127
Those rabbis who wanted Jews to retreat from the modernity that reshaped women’s roles have used dress codes to form their communities. Men and women’s clothing symbolizes who they are. To don the proper clothing is the way in, to take them off is the way out. The world and its customary way of dressing had no claim on Jews . Jews were thus encouraged to separate themselves from the mainstream.
In our survey we have seen how a biblical prohibition has traveled through the centuries. Even though we cannot determine the exact cause of its origin, it has been used as a form of social control. The rabbis extended its meaning to include many
forms of the presentation of the self. Through most of its history the application of the rule has been modified by minhag. In modern times Orthodox decisors have interpreted it in a very different way by using it to enforce separation.
Notes
Joan Wallach Scott , Gender and the Politics of History, New York , 1976, p. 19. Commentators who use the words“transvestism” bring a modern psychological category to their work and already have interpreted the text radically by using this term
Genesis 1:27
Jeffery H. Tigay , Deuteronomy , The PS Torah Commentary, Philadelphia and New York , 1996, p. 200
This moral universalism is in interesting contrast to the views held by some modern Jewish scholars, as we shall see below, who insist on creating immoral non-Jewish straw men to knock down.
Louis M. Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism, New York , 1976. Gerhard von Rad , Deuteronomy , A Commentary, Philadelphia, .1966.
Otto Eisfeldt, Einleitung in das Alte Testament , Tuebingen 1964.
Moshe Weinfeld , Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, Oxford, 1972, p 19
Alice L. Lattey, An Introduction to the Old Testament , Philadelphia, .1988, p. 19. G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, Princeton, p. 209. Maurice Godelier quoted by Scott, Ibid., p. 45.
This follows the Targum’s translation of kli as military apparel, armor.