Being religious doesn't mean a woman can't dress as she wants

In this interview, a woman who was once part of the Haredi community talks about her life as a supermarket employee, and a social media user:

Today, at 20, after completing national service in a kindergarten for children with special needs, Elmalich is a social media star with nearly a million followers across platforms. She describes herself as "religious in every way except for how I dress."

She grew up in a deeply religious household in Netivot, in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Her mother teaches at a religious girls' high school, while her father teaches at a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. She is the seventh of nine children.

Her family maintained a very strict set of boundaries, yet the outside world began discovering her long before her family was ready for it. For a long time, she led a double life: At home, she tried to respect the rules, while online she presented a very different image, one that gave little indication of her religious upbringing.

"I was always a rebellious child," she says. "It didn't start with clothing, but with boundaries that felt suffocating." As a child, her rebellion began with the smallest acts of defiance. "On Saturdays, they'd tell me to come back from reciting Psalms at four, and I'd come home at five."

‘I lied so I could go to Bnei Akiva’

In seventh grade, at a religious school in Netivot, her difficulties intensified. "Every morning, the rabbi would stand at the school gate and check the length of our skirts. If he didn't approve, he'd send me home to change. Sometimes I'd leave and never come back to school that day. I wasn't a good student, and he would humiliate me in front of everyone. One teacher told me, 'Do you really expect to amount to anything if you carry on like this?' It made me hate religion. What are you saying? That I'm worthless if I don't dress modestly?"

Which is absolutely not true. How you dress isn't what determines your value, it's your respect for innocent people that does.

Her parents forbade her from attending Bnei Akiva, a religious Zionist youth movement, because boys participated in its activities. They would only allow her to join a girls-only youth group. "I would lie and go to Bnei Akiva," she says. At the time, she had almost no interaction with boys, so even an ordinary encounter could frighten her. "When boys spoke to me, I felt like I was doing something wrong. I was waiting to be punished. I'd think, what's going to happen now? Am I going to fall? To this day, I still have those feelings of guilt. That guilt weighs very heavily on me."

Forbidding the sexes to interact with each other is some of the worst hysteria to come about in any part of the religious world, and has to stop.

Only when she transferred at 15 to the religious girls' high school where her mother teaches did things begin to feel different. There, too, she was judged by her academic performance and clothing, but at least she was not humiliated in front of the entire class, and there were discussions about values. "When people see you as a human being, it feels different," she says. "It made me start over with religion, to begin reciting the morning blessings again after I'd been avoiding them." She completed 12 years of schooling but did not earn a full high school matriculation certificate. "I didn't feel I was doing my best academically. I would take Ritalin to help me succeed, and it simply didn't work."

During her time at the religious school, she did something she had dreamed of for years: She wore pants. "I'd see secular girls wearing pants and think how much I wanted to be like them, and then feel guilty for even thinking it. They seemed free to me, without problems. When a friend gave me a pair of pants and I went out wearing them for the first time, I felt so happy."

It's quite alright. Though when she wears dresses, she should consider styles like the strapless party outfit, and probably has. At the end:

Do you have any red lines when it comes to work?

"You can see that I don't dress modestly, and nobody can say a word to me about my clothing. That's what pushed me away from religion. If I have a boyfriend who has a problem with the way I dress, then bye. But I won't advertise underwear. Not long ago, I received an offer to fly abroad for an underwear campaign. I've never been abroad, I didn't even have a passport, so even though traveling overseas is a dream of mine, I turned it down. Those are my values."

Maybe she should reconsider. In any event, it's just a shame she has to make use of TikTok, even though they're ostensibly no longer under Chinese ownership. There are some alternatives around, and it'd be recommended she try those instead. For now, let us be clear. Not dressing "modestly" is not antithetical to Judaism, Orthodox or otherwise, and it's about time the point be made clearer, especially to the Haredis themselves. This kind of hysteria cannot go on, and if they really want to differentiate from other religions, that's why it's vital to start thinking more about all this.