Judging by appearance (one way 2)

I do remember, vaguely, when the carpet was replaced, during a period of intense redecoration undertaken by my parents.


….My parents. Good people, on the whole, with, of course, plenty of flaws, as is the way with people. I remember my mother’s little toes, which I have inherited, at least as far as the toenail goes – a twisty, inconsequential little thing. But I digress (although you don’t know it yet). I was thinking that a sensible place to start is my relationship with Judaism, since it was such a major part of my early years, my family’s social world. Every Friday night, candles, challah, hand-washing, roast chicken and roast potatoes (oh, those roast potatoes, how we boys used to scramble for seconds of those!). Every Saturday morning, the walk to shul, the hours in shul, reading Hebrew prayers we did not really understand. That is a major flaw of ‘orthodox’ Judaism in England – praying without meaning – hardly likely to instill longevity of faith. And the dressing up – suits, always – we had to look our best for shul. And I think that this was the root of my earliest questioning of the faith I was born to, an uncertainty that has led to the questioning of all blindly-followed religions.
I must have been about five, and I had a brand new deep purple suit. I was walking to shul along the London Road, with my Dad, and next two brothers. I guess that the youngest of these was probably being carried, or pushed in a pram, since he could only have been a little over 1 year old. For some reason, mum had stayed at home – now I think of it, it’s possible that she was just pregnant with my youngest brother. Before we left home it was, I think, made very clear what a privilege it was to be sporting such a fine new suit, and yet, despite repeated warnings from my father, I was heedlessly running ahead, perhaps playing one of my favourite Saturday morning games of avoiding the cracks in the pavement. Anyway, I tripped, fell, and ripped open the knee of my smart new trousers. And Dad was livid. He turned about, and dragged me home in disgrace. And my mother flew into the first rage I can really recall. So mad. So mad that Dad had to hold her off from beating me too hard. And I was terrified, and innocent. An accidental trip, so much accusation and blame. I know that money was tight, and that the expense of buying a suit for their kids must have seriously stretched their resources, but the reaction remains one of my strongest, most fearful memories.
I can’t say that from that moment on I hated ‘dressing up’, or that at five years old I could see that so much wrong in the world arose from pretentious materialism, but this must have been the seed of later thoughts. So many shul-goers, church-goers, employers, socialites, so much of humanity so concerned about ‘looking their best’, so much judgment by appearance, in a horrifically materialist world. Fashion, make-up, ‘style’, accessories, accent, skin-colour. We live in a world where most people place so much importance on the way others look. And yet, judging someone by clothes, by appearance, is fundamentally no different from judging by race or skin-colour. The argument I’ve heard against this is that you can choose your clothes, but not your skin. That may be true, if one has enough money to make choices of clothes, but is really no reason to discriminate by appearance. I am certain that clothes are not a window to the soul. The other argument against is that it is somehow disrespectful not to dress well, not to dress ‘appropriately’, but where on earth does this perception of respect come from?
Is this discrimination innate, a part of the human genome? Possibly, but so is violence, and we, as ‘civilised’ people, claim to eschew violence. But try to get a job in a bank, for example, without the right clothes. It’s a disgrace the way we judge so, it really is. For years, I’ve considered dressing up a chore, and have avoided jobs that take appearance too seriously. I know that millions of people all over the world seem to take pleasure form the clothes they wear, which is fine, apart from the inevitable flipside that considers those who don’t dress well as somehow lesser. That is real insanity, and it seriously divides society. In my not very humble opinion, we should always dress only for comfort and protection from the elements. More than enough on that subject, for now.