Bekeshas, Boots & Blue Shirts: Jewish Dress in Modern Times

[Music] both of those projects initiatives got off the ground because of the guerrero prolific team members slain in west germany at the future out of the 24 who were killed were americans who had come to learn in covenant i say one million jewish children who were made to become losers [Music] it is never too little it is never too late and it is never enough jewish history sound bites bringing alive the world of our glorious past here is our host live from jerusalem jewish historian and tour guide yehuda gabor welcome everyone to jewish history sound bites this is yudhi gaber with another episode of jewish history sound bites and this episode has been generously sponsored by the shapiro family of los angeles before we get to the topic of jewish dress in in modern jewish history i just want to read a couple of uh feedback letters from recent episodes it had a couple of weeks ago an episode on the safer nephew of verb velozener and um and its role in in the history of the of the hasidic movement and the opposition to the hasidic movement and a interesting i guess is the right word a somewhat odd a letter um i'm just going to read a short expert ex excerpt excuse me um about i mentioned that of a legend had not uh had not signed on any of the um any of the excommunications um about uh hasidim and um so part of the letter i received said that this letter writer this listener heard that the reason is as he heard from rabbi yosef buksbaum that he knew the handwriting of rebhaim velajenner as he was a big expert or the biggest expert in kissfayyad in manuscripts and the handwriting from the harem is rabhiyam's handwriting so if he wrote it he did not need to sign it that's pretty pretty wild i gotta say because it's not supported by any of the evidence we know of at the time in other words there would have had to have been some sort of corroborative evidence that uh that that he's the one who wrote it that someone said that he wrote it that someone wrote that he wrote it that someone testified that here i don't know it just seems uh seems to be to me at least uh it's just me speculation and quite far-fetched um so i would dismiss it um i had a recent episode about the devourer of rum from deverikana shapiro the rav of kavna and fascinating couple of letters about him in the covenant ghetto very very interesting one listener wrote that his son writes in the introduction to his safer that his father would not cut his beard he was even willing to get killed at least not to touch his beard which he was able to do and he and the nazis did not cut off his beard and his son writes this i looked it up explicitly in the introduction to the books an incredible dedication of the dvar of rum to not have his beard cut off another um another letter about him in the ghetto also fascinating this is a son of a survivor of the covenant ghetto wrote me this my father told me that handbills were plastered throughout the covenant ghetto which publicized up sak by rabbi kahane shapiro which obligated the ghetto inhabitants to work for the germans anyam kippur as a matter of pekuach nefesh a reference to the story of the handbills is found in a 2014 book titled the clandestine history of the covenant ghetto police notwithstanding the my father simply could not refrain excuse me cannot fathom working on him kippur and did not report for work that day very interesting okay so also i want to mention that it's the end of the contest of the trivia quiz uh of the machine that the in our column for the record in mishpacha magazine so i hope that you all uh entered your uh into into the uh and you know into got got good scores and got into the raffle and we're gonna get some prizes and i'm gonna do some follow-up in the coming episodes i'm gonna try to analyze some of the results and some of the questions and and talk about it a little bit so stay tuned for that as well and of course um if you want to be in touch with me about any sponsorships or lectures of the sort then please feel free to do so yehuda yehudigebr.com today's topic is jewish dress in history it's a big topic and it's possibly big enough for two episodes maybe even three it's anything we don't get to in this time we'll have a future opportunity um so uh don't get nervous if we don't uh if we don't get to it um so and also if you want a future episode dedicated to this topic of jewish dress and fashion throughout history then you can dedicate a future episode and be in touch with me about that sponsorship uh as well it's as huge i mentioned as is as it's ancient it's not just modern jewish history this is throughout the ages and it's we know that the geographical spread and the chronological range of the styles of jewish fashion throughout history is very diverse and it goes from anywhere at any time in any century in any country that jews lived in it's a topic for everywhere literally and that's why there's really so much to talk about i'm going to try to keep it focused on uh specific areas and times you know you have in in in the in you see in rembrandt's uh paintings of the dutch jewish community who were many of the wealthy uh uh patrons and ones who commissioned rembrandt to paint their their portrait was dutch jews living in amsterdam in the 16th century um so that's and they have a very distinctive style of dress which is similar to dutch dress at the time but also uh jewish in its own way and it's vastly different than for instance traditional yemenite dress which is different than medieval german or medieval spanish jewish dress so each each one has its as its time so and also these type of episodes also draw a lot of feedback so i'm looking forward to that feedback and we'll incorporate that into future uh installments of this topic as well there's actually a letter i got from a lawyer loyal and dedicated listener who who i mentioned to him that i'd be doing this