You Are What You Wear

In yeshiva we have a policy that bochurim must have their shirts tucked into their pants. The reason, we said, is that when your shirt is tucked in it says "I'm ready to work." And when it's untucked it says "I'm bored, relaxed, and not ready for anything serious."

What you wear and how you wear it determines not only the way people perceive you but also the way you think about yourself. Some people will be working hard all day long, until they take off their shoes. Then they're done. Don't even bother asking. Others can't get work done with their shoes on, and keep them off, under their desks at work, while working.

Some bochurim today, in another attack by the powers of assimilation, are attracted to wearing the grungy, sloppy, ragged - no, not rugged - style of clothing. They leave a few buttons open at the top of their shirts, wear their pants low enough to step on the bottoms, et al.

The fact that some shgotzim decided that the style of clothing should be such, and that frum boys (and girls) are clicking their heels and saying 'yes sir! - we will do and we will hear without asking why' - is a tragedy that has long reaching effects. Would you be surprised anymore to hear that next summer official style from Hollywood is no pants! That's right! Designer boxers. No, it wouldn't shock us anymore. Can you just see us begging our teenage kids to put on a pair of pants before they go out?

Far-fetched? Yes, but not very far.

The desire to dress down is overwhelming. Some of the boys that dress properly during yeshiva rush to change into their shreds the moment they leave the yeshiva building. G-d forbid, they feel, to be seen in the airport wearing presentable clothes. They think: If I wear normal clothes people will think I'm not normal. Seriously.

The Yidden in Mitzrayim had several saving qualities. One of these is that they did not stop dressing like Yidden all the long while they were in Mitzrayim. Even when the Egyptians began dressing with their robes worn low, the Yidden remained Yidden. And when the Egyptians started dressing with less dress, the Yidden remained clothed.

Back then the assault was by slavery and brutality. Later the assault was by Inquisitions, pogroms and Nazis. Today the assault is by assimilation.

We need to teach our children when they are very, very young that we don't mess with the way we look. We look like Jews, we look like Chassidim, and fads and styles are for people whose lives are maked or breaked by what they wear or don't wear.