Last Wednesday afternoon, I found myself with some free time and an urge to explore Jerusalem. As somewhat of a history and culture nerd (hello, fast-approaching PhD!), I decided to head off to the Israel Museum, a place I had last visited at the age of eight and which I remembered very little of except an ancient olive press on display, which apparently made a lasting impression on me. As it turns out, walking to the museum campus uphill in 90-degree heat (which took decidedly longer than the online prediction of 20 minutes) may not have been the wisest idea. However, I eventually found myself at the expansive, air-conditioned museum entrance, where a friendly security guard, on spotting the Hebrew language textbook in my bag, informed me that he himself was a Hebrew teacher and that it was a very fine publication. Thus reassured, I proceeded to look around the museum.
I should point out: the Israel Museum is HUGE, covering everything from ancient history to art to contemporary Israeli society, and since I arrived only an hour and a half prior to closing time, it’s fair to say I was at a loss as to where to begin. After a few minutes involving wandering around in confusion and falling over on an escalator (not necessarily in that order), I gravitated towards the displays on Jewish life-cycle events, where I retroactively questioned my choice of wedding dress on seeing a particularly beautiful example from the Old Country (in this case, Baghdad), and learned about some Yemenite post-birth rituals. I then headed up another flight of stairs to visit an exhibition whose title had intrigued me; ‘Veiled Women of the Holy Land: New Trends in Modest Dress.’
As some of you may know, there was a period in my life where I chose to cover up to express my religious identity, and I’m still interested in learning about the feelings and motivations of those who choose to do so. This particular exhibition focused on women in Israel and the Palestinian Territories – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian – who had chosen particularly ‘extreme’ forms of ‘modest’ dress, including the many-layered black habit of Russian Orthodox nuns, the face-covering niqab, and the all-encompassing veils favoured by a small but growing number of Chassidic Jewish women. The exhibition aimed to explore the significance of such clothing to its wearers and questions surrounding women’s liberation, societal change, and the reactions of others.
Walking into the exhibition gallery, I came face to face with three groups of white-faced mannikins clad in an array of stark blacks and browns. One group displayed the habits of Catholic and Orthodox nuns, one differing degrees of Islamic (and Druze) religious dress, and one the long cloaks, skirts and shawls worn by a few women in more conservative sections of the Chassidic community in Israel. It was a somewhat eerie sight, maybe because of the conformity within each group despite subtle variations, or maybe because it was possible to imagine how the concealing nature of the garments might have a depersonalising effect on an individual wearer. Looking closer at the display descriptions, I was immediately struck by the fact that the number of layers was listed for most of the outfits – up to eight for some Chassidic women and Orthodox nuns. My attention was also drawn to the smaller, child-sized mannikins among the ‘Jewish’ and ‘Muslim’ groups, covered head-to-toe in baggy, floral material, with only hands and faces exposed. While there were some explanatory panels – one for each religious group – with accompanying photos, as well as a book filled with more photos for visitors to peruse, I kept returning to the mannikins, gazing with a mixture of awkward fascination and sadness.
The second and last exhibition gallery contained a short film looking at the role of such ‘modest’ dress in the lives of those choosing to wear it. Since the very ethos behind their all-covering outfits meant it was not possible to show the ‘real’ women, actresses playing an Orthodox nun from Poland, a young Palestinian Muslim woman, and a Chassidic ‘returnee’ to Judaism delivered monologues based on a number of interviews. Throughout, the three women were shown in side-by-side individual shots, encouraging viewers to notice the similarities not only between their physical appearances, but also between their stated motivations for adopting their distinctive styles of dress. All three mentioned yearning for a close, personal relationship with God, a feeling that despite ‘having everything’ in life – education, successful careers, independence – something was missing. All of the women also saw their clothing choices as an essential part of God’s ‘purpose’ for them. The film did suggest, however, that societal as well as individual concerns played a part in these decisions. The actress playing the Muslim woman described an incident where her character, stopped at an Israeli checkpoint, refused to lift her niqab when requested, asserting not only her own bodily autonomy, but the autonomy of the Palestinian people. The Jewish character, meanwhile, described her experiences on a visit to the mall, where she felt horror at the ‘cruel’ focus on women’s bodies as displayed in shop windows. The women came across as both conformist and counter-cultural, describing both the positive and negative reactions of those around them, and calling on others not to judge them by their modes of dress despite being to some extent defined by them in their everyday interactions and viewing them as key pillars of their identity. Maybe this was an inevitable effect of basing characters’ experiences on those of multiple women, but these tensions also rang true for portrayals of women for whom conservative dress is also a radical, and highly visible, statement.