episode so he writes to me as follows i know there's a lot on this topic and i'm sure you'll cover as much as you're able but if possible please include include these few items because i use them a black hat fedora a kappata that's the lubavitch version of a bekacha black velvet yarmulke jackets for the weekday and shabbos for many and even as a baker in yeshiva i wondered how the hat and jacket became the equivalent to eating matzah and pesach and that was that was what he wrote so i don't know if i'll get specifically to those hopefully we'll touch on it a little bit um today of course the type of yarmulke one wears at least in israel it's probably less so in in in less tense uh jewish societies but in it it's the type of yamako one whereas defines your religious affiliation it even defines your political affiliation and whether i should be friends with you or not it's a statement um you know do you have the niryanika and a velvet yarmulke you have a big one you have small one you have leather you have hasidic different styles of yarmulkes and colors and and it gets very exciting this is of course not to meant to be an exhaustive uh or comprehensive overview it's just some of the thoughts that i came up with on the topic so if you're expecting something completely con comprehensive i hope you're not too disappointed i also won't be discussing too much a little bit i'll touch on it here and there of female jewish fashion this time around maybe in a future episode of course it's a fascinating topic maybe for another time so the primary focus on male fashion but i will touch here and there on female jewish fashion as well traditional uh primarily we're gonna focus on the last couple of centuries last two three hundred years and of course primarily eastern european as is in general the general theme of jewish history some ways though not exclusively but you know i'll try to get around as much as we can there's a certain anachronism that goes on when we talk about jewish dress throughout the ages is that we assume that any just that's worn by jews today was worn by them throughout history and that reminds me of a story of a family member of mine actually he sent his his uh children to a yeshiva that was kind of haimish and they had the some of the administration and some of the rebaim and the yeshiva were of hasidic background and therefore his son in first grade came home with a a booklet on the parsha where maisha rabbenu and aaron were in the desert and they're wearing strymols and dasan and aviram who were the bad guys they were wearing hats and jackets now of course this family member of mine wore a hat and jacket and you know the rebbe and the yeshiva were astraymal so he called up the principal to complain he said you're trying to teach my kid that his father is like dustin and aviram and you know the idea is not only that you know that that was lousy education in his opinion but also that we assume that of course maisha rabbanu had to have warren astremill and i remember there was a joke when i was growing up i don't know might have might have developed differently today but that they said how do we know that maestro bana war is tribal because it says in the past explicitly vaye so of course he wore one so we assume uh that that that it's been like this throughout history because we're a traditional and conservative society and nothing ever changes of course today things did change because it's actually appropriate to mention it's approxim almost exactly a year ago that the original lockdowns began with coronavirus so it's about a year since then that this corona changed everything because now no one gets dressed altogether so there is no fashion anymore so that's appropriate to discuss what was in history and of course the question is is it jewish fashion or is it jews who are involved in a fashion and jews have always been involved in the textile industry you know people like um just for example calvin klein and ralph lauren who is ralph lipschitz calvin klein's ancestors came from galicia and ralph lauren's ancestors came from pinsk in in lithuania and belarus so they both grew up on the grand concourse in in the bronx which is that neighborhood is of course uh you know if anyone likes the bronx we can talk about it in the jewish america great american jewish history series which is going to be starting again soon so those are they're they're big big names in fashion and they're jews but that's not jewish fashion what we're talking about today is jewish distinctive dress what today would be referred to as you know uh where they were where you know where yeshiva guys get their clothing so sims bash is is jewish dress or century 21 or emporio suits supply in israel it's in the gula neighborhood when i was growing up in muncie we used to go to this elderly holocaust survivor mrs wenger she had the suits so that's jewish dress but what i really want to get into is the the history of it what goes behind it um there's three aspects to explore with traditional jewish rest one by one is the fact that it's primarily a knockoff of a copy of non-jewish dress the jews were always influenced by their surroundings and and primarily they went with the general trends and fashions uh of their of their surrounding countries and societies the culture that that's that's the that's the basic theme their second point is that there were almost always jewish variations there was distinctive jewish shabbos clothing there was modest attire sneeze issues that caused it to be slightly different there was also very often decrees governmental decrees that said the jews had to wear a special hat at a where special sign on their clothing of course were familiar with the nazi era with the yellow star but many societies in medieval times they had jews wear distinctive markings on their clothing and that became a jewish form of dress the third point to emphasize which is which is more related to