Did a Rabbi Permit Self-Mutilation To Promote 'Modesty'?

Ynet has a troubling story about a high-profile rabbi in Israel who gave advice to a young woman to cut her own legs in order to stay religious. The story, if it's true, conflates male religious authority, extreme body cover and self-mutilation, and brings the discussions of the female body in Judaism to a whole new low. The problem is that this story may not be true, in which case instead of highlighting sexism in Orthodox Judaism, the story becomes an example of journalists' sometimes overzealousness in their desire to attack religion by pretending to care about women. Especially given the recent history of media attitudes towards France's burqa ban, the actions of certain journalists are no less troubling than those of religious leaders controlling the female body.

Ynet has a troubling story about a high-profile rabbi in Israel who gave advice to a young woman to cut her own legs in order to stay religious. The story, if it's true, conflates male religious authority, extreme body cover and self-mutilation, and brings the discussions of the female body in Judaism to a whole new low.

The problem is that this story may not be true, in which case instead of highlighting sexism in Orthodox Judaism, the story becomes an example of journalists' sometimes overzealousness in their desire to attack religion by pretending to care about women. Especially given the recent history of media attitudes towards France's burqa ban, the actions of certain journalists are no less troubling than those of religious leaders controlling the female body.

According to the article, written by a young Jerusalem journalist, Ari Galahar, for Yediot Ahranot's Hebrew news site, Rabbi Yizhak Silberstein was asked to respond to a strange query from a young woman who was accepted to a religious academy despite her family's non-religiousness. The young woman, struggling with the academy's strict dress code of long skirts, long sleeves, and covered collarbones because her secular parents were supposedly pressuring her to dress in a more revealing way, asked Silberstein whether she could cut her legs, so that her parents would agree that she must wear a long skirt in order to cover the bruises. The rabbi reportedly responded, "She is permitted to cut herself in order to dress modestly, and thus to escape all sin." He reportedly added that "the blood from the bruise will redeem all of Israel like the blood of the ritual sacrifices."

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