An interesting question came to my attention recently, it is one that I have pondered in the past but never heard a spiritual approach to. This question also got a song stuck in my head that I haven’t heard since high school…

I rock the undies on the outside!
Who rocks the undies on the outside?
We rock the undies on the outside!

This song is the theme song for “Undies On The Outside” a Los Angeles based band from the early 2000s, and it expresses a certain mentality, one that reflects this generation’s mentality:  ’What is normally on the inside, we show off on the outside!’ Undies are a thing that are usually private and yet, express a certain part of our souls, they reflect a lot about a person’s individuality and personality, as the song says “I rock undies in three different shades/I rock five pairs just in one day”. People will also often spend lots of money on undies, different brands “Gucci, Gap and Calvin Klein/Get ‘em while they’re hot and buy the whole line”, etc. but this extreme expenditure and focus on undies would generally be a private thing. This song is an anthem for those who have an extreme desire to express the inner parts of their souls, things that are normally kept private are made public and flaunted to the world.

Many people would condemn this mentality as having a lack of tzniut. Tzniut, often translated as modesty, is generally taken to mean covering up that which is attractive or which draws attention. People take this idea to mean that a person should cover up their insides – their pnimiut - and keep those things which make them special private. This could not be further from the truth! Tzniut is supposed to cover up those things that we share in common with others, those things that distract us from our pnimiut - essence or insides – and that would end up blocking our individual expression.

The mentality of ‘undies on the outside’ is a very healthy Torah mentality. To better express this, let me present the question that I mentioned in the first paragraph. “Why is the male reproductive organ of mammals on the outside of the body? This seems to be ‘unintelligent design’! This organ which is responsible for the perpetuation of the species should be the most protected, not most exposed.” First of all, not to enter the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate (of which I don’t really see a debate, in my mind both opinions could work in harmony…) but those evolutionists who use this question as a proof against intelligent design are asking an equally damning question on their own theory. If the placement of the organ seems “unintelligent” than according to survival of the fittest the species with this placement should have died off, and if it is evolutionarily sound than the placement must have some intelligence to it…I heard a video tour online of a zoo with a rabbi recently who expressed a very interesting idea, he explained that the briah - creation – is here to teach us. There is something to be learned from all the seemingly insignificant parts of creation (see intro post) and he applied this idea to the placement of this organ. He explained that the organ was placed in this way to teach us that, in a spiritual sense, our creative aspect, the part of us that has the greatest potential to contribute to this reality must be on the outside, not hidden or protected from view. This is the lesson to be learned from male mammals in the zoo.

(For those who are interested, a very satisfactory scientific answer to the above question is that having the sperm in a more hostile environment creates a mini-survival-of-the-fittest situation in which the weaker and/or lesser quality sperm cannot survive, leaving only the top-notch cells to make the journey and perpetuate the species)

So, to sum up, rock your undies on the outside (in a metaphorical sense)! Don’t cover up and hide the parts of your soul that make you who you are and/or are the parts of you that are creative and can be used to contribute to the universe.

I wrote the below Dvar Torah for the West Coast OU Bulletin the same week that I came up with the idea for this blog. I actually had a completely different song stuck in my head which inspired (post forthcoming) the blog, but I feel that the hashkafa presented in this piece reflects, at least in my opinion, the hashkafa which inspired this blog…enjoy!

There is wisdom all around us. The world that God created is a beautiful testament to His Glory and there is not one thing that is “accidental” and that we cannot glean some piece of wisdom from. I was recently driving, engaging in one of my guilty pleasures in life – listening to Country Music –  when a song came on the radio, it went like this:

He didn’t have to wake up
He’d been up all night
Layin’ there in bed listenin’
To his new born baby cry
He makes a pot of coffee
He splashes water on his face
His wife gives him a kiss and says
It gonna be OK

It won’t be like this for long
One day soon that little girl is gonna be
All grown up and gone
Yeah, this phase is gonna fly by
So, he’s tryin’ to hold on

The song tells a story about a father and his daughter, through the good times and the bad, he would remind himself that “It won’t be like this for long”. During the bad times, it helped him get through them, and during the good times, it reminded him that he needed to hold onto those moments, because they too would pass. This song nearly brought tear to my eyes and when I got to school I decided that I would focus that day’s Jewish Philosophy class on this topic. Gam Ze Ya’avor – This Too Will Pass. The famous story of Shlomo Ha’Melech and the ring brought back to him by his trusted advisor with that very inscription.

This Dvar is not about Gam Ze Ya’avor, it isn’t even about Shlomo Ha’Melech, it is, however, about Country Music. In this weeks parsha, preceding the plague of Barad – hail – the Chumash tells us that there were two groups of Egyptians, those who were in awe of God and took their cattle inside to avoid the destruction of the plague and those who “Lo Sam Libo – didn’t pay attention” and left their cattle outside to be destroyed by the hail. There is a glaring lack of symmetry here, should the pasuk not have said “Those who were in awe of God took their cattle inside and thosewho were not in awe of God left their cattle outside”? This seems to be the logical symmetrical wording! But of course, the Psukim are teaching a much deeper lesson, there are expressing to us an important secret in how to live our lives…

When we learn Torah, we do not need to make a new Bracha each time as we do with food, rather, the Bracha we make each morning stays with us throughout the day, this is why we say “La’asok Be’Divrei Torah – To be involved in the words of Torah” the commandment is to be “involved” in the Torah, ordinarily a hefsek – disruption – would require a person to make a new bracha before completing a commandment, but not in this case, we only make one bracha each day. This is precisely the secret the Pasuk from our Parsha and the story of the country song is teaching us. As we move through our days, we do not spend our time in the shul 24/7 we are not all privileged to spend our days in the Beis Medrash from dawn ‘till dusk, but that does not mean that we cannot be involved with God and Torah study all day long. When a song comes on the radio, or we see a beautiful flower, we need to “Sam Lev – pay attention” because NOT paying attention tantamount to not being in awe of God, that is the true symmetry of the pasuk from our parsha. Wisdom and the Torah are all around us, God builds this world using the Torah as His blueprint all we need to do is “pay attention” and we will be able to be “involved in the words of Torah” all day long. “Reishit Chachman Yirat Hashem – The source of wisdom is awe of God” (Tehillim 111:10) and being in awe of God is as easy as opening your eyes and paying attention to the world around you.