The reason shatnez seems resonant to me right now is that I have a kid whose laws governing clothing are as strict as the Torah’s. She won’t wear anything made of wool, denim, khaki, or corduroy. She abhors anything with tight sleeves or a tag in the back. She cannot abide shoulder straps with any lace, appliqués, or detailing that might touch her shoulders. She smites (metaphorically) all halter-tops and any sundress that ties behind the neck. She disdains the narrow crewneck, the turtleneck, the elasticized sleeve, the wide waistband.

But Maxie’s laws are mishpatim, not chukim. Her reasoning is known. She has sensory issues, and all those sartorial items feel horrible to her.

I understand her logic, but what’s the Torah’s? Maimonides theorized that it had to do with pagan priests who wore robes made of a wool-and-linen combo. Heaven forbid anyone confuse us with those guys. Another explanation is that shatnez hearkens back to the offerings Cain and Abel brought to God. One brought flax (the source of linen) and the other brought a sheep (the source of wool), and look how well their story came out. So, uh, let’s not do that.

According to the scholarly Jewish textual resource known as Wikipedia, some people believe that shatnez was based on scientific reasoning. Wool shrinks when it gets wet, and linen doesn’t, so if the fibers were combined it might lead to perspiration and other hygiene issues (I’m unclear on this part). And we Jews are all about the hygiene. Which is why we all have asthma and neuroses today.

Even the derivation of the word shatnez is unclear. One theory holds that it’s a mash-up of three words: shua, which refers to combing raw fiber; tuvi, the process of spinning fiber into thread; and nuz, the weaving of thread into cloth. The Zohar, Madonna’s favorite kabbalistic text, says that shatnez comes from two words: “Satan az,” or “Satan is strong.” Do not mess with Satan by bringing together products that should not go together.

In the Coptic language, spoken in ancient Egypt until the 7th century or so and somewhat similar to Hebrew, shatnez sounds an awful lot like sasht nouz, meaning false weave. A Greek version of the Torah from the era of Alexander the Great translates shatnez as false or adulterated.

For a little clarity (OK, any clarity) on the subject, I checked in with Amy Kalmanofsky, assistant professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary. “No one entirely knows why we have shatnez,” she said, “but it’s obviously related to purity being the ideal. The world is created in order, and order reflects the divine will and the divine universe. Mixtures are chaotic—they introduce unholiness in some way. But the interesting thing is that the high priests wore shatnez, and the curtain in the mishkan, the Tabernacle, was made with wool and linen. In those cases you could say that shatnez was the opposite of unholy; it was indicative of holiness. Only the sanctified people and spaces are holy enough to be draped in it.” In ancient times and today—aren’t the sacred and the profane often awfully close together?

Kalmanofsky mentioned the 1966 book Purity and Danger, by Mary Douglas. It’s a seminal work in social anthropology, looking at the interplay of the sacred, the clean, and the unclean in different cultures. Douglas wrote that the laws of kashrut are about maintaining symbolic boundaries, and the foods that are prohibited are the ones that don’t seem to fall clearly into any category. (Lobsters? Sea insects! Pigs? Why won’t you chew your cud, you cloven-hoofed freaks!) Similarly, shatnez may be just another way to guard the boundaries of purity.

This being America, you can hire people to guard these boundaries for you and shatnez-check your wardrobe. Visit the Shatnez Testers of America web site for more info—you’ll find shatnez alerts (tragic news: Barneys New York’s suits are shatnezville), guidelines for what items need to be checked (the halachic jury is still out on baseball gloves), lists of shatnez-testing laboratories in various countries. Shatnez checkers with special Good Housekeeping Seals of Shatnez can take samples from fabric (apparently without damaging the garment) to send to the shatnez lab, where they’re examined under low-powered microscopes to identify the fibers. Some shatnez-laden clothing can be de-shatnified for a small fee.

But while you can control the shatnez in your wardrobe, you’ll find it’s a lot harder to control your kids’ innate temperament and predilections. No one knows why some kids have sensory processing mishegas. Some people think it’s a construct, not a real thing. You know, like religion.

