Hot Weather vs. Holy People

Rav Mayer Twersky on the Challenges of Tznius in the Office

As summer starts to heat up, wardrobes change, and for Bnei Torah, this creates a real challenge. It’s true for all men, but especially for those who work in a corporate office, where tznius challenges are present all day, every day.

Rav Mayer Twersky addressed this issue in a recent shiur. I wanted to share his important perspective (not that he needs my haskamah) and possibly add a thought or two of my own.

(There are many other aspects to this question, some of which we have covered in other podcast episodes)

Rav Twersky is a master wordsmith, and he opened his shiur as follows (transcipt via Sofer.ai, with some light edits for clarity):

It’s a truism that in contemporary times we live surrounded by an immoral society, which is in many respects inimical to our faith and mesora, thereby posing a threat to the Torah worldview and way of life. The challenge posed by that reality is exponentially compounded by the militancy of that immorality.

He then raises the question: to what extent does this reality demand that we withdraw from the world to avoid nisyonos? It’s a major question, and the answer clearly depends on the specifics. Rav Twersky offers two examples of the tension between exposure and insularity

.

The first concerns accepting into schools children who might be more exposed to the outside world, particularly children of baalei teshuva. The second is the one we’re focusing on here.

…Undoubtedly at all seasons, but especially in the spring and summer, the amount of pritzus that exists, say in Manhattan, is staggering. So maybe what that warrants is a policy that even for parnassah purposes, a person is not allowed to enter that borough, or south of Washington Heights, at any rate.

Rav Twersky goes on to say that total withdrawal is clearly not tenable in either situation. Why not? Let’s focus on his reasoning regarding the tznius and work dilemma.

Chazal caution us: לעולם אל יביא אדם עצמו לידי נסיון. So the answer is that we need to differentiate between types of nisyonos:

Yeish veyeish. On one hand, לעולם אל יביא אדם עצמו לידי נסיון. On the other hand, the Ramchal writes at the beginning of Mesillas Yesharim that all of life (in addition to being a continuous series of bracha and opportunity), is also a continuous series of nisyonos and challenges. When Chazal caution us against nisyonos, against placing ourselves in a position where we must confront and navigate a nisayon, they are referring to a self-imposed nisayon.

That is what happened with Dovid HaMelech, who wanted the Shemoneh Esrei to include Elokei Dovid. Hakadosh Baruch Hu told him: you haven’t earned it. So Dovid HaMelech said: give me a nisayon, give me the chance to earn it. And that was his mistake, inviting a self-imposed nisayon. A self-imposed nisayon is something a person should never seek out.

Rav Twersky then defines the kind of nisayon that should not be avoided:

A person is never supposed to gratuitously impose a nisayon on himself. But nisyonos constitute the very fabric of life, and all of life is a continuum of nisyonos. And what happens when a person, or a society, or a community, tries to avoid a nisayon that isn’t gratuitous, that isn’t self-imposed, but is woven into the very fabric of life? Inevitably, in avoiding that nisayon, one will short-change, or be insensitive to, or oblivious to, the other nisyonos he is supposed to be confronting.

Rav Twersky’s goes on to explain that avoiding this nisayon can run you straight into another set of nisyonos. Poverty is a massive nisayon. Working in a job that requires dishonesty is also extremely difficult, as the temptation of gezel is notorious. We have to be aware of when avoiding one nisayon creates another.

Here is where I want to add two points to Rav Twersky’s penetrating and nuanced analysis.

First: part of what makes this a “normal” nisayon is simply that no one consciously chose it. It emerged because everyone followed the same path. That’s how communal defaults form. No single person decided that the whole community should be working in corporate Manhattan. It became the norm because that’s what everyone around them was doing, and so it became what everyone around them kept doing.

This is not the only possible way to work in 2026. For example, there are chassidic communities where people work in something closer to blue-collar trades, like HVAC and construction, with far less mixed-gender interaction. The circumstances that make that model possible are certainly different: tighter income expectations, concentrated community employment networks, different social structures. It’s not easily replicable for every Ben Torah.

But the fact that an alternative exists at all should prompt the question: is there another path? Are the nisyonos that come with working in downtown of a major city really inevitable? Is it possible to shift communal norms towards other profesions, and even if so, is it a good idea?

Second: even on an individual level, it’s important to keep an open mind. Sometimes there are opportunities that allow for a significant increase in kedusha without the nisyonos that accompany financial insecurity or professional dishonesty. A boutique family law firm, for example, smaller, less cutthroat, with a more controlled client base and work environment, can look very different from a large corporate firm, while still offering stable, honest parnassah. We live in a tight-knit community, but that doesn’t relieve any individual of the obligation to think independently and find the right path for himself.

Our work is a major part of our lives. We should make thoughtful decisions about where we spend those hours, and choose environments that align as closely as possible with our values.