We had to check our calendar today to be sure it's not April Fools' day or Purim. We came across a piece of breaking news on the Vos Is Neias Haredi website that brings us to restate our observation that you just can't make this stuff up.
What's the news? That a startup company in Jerusalem is selling eyeglasses with blurred lenses so that wearers will not have to look at immodestly dressed women when they are walking in the street. Evidently they have not been able to black out all of the billboards and put stickers on all consumer products that show images of women in all states of dress and undress.
As Allison C. Witty wrote in VIN News,
The glasses contain blurry lenses that obscure the wearer’s vision and do allow men not to see more than three meters. For those who already wear glasses, the company has designed stickers that can be affixed to the existing pair of glasses which will obscure the vision.
Yedioth Ahronot reports that the glasses, designed for the charedi community, are intended for charedi men who must go to places where women will be present. The new patent cost the inventors only NIS 25. The patent includes non-prescription glasses and the obscuring stickers. The glasses with the blurry lenses contain perforations at the bottom of the lenses enabling charedi men to look down at the ground through the perforation and still see where they are walking.
Readers of VIN News have been quick to comment, and they are almost all ridiculing this new head-in-the-sand initiative. Here are a few of the best comments:
- The Torah says that you should not put a stumbling block in front of a blind person.
- What a wonderful idea! It also enables us to cross the streets without looking since the cars can't hit me if i cant see them!!
- Does this mean that if men are wearing these glasses, women won't have to move to the back of the bus?
- Actually, this is good. add a set of ear plugs and they can serve in the army. no more excuses.
- It's funny because now they're going to bump into the women instead of seeing them.
- Yup. now they can feel their way around.
- Yep, this could easily lead to mixed dancing.
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I love how this new kosher invention creates a lot of new shutim.
ReplyDeleteHi, great site. I'm afraid, though, on this one, you've been taken in. The key is that the story comes from Chelm. Chelm is a mythical place (well, there is a place by that name, actually) where absurd, silly and gently-self-deprecating things happen. See Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories" for more Chelm stories.
ReplyDeleteIn light of this silly Takana I wrote an original Chelm story parodying it. Check it out: http://www.mywesternwall.net/2012/09/14/the-silly-world-of-chelm-and-the-foggy-glasses.html
ReplyDelete