not fair.

 

It also  still doesn’t make sense to me–there are plenty of images that a Chaddishe boy would feel ashamed by, whether he is at home or in public. In fact, most people in the world make it their policy to look at/enjoy  provocative imagery in private-not public. So I don’t get that disitinction at all.

 

But, if you check my blog, you will see that I made a post that I don’t think this is the newspapers fault at all. They need to make a parnassah–this is the new expectations of the community. But at the same time that these publications are catering to one community, they are deeply offending a different part of the community. (I still am naive and think that we are all one community!) Anyway, as I said I am really grateful to you for explaining their thoughts.

-Ann