what we're going to talk to today um is is the fact that the challenges of modernity and in the end of the 19th century the early 20th century so the rise of jewish fundamentalism and the onslaught of modernity and those challenges caused the the external expressions of jewish identity to become very strong and and in the way you dress defined who you were because the community felt threatened and especially that ad what added to that was the holocaust that anything that came from eastern europe was now frozen in time because it's holy because there are martyrs because it's a vanished world so anything from that world is is elevated in status and therefore we can't change it so both because of the challenges of modernity in the decades leading up to the holocaust so dress became a very important value in the jewish community in the traditional jewish community and especially because of the holocaust and the decimation of that world and therefore the whole status of any symbolism from that world becomes elevated and therefore that that influence is how we dress until this very day but the golden rule is and i want to emphasize it is that basically almost all jewish fashion is knockoffs copies of non-jewish fashion with a slight jewish twist sometimes um it's what the non-jews forced them to wear and that became traditional other times it was just copying what they wore and eventually gave it a bit of a a jewish flavor and oftentimes the non-jewish style permeated the jewish ghetto at a much later date often when it was already out of style in its place of origin and then it extended much later in the jewish community as can be expected in a conservative religious society so garb is a uniform you know that in sports they wear uniform and armies boy scouts and then and uh and that goes for jewish traditional dress as well in egypt and almost by pesach now they were redeemed because of jewish dress that's what the that's what the tradition teaches us that they they kept a distinctive jewish dress so it has cultural and historic value even religious value though often it was imposed by external factors and always influenced by them in fact they mentioned pesach and the haggadah so the his two other points the hassan cipher who was one of the fighters against modernity in hungary in in the 1800s early 1800s so he said that he pointed out that it that it says when they that they were going to take when they left mitsrayam and they left egypt they were going to take the clothes from the egyptians as part of their salary as part of taking away the gold from the egyptians they also took their clothing but he he points out that the pasta says the you're going to put it on your children he says why are they going to put it on their children why can't they wear it themselves so reflecting the trends in his day and age the german and and and the fashions in the in the austrian empire he said because the material were non-jews that they were modern they were modern and with courts they went with short clothing so you know short jackets so they couldn't wear it for themselves because they had to wear long so but it fit it fit their children it was long for their children the adult egyptian clothing would be for the children so you see how the history comes uh you know in that challenge there i remember rebel wine uh pointed out to me a few times that in many ancient haggadahs he's examined the illustrations and haggad is through the ages and almost always when it depicts the four sons so almost always the wicked son is is depicted with the prevailing non-jewish or modern fashion that was the the expression of the of how the wicked son looks but it is a uniform you know when you go to a formal ceremony if you go to to the tony's uh uh awards you have to wear a tuxedo you have to have you have to conform to a certain atmosphere that that's in the surrounding and the same goes through uh to a jewish society also of course at the tony's even if you're a seat filler you have to wear a tuxedo who and then sometimes the seat filler even wins a tony but that's another story so it's important to understand the underlying principle every society not just jewish society fashion is a strong statement of identity it's a facet of identity it's a statement of who you are there's also a technology factor you know sometimes in europe people might have been before the war poorer but they may have had nicer clothes than today in 21st century united states or israel because they were handmade and the handmade might have been better quality so so they maybe not you know so so there's there's there's other external factors as well so we go to the 19th century also want to know how did distinctive hasidic dress develop so there's different nuances again in in each dynasty but um but it developed over time traditional jewish dress eventually like i said before becomes frozen because of of the onslaught of on traditions so that we keep traditional and a conservative dress and because of the great crisis uh uh facing the hasidic movement in uh in the uh early 20th century and and uh and the hasidic movement turns towards fundamentalism and it becomes a very dress becomes a very strong uh uh border of where the community is and um and i remember um i remember uh i i was privileged to study under for a time professor martin martin vajinsky who describes this a lot he he explains a lot about hasidic dress in in the early 19th century all all you know non-hasidic rabbis missnak them even masculine uh and rabbis they all wore copics and strymals in the 19th century it was common dress in the russian empire even in the austro-hungarian empire it was not distinctive hasidic dress it was traditional jewish dress of 18 19th century europe um so what made it acidic dress at what point so you have a very interesting story in 1846 there was what's known in in in jewish history as the xerus hamalbuchen excuse me the um