Hatboxes glossary: clip-on earrings

Miriam and Nadine shop together in Hatboxes

In Hatboxes, Miriam exclaims, "You never see such nice clip-ons," as she peruses a whole tree of earrings in Lena's boutique.  "I think I'll get two."

Some observant Jews do not pierce their ears because it may be considered immodest. Tzni'ut (Hebrew: צניעות) is a body of Jewish law concerned with comportment, including dress, and relations between the sexes.  Tzni'ut is rooted in concepts of of humility and modesty, articulated repeatedly across the Bible as ideal traits, and it forms the basis of an enormous body of jurisprudence.

Ear-piercing sometimes gets included among the prohibitions against mutilating the body:  "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor imprint any marks upon you: I am the LORD." (Leviticus 19:28; the Talmud identifies tattooing as an idolatrous practice, but the rabbis disagreed about whether including the name of a deity was what was prohibited or the entire act itself.  800 years ago, Maimonides concluded that tattoos are entirely prohibited.)  In Exodus 32, Aaron collecting the earrings from women, sons, and daughters, but maybe melting them down to use as the Golden Calf casts a taint on piercings still, thousands of years later.

Is modesty a part of how you choose to dress yourself?