{"id":98979,"date":"2022-11-20T04:51:35","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T02:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/?p=98979"},"modified":"2022-11-20T04:51:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T02:51:35","slug":"hands-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/hands-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Hands Off!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I had occasion to meet with a venerated queen. As we were being introduced, she stuck out her hand in order to shake mine, as is accepted throughout the gentile world. But <em>tzeniut<\/em> and halachah dictate that a man may not have physical contact with a strange woman. I politely declined her outstretched hand.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is that initially, I was embarrassed. It is highly unpleasant to rebuff a motion of goodwill, especially from such a venerated figure. Moreover, I was afraid the queen would be insulted or even angered at my flagrant disrespect.<\/p>\n<p>In spite of my discomfort, I knew that I would never yield to such an act. Hashem is the King of the world. He commanded us to uphold the principles of <em>tzeniut<\/em> and forbade even a handshake with a strange woman. I received Divine assistance in my determination, as we are told (<em>Makkot<\/em> 10b), \u201cIn the way in which man wishes to go, he is led.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Not only was the queen unperturbed by my refusal to shake her hand, but she respected me for maintaining my morals. She even apologized for perhaps insulting my sensitivities<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hands Off! I had occasion to meet with a venerated queen. As we were being introduced, she stuck out her hand in order to shake mine, as is accepted throughout the gentile world. But tzeniut and halachah dictate that a man may not have physical contact with a strange woman. I politely declined her outstretched [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":58830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modesty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}