the dress decrees which lasted until 1854 but even beyond um it was mainly in central poland but it was in other areas of the russian empire as well and uh they there was a decree against wearing jewish dress and what are they gonna do so the many many of the great rebbers many of the great leaders in sadiq they said no we have to have a serious nephesh valley or this is jewish dress this is this is our identity we have to risk our lives for traditional jewish stress but there is options excuse me yeah the government gave options to you can choose you can either choose a european bourgeois dress a more modern dress or you could choose traditional russian peasant dress uh fashion which um so in the uproar that ensued many of the hasidic communities adopted the russian dress because that was the lesser of two evils that allowed them to retain their beards that allowed them to retain long coats and fur hats and this is also important it wasn't common in central poland at the time where garen and varka and alexander and all these other dynasties were developing so jews could remain distinct even even you know they weren't even around so many russian peasants which was more east in in the pale not in central poland um but jewish dress eventually evolves into hasidic dress in the late 19th century like i said the crisis of modernity the need for distinctiveness um there's it's a means of collective identity during this time of crisis and it's also to project uh uh to the outside world um the the the emergence of a of you know it's a stigmatization we're which we don't want to get we don't we don't want to get rid of we want to get rid of excuse me we want to get rid of free riders we're establishing barriers um for the community and it's going to be an embarrassment for outsiders to wear our dress and we only want people who are strongly committed this gives strength internal strength to the core and it's strengthening the ranks anyone who removes the dress is outside the community this of course becomes even more pronounced during the urbanization following world war one because now you're in a big city you want to spot someone a block away in your store or in in in the park he's part of us he's not part of us right and it's a distinctive dress that preserves it in an urban urban setting so that's um that's very important uh that's uh it is also the question of expense which which uniform dress is also not affordable at the time so it doesn't become completely uniform until the post war um so not everyone wore the the distinctive hasidic dress but it it's kind of a gradual so the um and in different different dynasties develop their own nuances you know one of the other things that that wojinski points out is that uh is that hasidic fashion has preserved imperial borders of the 19th century in other words uh hasidic dynasties today they they they come from galicia the austro-hungarian empire pre-world war one they'll wear similar types of dress if they come from the russian empire or parts of poland they'll wear different and and and literally they're probably the only people in the world who have been able to preserve political borders of the 19th century through the way they dress in 2021 across the ocean in williamsburg or in israel um it's a fascinating phenomenon in in poland the hasidim did not wear striables they were spuddicks and all polish christine wasn't just gyerus any any hasidic dynasty in poland if it was majits or or khajnits or radomsk or even navaminsk which was imported from belarus but settled down in poland so they adopted the polish dress you know the geraka see them they they would tuck their pants their their pants into their socks and became a distinctive part of their uniform and i mentioned in another episode that perhaps it was because of the mud that was that was a joke that they said who knows if it's really true in galatia further south they had a different style dress they in fact the in bells the children wore a distinctive or still wear a distinctive cap it because it was a decree and that at one point the government forced the jews to wear that type of cap and they decided to adopt it as a badge of pride this is what the children will wear in honor of shabbos so they took something that was supposed to be shameful and they transformed it in a creative way into a badge of pride there's a story um at a belle's wedding there was a fellow by the name of rabitrik nakhum twersky who was from the spike of dynasty which comes from square who comes from chernobyl and he married him to the bell's family married a daughter of the belzeraba eventually was a rabbi in rava ruska and he was killed by the nazis but he was going through a struggle at the time and he wrote this incredible confession to the yiddish writer on skin and warsaw tennyson denizen in in warsaw and he complains there about how the bells dressed and in general hasidim in galicia they wear a very different type of dress than what the ukrainian and chernobyl dynasty uh they they dress much more nicer much more refined and he says the bells galicia dress is is longer and the sleeves are long and it's big and baggy and he didn't like it and he's very critical of the way they dress in galicia so you see even within the internal within the different dynasties different areas they each have their already their distinct uh address we know that throughout the first 100 years perhaps longer for a large portion of the history of the hasidic movement that sadikim of the movement wore white and it was considered if you were someone white before he was he was at sadiq he was a hasidic leader eventually that changed um vishnuts which was a hungarian romanian hasidic group they had their distinctiveness which was that they had their hat banned on the other side that band was on the right side in general many one of the distinctive forms of hasidic dress became for kabbalistic reasons that they had