Saddened by the Waste

This story, complete with pictures, saddens me. I don't want to get into a discussion about tzniut, or the lack thereof, nor do I want to get into a discussion about boycotts and heksherim on clothing stores. There are plenty of other blogs out there that have discussed these subjects and I really don't have anything to add.

What I do want to discuss is how a community (or sub-section of a community, since obviously not everyone is putting their clothing up in flames) in which so many people suffer from poverty and so many others are sent to beg for funds to cover the massive debts they have incurred, can engage in such wasteful behavior: public burning of "immodest' clothing.

Like I said, I am not interested in discussing tzniut right now. Ideally one would hope that if someone had clothing that they did not want to wear anymore because they are making a choice to uphold a higher level of tzniut, that they would either try to make their clothing tzniut if it was cost effective or they would donate their clothing to those who are taking on a more basic level of tzniut and have to replace nearly an entire closet full of clothing. Are there no people out there in dire need of clothing? But in a world of black and white and little gray, I can understand that someone who really believes that certain items of clothing just are not tzniut, isn't going to want anyone else to wear them either.

But, there are just so many ways to re-use common household items like clothing, that collecting them for a public burning just makes me very sad. My mother grew up in a very poor family, and the habits she learned were never discarded. While I haven't maintained all of her habits (and don't intend to maintain some of them), the general concept of thrift is a valuable one (in fact it is on of Rav Salanter's 13 Middos).

Buttons can be taken off clothing and used to replace missing buttons on children's clothing (I've got a whole stack of kid's clothes looking for replacement buttons). Buttons can be used for educational activities like teaching children how to sew, or for math exercises, or for sorting activities (size and color), or for art projects. Clothing can be cut up and re-created into other items (potholders, table mats, trivets, rags, things for pretend play, pillow cases, etc). Or it can be used to teach highly useful skills like hemming, patching, or quilt making.

The modest uses for 'immodest' clothing are as big as one's imagination and I cannot even begin to phathom how those immersed in a community with real material poverty can be convinced to put their clothing up in flames. While I have never spent significant time in these communities (and therefore shy away from topics concerning them), I do know that these are communities of tremendous chessed with literally a gemach for everything. It seems to me that nearly every item which is not being used regularly by one family is listed so it might be used by another. This makes the zealotry to uphold one mitzvah, while flirting with the violation of another mitzvah, even sadder.