I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist. Compared to other Christians, Adventists feel modest. By Muslim and Orthodox Jewish standards, however, they dress like hookers. Modest Adventist women feel little compunction about walking around in pants or shorts or knee-length dresses with naked arms. There’s also no custom or law in Adventism against greeting a member of the opposite sex.
By contrast, in traditional Orthodox Judaism, pretty much all female skin but the face is expected to be covered, women don’t wear pants in public, and talking to the opposite sex is discouraged (unless they’re family or you have to do it for practical reasons).
Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes: “He thinks that a woman who refuses to say good morning to her male neighbor is demonstrating proper tzeniut [modesty].”
A friend writes: The video is pretty horrible. He’s saying how according to the midrash, God struck down all the weak Jews during the plague of darkness, so the surviving mother is answering the one surviving child why father died (because he had Yes, the Israeli cable channel) and the sister died because she wore pants, its really horrible stuff, and he does those voices mocking them, then he says that any day now there will another darkness like that heralding the redemption, and God will kill all the women who say good morning to their neighbours, etc. I used to know people who were into stuff like that when I lived in Israel (I hung out in Sepharadi and Yemenite areas), it was really terrifying, its not the Judaism you know, but this punitive and superstitious world of amulets, magic, miraculous blessings, etc. Not all Sepharadim are like that of course, I knew some really wonderful people from France, educated intellectual religious people, but in the poorer areas, you can hear some amazing things…
