And they said unto him: ‘Where is Sarah Your wife?’ And he said: ‘Behold, in the tent.’ Breishis 18:9

The Talmud asks: And they said unto him, Where is Sarah Your wife? And he said, Behold, she is in the tent: this is to inform us that she was modest. Rav Yehudah said in Rav’s name: The Ministering Angels knew that our mother Sarah was in the tent, but why [bring out the fact that she was] in her tent? In order to make her beloved to her husband. Bava Metzia 87a

The Iyun Yaakov explains that the angel intended to make Sarah more beloved in the eyes of her husband by reminding him of the deeds she did through which she merited three miracles in her “tent,” namely: the Shabbos candles remained lit miraculously from Erev Shabbos to the next Erev Shabbos, the dough in her tent remained fresh from week to week, and  the cloud of holiness hovered over her tent, always.

The Etz Yosef teaches that the angels wanted Avraham to answer that “behold she is in the tent” to make him aware that she saw her place always to be “in the tent,” preparing to take care of guests. This reminded Avraham of the midos tovos of Sarah in that she was constantly involved in the mitzvah of hachnasas orchim and gemilus chasadim— and this awareness endeared her to Avraham.

The significance of Sarah remaining alone in the tent while the meeting between Avraham and the three angels took place without her was that her aloneness in the tent, was comprised of proactive modesty. Modesty does not mean passive relegation to a subservient role. Rather, modesty means that she was proactively involved in the three mitzvos that are connected with the tent—the Jewish home, which define a Jewish woman:

1. The continuous Shabbos candles—making the sanctity of Shabbos, meaning a purposeful and meaningful life, pervaded her home and her life, from day to day and week to week;
2. The freshness of the dough—that she dedicated her family’s resources to freshness and vitality—in service of the needs of others, through chessed and kind deeds;
3. The cloud above her tent—that she was proactively involved in kedushah—meaning family purity.

Sarah’s aloneness in the tent means that she was actively involved in building the values of the Jewish people. Aloneness then, allows us to reflect and look within, in modesty, and then to muster the strength to apply and to actualize our values and resources to live a life of meaning and destiny.

Let us, then, re-evaluate our traditional view of a woman’s modesty, being defined as a reticent, reserved and lonely woman, relegated to the kitchen of her home, and tending to the children, while her husband conducts the affairs of state and the “real” world. The Torah view of modesty is much more than the manner in which we wear modest clothing, rather it is about how we proactively interact with the world.  When we act superficially and concern ourselves with externalities—of how things look—we are living in the chomer-physical dimension. This is not modesty. When we go deeper within ourselves and look at the inner meaning of our lives, and dedicate ourselves to a sense of purpose, then we are living in the dimension of tzurah—destiny, and tznius—modesty.

Tznius means to actualize our unique selves, from a place of inner depth. The two parts of the body that are unique to the human being are the face and the fingerprints. The rest of the body is essentially the nefesh ha-bahamis, the animal dimension of the person. In this respect, every human being is exactly the same. Each person has the same body parts; there is no uniqueness in this aspect of a person. When we speak of tznius, modesty, we usually speak of those parts of the body that we cover, to maintain a sense of dignity and to distance ourselves from the animal within us.

However, if we look at modesty as an expression of uniqueness, then we must speak of revealing the aspects of self that are unique to us — and covering those aspects that are similar to everyone else.

Why would you want to emphasize and glorify the parts of the body that are the same as others? There is no glory or honor in revealing those aspects of self. If they are common to all people then that speaks to the animal within us, our common instincts of the body and the flesh.  There is no glory in revealing the flesh that bespeaks sameness. That is why we reveal only the face and the hands and cover all other parts of the body. It is the face that communicates the glow of personality, and the deeds of our hands which distinguish us from others.

It is the face, the panim that reveals the penim, the internal uniqueness of the individual. The shechinah shines from one’s face, as a partial reflection of the rays of light that shone from Moshe Rabeinu’s face after he returned from Mount Sinai, and his encounter with the Shechinah. We also reveal our hands, which represent man’s deeds. The fingerprints are unique to each individual; no two fingerprints are alike. Fingerprints represent your spiritual fingerprint; much like your ecological footprint expresses your sensitivity to the environment.

Your contribution to the needs of others is done via your actions, driven by your hands that extend in kindness to others. The hands — and thus fingerprints — are not covered in order to reveal kind deeds, as an expression of our unique Godliness.

Tznius, then, is not what we cover, but what we reveal. When we resolve to reveal our true selves — through our positive speech (revealed face) and good deeds (hands and fingerprints) — we are saying that we have a unique mission and contribution to make in building the reality of the universe. We are making our version of truth — through our unique words and deeds — as part of revealing of the Ultimate Truth. This is the aloneness and uniqueness of tznius.