And as with  religion, when it comes to Maxie, I’ve decided to simply obey her laws. Her big sister’s vile, impure clothes are boxed up and put into storage for my little niece. I buy Maxie loose cotton dresses and leggings, mostly from (tagless) Hanna Andersson and Old Navy. I just discovered a new line of clothing designed by a Brooklyn special-education teacher and fashion lover (with help from her pals, a designer for Calvin Klein and a former designer for Michael Kors and Isaac Mizrahi), aimed at kids with sensory and tactile processing sensitivity. Everything’s made of super-soft cotton, with flat seams, loose collars, veggie-ink-printed labels, and a roomy fit.

Maxie has rules, and I love her, so I deal. And I hope that by dealing, I can keep some of her pain at bay. Shatnez, too, is about keeping chaos at bay. And of course, you never really can. But we all have different levels of tolerance for disorder, and we all have to find our own way in the world.

I had been wearing slouchy clothes since long before I had kids. I favored men’s oversized garments that hung loosely from my body and had never much cared for fashion or trends. For the most part, I spent little to no time on my appearance. From the time I was 19 until I turned 32, I devoted my time to studying, writing a thesis, and starting a family. But the acting itch never completely abated and I had decided to pursue it again rather than stay in academia. The actor’s life I want to pursue gives me more time to raise my children, rather than hand them over to a nanny. Getting a makeover seemed like a great opportunity to put together a new look that I could use on future auditions.

The WNTW producers asked if I have any clothing restrictions. Deep breath. “I don’t wear pants,” I told them. “I prefer skirts.” You see, I am what I guess you’d call a Conservadox Jew. I started embracing certain aspects of Jewish modesty, or tzniut, before my second son was born, and although I know many Orthodox women who don’t observe tzniut, the boundaries and framework of privacy it provides appealed to me.

I was raised in a traditional Reform household, the grand-daughter of poor Orthodox immigrants from Eastern Europe. For them, success in America came at the seemingly small price of relative assimilation. Growing up, I lived a pretty normal life; I had my own prime-time network TV show from the ages of 14 to 19, which meant my physical appearance and clothing choices were dissected on a weekly basis in gossip magazines and on television. I was pretty impervious to media critiques of my style. I had no real sense of my own physicality and took for granted the feminist idea that I should be able to walk around naked without harassment. But I soon learned that not everyone was a feminist.

After graduating from public high school in Los Angeles, I went to college at UCLA, where I met the man who’s now my husband. Knowing we wanted a traditional wedding ceremony, we started studying Judaism together to prepare for it. At first my lessons with an Orthodox instructor were almost anthropological—I was curious as to how Judaism viewed marriage and sexuality, but I did not really intend to increase my level of observance. The more I learned, however, the more my previous distance from traditional Judaism disappeared. I was also a serious person in general, and chose a wedding dress that reflected my serious attitude about marriage. Entering a sacred covenant before G-d, I wore an ankle-length, high-necked Victorian dress with sleeves past the elbow and a heavy veil, reminiscent (I hoped) of the matriarchs Leah and Rebekah.

During the days of the sheva brachot, the seven traditional feasts celebrated in the days after the chuppah ceremony, I tentatively covered my head with scarves and crocheted hats, trying on my new status as a married woman. Beyond wearing a ring, my lifestyle didn’t have a means of representing the change from single to married, and I was cautious about challenging the feminist ideals I’d previously embraced. But I liked feeling a physical representation in my new life as a married woman. In synagogue, I began covering my head with tichels (decorative scarves) from trips to Israel—just as my Orthodox cousins who I used to consider submissive and trapped in an archaic lifestyle taught me to wrap them—and fashionable hats. No flowers allowed. Too Blossom-y.

As my life progressed, tzniut became a bigger part of it and I started appreciating what it means to keep your sexual appeal for yourself and for your partner. I came to see that not everything that makes me beautiful, sexy, or desirable needs to be on display.

In the world of acting, though, maintaining a degree of modesty has been a challenge. I stopped wearing pants outside of the home in November 2007. (I still wear them at home or under dresses.) These days, I am more comfortable in skirts rather than the baggy saggy pants I used to wear. Personally, I feel more attractive and more put-together in a skirt. Tzniut doesn’t mean making yourself less attractive; it means highlighting your strengths within limits.

