{"id":187421,"date":"2011-07-04T21:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T02:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/07\/04\/a-shanda-before-the-goyim\/"},"modified":"2011-07-04T21:09:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T02:09:00","slug":"a-shanda-before-the-goyim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/07\/04\/a-shanda-before-the-goyim\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shanda Before the Goyim*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A prominent Orthodox rabbi has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ynetnews.com\/articles\/0,7340,L-4083216,00.html\">endorsed self-mutilation as a means to modesty<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"color: blue;\">What should a girl do if she wishes to dress modestly but her parents won&#8217;t let her? According to Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein she can injure herself in order to use it as an excuse for dressing modestly.<\/p>\n<p>Three weeks ago, Rabbi Zilberstein, the the son-in-law of prominent Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv, received an inquiry from a women&#8217;s religious seminary (Midrasha) about a student who is growing increasingly religious. The student said she wanted to dress modestly but her parents were preventing her from doing so, because they were not religious. <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The young woman thought that if she inflicted wounds on her legs she could tell her parents that she is wearing a long skirt to cover the wounds,&#8221; the letter said.<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Zilberstein&#8217;s reply came shortly after, with an unequivocal answer: &#8220;She is allowed to inflict wounds on her legs in order to dress modestly and evade sin.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In his reply, the rabbi commended the student&#8217;s initiative, saying &#8220;<\/span><b style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">the blood from the self-inflicted wound will atone for the people of Israel<\/span><\/b><span style=\"color: blue;\">,&#8221; adding that the coordinator <\/span>[of the woman&#8217;s seminary]<span style=\"color: blue;\"> should allow the student to commit the act. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This &#8220;Rabbi&#8221; is suggesting that self mutilation akin animal sacrifices last presented at the Temple more than 2000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>There is a word for people who believe that self inflicted injury is somehow holy, and that word is &#8220;nut-case.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, he, and the seminary coordinator, are being played as fools.&nbsp; This girl is not being forced by her parents to dress in hot pants, but rather she is profoundly troubled, and looking for a &#8220;get out of  jail free card&#8221; for cutting herself, a pathological behavior rather common among adolescent girls.<\/p>\n<p>Un-dirtyword-believable.<\/p>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/failedmessiah.typepad.com\/failed_messiahcom\/2011\/07\/girl-should-cut-her-legs-so-her-parents-will-allow-her-to-wear-long-skirts-rabbi-says-234.html\">Failed Messiah dot Com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup>An embarrassment before the rest of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A prominent Orthodox rabbi has endorsed self-mutilation as a means to modesty: What should a girl do if she wishes to dress modestly but her parents won&#8217;t let her? According to Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein she can injure herself in order to use it as an excuse for dressing modestly. Three weeks ago, Rabbi Zilberstein, the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1104,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}