the coat buttons were buttoned right over left as opposed to left over right and because they did it for a kabbalistic reason that the right it has to be stronger so that became a a symbolic form of of of their dress so envision it the one of the vision of the rebels had noticed that a priest his hat band was on the other side so he wanted to be different than the priest be different than the christians so he immediately switched his hat band to flip it around the other side and this way it becomes a distinctive part of the uniform i mentioned in another episode about the skivera boots and i said it incorrectly so i got a hundred emails afterwards that the reason that the skiver has dynasty wears boots is because one of them joined the married into bells and he wanted to cover over his white socks so he put on boots it became part of the skivera uniform so so that's the clarification of that but that again it's another example eventually with hasidic interdistinctive dress is not just only to separate from the outside world but perhaps even more so today especially is to be a distinctive uniform for their specific tribe it gives a strong sense of identity to separate themselves not from the outside world but rather from a different hasidic dynasty and again especially with urbanization when there's it's not that your area of galicia you're the only hasidic group around and in town so you don't need to separate yourself from with an external expression like that from anyone else but when urbanization happens which continues till today so there's a hundred hasidic groups in your community so how do you look different so you have to have these small nuances so that makes it makes one look different we have in in the lobovich the hasidic group they or the rebel the last rabbit abandoned the shrimal for a distinctive type of fedora and that became the symbol of of the of that that dynasty that that group that community one of the most unique uh um uh hasidic style dresses and it's probably one of the best examples of non-jewish influences on jewish garb is breathless hasidic dress or lack thereof breslav hasidic dress which seems to be influenced by hippie or beatnik hipster you know 1960s san francisco communes type of uh fashion which uh which you know influences large segments of the breast lift community uh till not all of them but large segments of them uh today uh the it even goes as far as glasses and gear and i believe also there was certain times when the rebbe made a a a request or or decree that everyone has to buy a specific type of glasses and therefore that became one of the ways that uh again a fashion statement of of this of this dynasty of course also natara anatalis which would be specifically jewish development as the non-jews did not wear a talis but it could even be something so simple as to even just wear a string well the satmarov said that in his community in the post war in the united states has to start wearing strymols why start because in hungary as opposed to poland as opposed to ukraine as opposed to russia on hungary strymol's were not so common among hasidim before the war and most kasim did not wear strymols so he's but he said post war we have to start wearing because it's a different situation it's uh it's a it's it's we need more of a symbol we need to show that we're different and it's it's more modern more urban more the the onslaught of american values and western values and modern dress it's more of a threat so we he he wanted and he asked that everyone wears a strymo within the satmer community you know and then like i said we go from we come full circle you know the event in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds the lit fox were wearing striables we have we know people in the time of the ville nagoyan and vilna war streimels and it's if we have pictures he wears drama why because it was a russian winter dress until today it's a russian winter dress if you go to russia especially among the aristocracy at that time and uh and uh and uh you know the the we go just touch on female fashion just for a second in the famous more infamous uh sans sadigura dispute of from 1869 to 1876 uh between the division of sons and the tzadikam dynasty so one of the aspects of the dispute was the was the fashion accepted in by the women in the sadigura community even in the rebels families to what was called then a crinoline or a hoop skirt and uh and the divrechai and shaitals also wigs that was that was a big issue then as well um and the the the recharm said that that that was inappropriate it's not snes and you're following the non-jewish fashion and uh you know the it becomes a big part of the term that the very high end place on the saudi guru dynasty and on the siddique so the way their wives dress with this crinoline or hoop skirt whatever it is is a big issue and it has to be removed that can't be a jewish dress if we move away from hasidim just for a few minutes is we go to yerushalayim the old yeshua spartak dress we have uh the way that the ashkenazim were able to come into yerushalayim in the early 1800s was only by disguising themselves as in in in sephardic dress because ashkenazim were not allowed to live in yusuf because there was a whole issue with the the the arab landlords when when it came in 1700 and then they were in debt and they didn't want any european jews coming anymore the sephardic jews paid their rent on time they were also businessmen they were more reliable um but the ashkenazim they didn't like them they don't want them so when when the ashkenazim tried to resettle new shalom they had to adopt the sephardic dress to sneak in and that became your show me fashion eventually that became traditionally genuine fashion even though its origins were in were copied off of their sephardic brothers you know the the distinctive sephardic dress for hundreds of years in many countries in israel and yerushalayim also