Good news, ladies: there was a new fashion guide published in Israel over the weekend and it’s got all you need to know about what not to wear, and by what not to wear, we mean what colors, shapes, and shoe styles.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a major figure of religious Zionism in Israel who heads the Beit El settlement and the Ateret Yerushalayim school in the Old City of Jerusalem, published a new column in the weekly pamphlet, “B’Ahavah U’ve’Emunah” or “With Love and Faith,” with a list of directions for women’s clothing. Some of his suggestions included not wearing colors like orange, red, nude, yellow, green, gold, silver—or really any color, for that matter.
“Clothing should cover the entire body, it should not be transparent, it should not be tight, and it should be quiet and reserved,” Aviner wrote.
Aviner went on to discuss the length of skirts, which should be 10 centimeters below the knee, how thick stockings should be, the length of sleeves, the bagginess of clothing, what shoe type and color women should wear, adding “how beautiful and pleasant the modesty of a daughter of Israel is.”
Aviner’s “fashion advice” has since been met with some serious backlash: co-dean of the Maalei Gilboa Yeshiva said Aviner’s “obsession with modesty is not modest,” and Rabbi Ronen Neubert of the recently established group Beit Hillel said his directions were “intrusive, humiliating and immodest,” and the discussion of modesty was not one Rabbis should weigh in on.
