Healthy Living - Part 5: Appearance & Modesty - Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller

[Music] okay in terms of appearance C says here also strive for moderation so he says is don't dress like a ragpicker but don't dress in a way that makes other people turn around and feel that you're making them feel uncomfortable by by just how you look you understand what I mean so don't dress to kill you know you don't want to be the one who walks in the room wow did you see her okay why not so there are two things one is it makes you think forget about other people that your human value is the way other people see you that you're important if other people and what if they don't okay clear so they did a survey in an Ivy leag College which made this even more frightening 18year olds okay if you had to have a catastrophe happen in your life you could either become completely paralyzed in an accident or you could gain 100 pound and not be able to lose it which which catastrophe would be worse what paraly people you can't walk vast majority of them said paralyzed no that's worse they would say no they said they would choose to be paralyzed choose rather than to be fat that mean you can't walk paraliz can't walk can't use your arms people are great yeah it talks like it tells you a great deal about the superficiality of the society in which we live wow okay clear so the reason they're doing this is that we people in that Society are judged by how they look it's not in their mind somebody will judge but people do judge you so you have to chose make a choice somewhere along the line either you're on the bus or you're off the bus either you're amongst those who judge others and judge themselves by appearance or you're not okay so he does say to dress with moderations clean neat appropriate for your status in life okay but not extreme okay so I'm going to move from there one step further than he does which is you're familiar with the modesty laws that form women and keep right where do you think that's coming from let's what's the point of departure that makes the Torah require modesty why okay so one is protection and comfort and the other is self-esteem what would you say right they're saying you're outside and not your inside so I'm going to give you a context for it this is the torah's context there is 613 mitzvot remembering 613 anything is very difficult do you all know your social security numbers yes good for you A lot of people don't numbers okay so so there are all sorts of systems through which people reduce them so one system is just like memorize the ones that are still practicable today without the base of mes that brings us down to a little under 300 okay that's half could you remember things next reduction okay and H okay D it reduces it to 15 if you remember these 15 they'll make you remember the rest meaning like they're like topic headings remember this and it'll bring you the rest some people find 15 too hard there was a reduction to nine okay then there's a reduction to three so I want to tell you the three one of them is love kindness what does kindness mean give me a definition of kindness okay doing good for others without self-interest now in this sense the other could be God also doing good for the sake of something that's not you to benefit them okay clear that's one now that's going to take with it all of the positive Commandments give charity pray every day that expresses you to God love your neighbor okay clear number two there are only three do justice notice you you don't have to love Justice you just have to do justice what's Justice like equality an example would be equality the right thing is very vague basically doing what is what is meant to be like the proper thing to do like what is deservant of the situation okay so I want to tell you the difficulty in what you're saying and what you're saying also it's two words says who okay so if you want to say appropriate in a situation who says that this is appropriate in the situation there's a tribe in central Africa I'm not making up their names they really are called the Uggs they're hunter gatherers if somebody can't keep up with the pace of the trail they're left behind this means old people young children women who go into labor during the day they're Left Behind if they left if they're Left Behind they die so the proper thing if the person who you love more than you love your own life trips over a branch and sprains his ankle is to let him die in that Society so because of that when you say something like do the right thing you have to deal with says who when you say as you did equality so um in America there's currently a great deal of um great deal of talk surrounding the relationship between the police and the black community is that true yes okay so do you see that there are two sides of the coin or you only see one side two two sides there are two sides what are the two sides the police side and the black people side the black people died disproportionately but the policemen who they killed are not the one who killed black people do you realize this they they shot policemen who were unrelated to crime against blacks so that's not equality it's not balanced the side of somebody who kills a policeman knowing that they're innocent is much more severe than a policeman who shoots somebody out of mistaken judgment which is bad enough it's bad enough but this is even worse you understand this so often times unless you say says who you don't have a good answer so the Jewish view of justice is that humans don't know how to make Justice can't make justice justice comes from God this will include all the negative Commandments don't murder don't steal but it'll also include don't break shabas don't eat on yum Kipper it's part of keeping balance in the world so we have all the positive and all the negative but there's a third so the third one is walk modestly before God so it's not what you do it's how you walk before God you have to walk before God modestly meaning with awareness of his presence with a certain sense of your being small and him being big at all times always so a person who walks modestly before God by the nature of things can't do the equivalent of stepping on somebody else's neck to get themselves a better position in their job how could they do that in the presence of God you understand this so part of that there's so part of being modest involves headset part of it is speech and part of it is appearance what do you think modest thinking would be pure thoughts pure thoughts also not self granted not judgmental thoughts not you know I don't want to have anything to do with her you know none of that not dismissive thoughts okay thoughts on which you could almost become the other person okay what do you think modesty and speech would be talk not yeah not vulgar okay not lashara not vulgar speech not cursing not referring to people by their body parts as is the Min hug in some parts of Brooklyn okay okay okay um but it also mean letting the other person talk making room for them okay not not creating conversation that's full of self okay modesty and appearance would mean not having an appearance that says all I am is a body because you're a Sol you're before God so this is where the modesty L come from which of course what that will mean will have to do with soci different societies certainly nobody who's in M thinks in terms of what the is because we're coming from a different society that makes sense you but the principle is a reasonable principle does that does the principle make sense to you so it's not about self- protection and I want to point out to you in what sense it isn't H but that'll be for next time [Music]