Where In The Torah Does It Say That We Can't Wear Sneakers To School?

Hi, this is Rabbi L's with our question and answer series. Our school instituted a rule against sneakers. Where in the Torah does it say that we have to wear loafers to school? It's in the volume, thou shalt not wear sneakers. No, I'm just kidding. Of course, there's no answer written in the Torah. But there is an issue of listening to the coming. That's a sort of catch all. You could fit almost anything into that. And there's also a mitzvah of covenant Torah. Covenant Torah. And therefore, there is a way that a covenant Torah is supposed to dress. There's a way that I'm supposed to behave in a base madrish. There are hilchos base and madrish, hilchos base and nesses. There's a way that as a Torah Jew, I have to behave. And um I'm old enough to remember where in public schools they had a dress code. And you had to wear, if you were a boy, slacks and and a button-down shirt. And shoes. No sneakers, no dungarees, no t-shirts. And uh and girls had to wear a blouse and a skirt. You know, and shoes, not sneakers. Yes, when you went to gym class, you could switch into your sneakers and switch into exercise clothes, but but in class, I still remember when I was growing up, there was what we called our school clothes. And my mother would always say, "When you come home, change out of your school clothes and put on your play clothes." And then at some point, they did away with it and the whole structure of education collapsed. Because you know, if the school is the street and and and there's no differentiation and there's no cupboard. It's very interesting. One of the things that uh these um charter schools do. They attract kids from poor neighborhood is they have a uniform. You come to school like a mensch. Yeah, I I I'm talking about non-Jewish charter schools. You have to set a standard. There's a way that you dress and the way you behave. So, I taught in seminary. They did not have a a dress code per se. They didn't have to wear a you you know, a uniform shirt and you know, and pleated skirt, whatever, you know, but you know, supposed to supposed to have um you know, dress in a way obviously that was uh tzniua. And fortunately, I don't know if the girls understood what that meant um because common sense is not as common as it used to be. But um uh I used to have certain rules in my class. I only had three rules. Turn off your cell phone, no talking, no gum chewing. So, over the years people would say, "I understand why I can't uh have my phone on cuz if it rings, it'll disturb. And I can understand why I can't talk cuz it'll disturb. What do you care if I chew gum?" I said, "Cuz the Queen of England will never chew gum." In fact, the Queen of England, if she came into a room, would never take off her coat. She'd go into a back room to take off her coat or she'd wear her coat. She felt it was undignified for the Queen of England to undress in front of people even if it meant taking off her coat. And she maintained a sense of class. You'll never see a kavod under the kavod chewing gum. It's not it's not the kavodik. I said, "For 45 minutes twice a week in my class, you're going to see yourself the way I see you. And I see you as a chashuve bas Yisrael. When you go out of here, I don't care what you do. You can you can allow yourself to abuse yourself and be abused as much as you want. But in here, you're somebody chashuv to me and you're going to act like a chashuv a person. And and girls, no, I meant it. I took it very seriously. I made a real effort to learn everybody's names and someone said to me, "Nobody does that. You're the only teacher." Everybody else just calls out the names and checks it or they even give it to a girl to do the roll. I said, "Because when I do the roll, I learn your names and I feel like if you're taking my class twice a week, I owe it to you to figure out who you are." I want to know your name. I want to know who you are because you're somebody chashuv to me. Now, when you consider that I had anywhere between 80 and 100 girls between my two classes and I taught for almost 20 years. That's like 20,000 names. No, 2,000 names. It's like 2,000 names. And I don't have the best memory in the world and I can usually remember people, but I don't always remember their names. I remember them. I sometimes I'll tell them where they were sitting. Yeah. Or uh someone came to visit me from like 20 years ago and uh she tells me her name and I'm looking at her and I said and uh she was wearing a shaitel. I said, "Didn't you used to be blonde?" And she goes, "Yeah, I'm still blonde. How did you remember that?" I said, "I remember you sat right over there." >> [laughter] [snorts] >> So uh yeah, you try to you you you try to make a commitment to people because they're chashuv. We don't go to school wearing our jean skirts and we don't go wearing our sneakers. We don't go chewing gum. We don't have pushed down socks. We dress like somebody who is chashuv. Remember in Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva, Rav Henoch was always very makpid on this. He says, "A guy who's learning in kollel should come to yeshiva like a junior executive." He would insist that they wore ties. You know, you have to come in and look like somebody chashuv. You have to carry yourself with that. And any gentleman out there who has ever had to wear a tuxedo, you know, just putting on a tuxedo, you right away think you're James Bond. You want to go over to the bar or bar and go, "Martini, shaken, not stirred." You know. You you feel that you're chashuv cuz you're dressed chashuv. And when you dress like a schlub, you feel like a schlub. You know, these people who sleep in their in their sweats and they get up in the morning, don't even bother getting dressed, you know, and they sit at the computer and they're eating a sandwich and wipe their hands on their thing. Okay. That's how much they think of themselves. And if you're more careful of how you dress and how you act, and like I say, your school clothes at least, so then you'll have a different approach to yourself and to your role in this world. This is David Orlofsky with the question and answer series.