A particularly interesting artistic choice was the way the actresses in the film are shown dressing and undressing (albeit not completely) throughout, peeling off veils, gloves, and layers of cloaks, skirts, and shirts, only to start the complex processes of draping, buttoning, and tying over again. To me, this felt uncomfortably voyeuristic, with the suggestion that audiences had the opportunity to view the ‘hidden’ parts of the women’s bodies, particularly their faces and hair, but it also highlighted the daily efforts that go into maintaining all-covering dress, as well as the extent to which women conceal themselves from the gazes of others. This was helped by the film’s switching between black and white backdrops – towards the end of the re-dressing, the backgrounds behind the women faded to black, and they, too, as their black outer garments were fully replaced, disappeared into darkness.
Another aspect of the film’s appeal was that it allowed viewers the opportunity to gauge the reactions of others in the audience. I was struck, but not overly surprised, by the fact that many apparently Jewish viewers listened quietly to the Christian and Muslim monologues but expressed shock or even wry amusement at some of the Jewish character’s statements – after all, while it may have been more common for some Middle-Eastern Jewish women to cover their faces in past centuries, this is no longer a normative part of even the most stringent standards of modest dress, and has never been mandated by Jewish law. For me as a Jewish woman, although I had previously read about and seen pictures of Jewish so-called ‘Taliban women’, seeing the obsessive attention to the layers of clothing that formed the ‘Tent of Sarah’ separating such women from the world around them did evoke feelings of anger and frustration at a practice that seems deeply unnecessary to me, particularly when I was confronted with the clothing that seemed to sexualise little girls through the very act of covering them up.
While the experiences of women of my own religion may have felt closer to home, the feelings of disquiet the exhibition raised in me were not limited to Jewish practices alone. The exhibition explicitly calls on viewers to note the similarities between the different styles of religious dress, pointing out how it can be difficult to distinguish a black-robed nun from a Muslim or even a Jewish woman. (As it happens, I did see two Orthodox nuns in the Shuk later that evening, and while their habits definitely had a distinct ‘look’, it was possible to see how they might be mistaken for hijab-wearing Muslim women.) If anything, I found these similarities more disturbing, as they reflected a phenomenon I had previously observed and talked about, but which now seemed clearer to me: the more ‘religious’ a group wishes to appear, the more covered the women of that group are. This is not to say that women who dress conservatively do not actively choose to do so, nor that appearing more religious is the only motivating factor in such decisions. However, as a religious person, I do find it upsetting that in some circles, a woman’s closeness to God is equated with the amount of skin she covers. That this phenomenon is present in multiple religious groups suggests to me that patriarchal societal factors, not just spiritual feeling, are at play. What’s more, while the examples of ‘modesty’ the exhibition shows seem extreme, I struggle to find the line where conservatism in dress becomes ‘excessive’. Is it when the whole face is covered? How about the hair, or the wrists, or the elbows? Again, I’m well aware that women choose to cover up to different degrees for a myriad of reasons, many of which may in fact be linked to a desire to subvert patriarchal objectification of female bodies, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that on a fundamental level, all these forms of dress – from habits to headscarves, sheitels to ‘Sarah’s Tent’ – suggest that women’s bodies are objects of sexual temptation and serve as a means of control.
This post isn’t meant to be a screed against ‘modest’ dress, nor to suggest that women are free from objectification in secular society. What I think it does show, however, is that I definitely found the ‘Veiled Women of the Holy Land’ exhibition thought-provoking and disquieting, and if you have the opportunity to see it, you should! I, for one, plan on returning to the Israel Museum before the end of my visit to see more of its vast collections – although maybe I’ll take the bus next time.
The Desert 