“There’s a sense that you have to dress in a way that respects the Torah that you represent. We generally assume it has to do with wearing clean, respectable clothing.”
have license to do that. And that has become Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition is plain shrouds, not to dress people up in fancier suits than they ever wore in their lifetime. So we have that as a very specific model of demonstrating humility. Granted, it’s in death, at which point what people think of him doesn’t really matter anyway. But that’s an iconic image of how rabbis approach clothing. We have discussions about rabbis respecting their clothing. Finegold: The famous one about the rabbi picking up the hem of his garment when passing through a thorny area because his skin could heal, but the clothing can’t… Torczyner: You’re talking about Abba Chilkiah. Another one is a rabbi who calls his clothing mechubadai : that which honours me, or is honoured of me. And so he was
I find that rabbis often lay these by the wayside.
Torczyner: You also have Talmudic examples of this—including some that go in the oppos- ite direction: Rabban Gamliel II was around in the period of the destruction of the Second Temple. He’s the one the Romans saved as the descendant of King David. He’s the political leader of the Jews. If you disagree with him in the rabbinic world, you’re toast. Rabban Gamliel gives instructions that when he passes away, to bury him in plain white canvas or linen. At the time, it had become very expensive for people to dress up the bodies of their loved ones when they passed away. The Talmud even records that they reached a stage where people were aban- doning the body because they couldn’t afford to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, on the burial. And Rabban Gamaliel says to bury him in plain clothing so that everybody will then
Torczyner: You’re making an interesting point in this distinction between attractive clothing and regal clothing, because I think there’s a lot of room for that distinction. Pursuing attractive clothing in a rabbi would actually worry me. I’m a child of the end of the 20th, beginning of the 21st century. And, unfortunately, I’ve seen scandals from time to time. And I would worry a little bit if I saw that there’s a rabbi who’s so concerned about the attractiveness of his appearance. Finegold: There’s an entire Instagram account that got turned into a book called @PreachersNSneakers. It’s about this phe- nomenon in the evangelical Christian world, preaching while wearing these thousand-dol- lar shoes.
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