ANSWER:
I am not going to go into the issur of wearing men's garments. I don't want to enter to any debates on that subject. I'll talk about something else.
Merely on the basis of identification, forget about all ideology, and I could speak about what pants mean. Pants accentuate a female body, and that shouldn't be done. It's accentuated enough as it is, but I'll leave everything out and just talk about symbols.
Pants are a symbol that you do not belong to the Torah camp, and that's all. It's a symbol, and we have to wear badges on us. We wear a badge; that's why we wear hats. A hat is a badge: I am a mamin, I believe in Hashem Elokei Yisroel, that's what a hat means.
If you don't wear a hat, you wear a yarmulka, a kippah, even if it's embroidered, even if your name is embroidered on it, but still you're declaring that we're all together. We, and the chassidim who wear shtreimleich, and those who wear derbies, and those who wear spudiks, and those who wear beanies, we're all together, we're am echod because Hashem echod, we're showing that we believe in Hashem Elokei Yisroel. It's something.
Therefore identity is of paramount importance. When a woman wears a dress - of course it has to be a dress, a mini skirt is just a pair of pants cut off short - but if she wears a dress so she's identifying, not only with decent Jews, she's identifying with decent humanity. Pants already is a departure. Although there are a lot of people who are wearing pants who think that they are virtuous, but you have to know pants can mean divorcee, divorcees marching around in pants, unmarried women living with husbands… Pants means already avant-garde, out of the world of Torah, not only that, out of the world of decency.
And don't give me any arguments, there are decent people wearing pants, I know some of the decent people wearing pants too, but I wouldn't come to give a talk in a place where there are women wearing pants, because it's not my place. It's already an alien camp, they are wearing badges. The badge should say, I am for Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and that's what a dress means. That's not the end of the subject, but I don't want to get to do any debates in halachah, it's a simple matter of identity.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Important Numbers