was the tar bush it's also called the fez and the jalabia in ottoman the ottoman empire that was that was nonjewish dress that was muslim dress the tar bush was a red hat that was worn and and the jalapeno was the long coat the galima in hebrew the the long uh you know like a robe type of a code and this this brings the idea of immigrants when you come from one country and you come to the united states to israel to to palestine at the time to change from the previous fashion and to adopt the local fashion that's something that takes time and and not always is it done so easily in fact um the interesting story the rabbis in in ottoman-palestine during world war one sephardic rabbis i'm talking about in the sephardic community you know people had come from syria from iraq from turkey uh they were living in yerushalayim so there was a military draft so there was a deferment for rabbis and rabbis were a distinctive type of glimmer certain distinctive jalabi with a sash with a certain type of tar bush so they they got it deferment so what happens everyone started to put those on because they wanted that military deferment the ottomans they weren't they weren't they weren't dumbs so they saw that everyone's starting to wear it so they did away with the rabbinic deferments so the rabbis had to go into hiding they tried to escape the whole story um which is interesting because of world war ii in before and during the in the 19 early 1900s the the the yeshiva boys were grey hats and the simple working men laborers were caps capeches like casquet they were a simple hat and the rabbis wore black cats the one the only ones who wore black cats were rabbis so when when there's certain rabbis when they were escaping from the nazis the beginning of the war from the soviets in order to disguise themselves they would get a gray hat so that they wouldn't look like a rabbi because only a rabbi would be sometimes rabbis were at higher risk so they wanted to be they disguised themselves by wearing a gray hat now the mustard yeshivas in lithuania the from the muslim movement and even other ones and mere in intel's and many yeshivas they adopted modern european fashionable dress as a principle as part of their educational platform to to to the the yeshiva boy should look aside from the vardic they they did not do that so when slabhatka in 1924 moved to yerushalayim they before they went to chevron they um they didn't fit in because um because the roshami's were wearing very conservative long coats long beards and here these dandies were coming into town wearing very fashionable clean shaven hats and canes and ties and they looked like masculine they looked like they looked like they were very modern so they did not fit into shalom and the ushamis kind of chased them out of town and that's eventually why they settled in in khavren um so the the um the uh the the idea of wearing long or short uh they they like they said the yeshivas at that point went to short jackets because it was more modern accepted in european society and became a question of rabbinic attire and especially in the lithuanian world to wear a long code which eventually was a frac which is another knockoff of a non-jewish dress and german aristocracy in the 19th century they wore fracks that's where it came from german hamburg and afrac they're both german non-jewish fashion that became rabbinic attire whereas the common man wore a vest or a jacket a short jacket and until today there was there are russia yeshiva who made a statement out of of of not wearing a long jacket not wearing a frock no i mean in israel of course everyone's running to wear a frog that you know as soon as they can get a position where but there are were ashish ever remember my rebbe in the mirror of he he did not does not aware of rock and romer stern or a big big people of palm uh blessed member feinstein there were people who they did they chose not to wear the rabbinic attire in fact in the mirror most of the uh rabbeim they did they wore short jackets there was one there was one rebbe in the mirror who who uh only wore a frock when he would go to the united states and um when the archala came the alumni came to study in the yeshiva so he would give his shirt to the archicad since they were visiting from the united states he would wear his frock so they said to him you're not an american now he says no i kept my passport in my pocket so it's it's it's part of the rabbinic distinctive attire i remember i was doing a segment on on um on great photographs with the legendary gadolin photographer maisha yarmisch who has the best pictures of the great gazelle's throat of the last generation so his he has a very famous picture of her maisha feinstein when he was when he was in up in the mountains during the summer on vacation he's caught him in when he was wearing his pajama shirt he was relaxing and uh and he said so he said moishi armish told me he said there are people who think that ramaisha was wearing a blue shirt he wasn't wearing a blue shirt he was his pajamas so um so the uh that became uh it became uh you know they uh it's that's part of the you know the yeshiva guy when he goes when he goes to work he's gonna transfer into blue shirt i had a friend who was in the mirror he told me when he's leaving the mirror he's going straight from the airport to blind blood blue shirts because he he's now he's going to be going to be part of the workforce he needs to have blue shirts he can't be wearing a white shirt so fashion because a very strong statement i got about a third of the way through the material that i prepared so i think we'll have to go to part two so this is you the gabriel with jewish history soundbytes you can reach me at yehuda at yahoodiger.com for questions comments sponsorships lectures you can subscribe to jewish history soundbites and podbean or your favorite podcast platform follow us on twitter at soundbytes and i hope you enjoyed