But my definition of limits and that of the folks at WNTW differed. On and off the set, I discussed my skirt preference with the show’s producers. When the hosts showed me pants as a possible option in my wardrobe, I pointed out that I don’t much wear them. I didn’t claim to be the spokesperson for tzniut; after all, I still wear shirts above the elbows and don’t cover my head regularly.

I got wonderful new clothes, jewelry, and vegan shoes (one of my other preferences). When we filmed me revealing the final outfits they picked, I gently pointed out that skirts above the knee are not something I’d wear, and that I wouldn’t wear sleeveless shirts or dresses without something to cover my arms once I left the set. When the show aired, I saw that my qualifications and explanations did not survive the cutting room.

I don’t wish to claim that there is an “immodest agenda” on WNTW. It’s a show for the average American, who is most likely not Jewish, and if she is Jewish, she’s most likely not observant. In spite of the fact that the hosts kept telling me that I needed to be “sexy” and not “hide” in my clothing, I loved being a part of the show. They were right to encourage me to wear clothing that was my size, and to emphasize my figure where it needed emphasizing. But sexy doesn’t necessarily mean scantily-clad.

The week after WNTW was filmed, I auditioned to play a Hasidic woman on Saving Grace. When the call came in, I laughed, pulled a salvaged Israeli ankle-length dark denim skirt from the floor of my almost bare closet, threw on a WNTW-purchased tank, cardigan, and simple flats, and applied some lovely understated make-up. I booked the part.

Mayim Bialik starred in NBC’s Blossom from 1990 to 1994. More recently she has appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Saving Grace and, this fall, will have a recurring role on The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for quite some time now. It’s not easy to do. Awkward, really. But I can’t help myself; some things need to be addressed, no matter how painful. This is one such thing. And it can wait no longer.

You see, my fellow Hebrews, we have a problem. Whether by accident or by design, whether throughout the course of human events or just in recent decades, whether knowingly or not, we have become sartorially challenged. And it’s not doing us good.

This textile dysfunction of ours isn’t hard to notice. Walk into a party here in New York, and the various clans that inhabit the city’s social landscape become evident, distinguished by their uniform: just as a Scot could tell a Lumsden apart from a Scrymgeour, a quick glimpse at their garments would help you tell the dons of academia—all faded tweeds and time-chewn mocassins—apart from the lords of Wall Street, with suits by Brooks Brothers and red ties by Satan.

But the Jews? Oy: the Jews, more often than not, are the schleppy ones, the ones with the jacket just a bit too tight or too loose and the pants a tad creased and the shirt slightly stained. More often than not, the Jews are the ones who look like they just don’t care. Which is because, more often than not, they couldn’t care less.

Before you pounce, friends—haven’t I seen Natalie Portman’s stunning Oscar dress? And don’t I know that Ralph Lauren, that icon of all-American elegance, was once Ralphie Reuben Lifshitz?—please bear with me. After all, Lauren may be Jewish, but he made his reputation by abandoning the Bronx and imagining instead the polo fields and yacht clubs, dens of effortless elegance and entitlement. And Calvin Klein may have celebrated his Bar Mitzvah, but only became a man in full when he adopted that clean-line look that owed more to Yves Saint-Laurent than to anything you may see in shul on Saturday morning.

Nothing better illustrates this argument, perhaps, than a quick Google Images search comparing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose perpetual grayish-blue suits are as monochromatic as his voice and public persona, and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, whose crisp, unbuttoned white shirts and tight-fitting pinstripe suits perfectly capture the reckless charm evident in both his personal and political lives. Put bluntly, the point is this: we Jews, in general, are an unstylish bunch.

There is, of course, a strong philosophical statement behind this common carelessness. Gently broaching the topic with several of my more accomplished and successful friends, men and women whose wardrobes, alas, fall far short of their stature, a similar theme came up repeatedly. A sloppy attire, went the argument, is a sign of a great mind: unlike the beefheaded goyim, who gladly idle away their time with fripperies and ornamentations, we Jews are too busy thinking, addressing life’s fundamental questions, to care about such piffle as lapel width or hem line or cut.

A good argument, this, but not one that our forefathers would’ve embraced. As this week’s parasha goes to great lengths to demonstrate, even the holiest of Hebrews were as concerned with sharp suits as they were with sharp minds: for pages on end, the Bible describes the outfits to be worn by the high priests, from their linen breeches to their silky sashes, displaying the obsessive attention to detail one expects to find in Esquire rather than in the Good Book.

Why do we need to know what the priests wore? Or why, for that matter, did the priests even need such luxurious getups, given that they spent most of their days sequestered in the sanctuary, far from the madding crowd? The answer is simple: it’s because our relation to our clothes has always far transcended our mere utilitarian needs. The Greek philosopher Epictetus got it just right when he said that a man must first know who he is, and then adorn himself accordingly; without the adornment, presumably, we can never be who we truly are, can never feel the true force of our personality.

A less philosophical way to think about this issue may be to imagine how you felt the night before the first day of school, say, or upon starting a new job or going out on a first date. Unless you are severely disinterested in all things corporeal, it is more than likely that you spent at least a few minutes fretting in front of the mirror, picking out the perfect outfit, discarding a few alternatives before settling on the one that made you feel most comfortable, the most desirable, and the most confident.

There’s nothing frivolous about such behavior. On the contrary: we are, all of us, perpetually playing dress up, counting on our clothes to imbue us with that determined sense of purpose that our easily rattled psyches often neglect. It’s why the priests had their linens, why brides have their gowns and soldiers their fatigues and nudists their nakedness: nothing says more about who we are than what we wear (or don’t wear).

And so, brothers and sisters, let’s try a bit harder. Let’s, together, wage war on frumpiness and schlubiness and carelessness. Let’s learn from all of our ancestors—the high priests of God and the high priests of Seventh Avenue—who worked hard to look good, and make this millennium the one in which we Jews become known as much for our bon chic as for our big brains. Instead of wearing our hearts on our sleeves, let’s keep our sleeves on our minds. Let’s dress up.

American Apparel has long garnered attention for their vaguely voyeuristic ads: flatly lit, haphazardly cropped photos of amateur models in deliberately spontaneous poses, wearing little but their skivvies. They exemplify the strategy that has made the 8-year-old company successful—infusing the ordinary with sex appeal—and have fanned sparks around two sexual harassment suits against founder Dov Charney.

Turns out the maniacally mustached entrepreneur himself took the photos of the bearded salesman during a 2003 visit to his native Montreal. With oversized glasses to match Charney’s, the bearded salesman (originally seen on the company’s website) leans on a rack of black suits, chatting with the photographer and projecting a casual authority. Often, when Orthodox men are photographed, they come off as curious foreigners—either specimens under a microscope, like Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s contended Methuselah, or else objects of casual caricature. But Charney’s photos, shot in the style of his other ads, evoke the same intimacy that makes his usual subjects so seductive, making the merchant appear more human, more ordinary, and even, yes, a little hip.

The effect is only magnified by the tagline, “There’s nothing like the shmata business.” When used these days by anyone under 50, and more dubiously by retailers, the word “shmata” tends to ring of irony, if not mockery. Yet Charney means it when he calls his company a “shmata business”—he loved when Malcolm Gladwell compared him to the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century handschumachers of upstate New York. “They were glove EXPERTS, and I was a T-shirt EXPERT,” he told Mireille Silcoff. “It’s just so fucking old school Jewish. I thought, ‘I’m REVITALIZING a TRADITION.” Playing up the link between a Hasidic merchant, a secular mogul, and a long-lived working-class ethos is not only surprising—imagine Ralph Lauren harking back to midtown garment factories—but oddly heartwarming, and far more convincing than you’d expect.

One wonders what Charney discussed with the salesman that day, and why he left with a black suit and fur hat of his own—to show genuine respect, or give the story a proper punchline? But the ad succeeds because for a moment it endows dignity on two unlikely subjects: the Hasidic clothing merchant—who, with his long racks of black garments, is the original purveyor of plainness—and Charney, who may not deserve the sheen of innocence that the “shmata business” suggests.