RE: Kol ishah

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

I never knew Leibowitz's stand on this.   How terrific of him.   His 
brilliant sister, one of this century's greatest Bible scholars, certainly 
fought hard to dispel these ridiculous assumptions about women's 
relationship to Torah and Halakha, but unfortunately couldn't get as far as 
far as she should have gotten with this.

Thanks for telling us this.

May his memory be blessed.


Reyzl



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From:  Jonathan Schorsch [SMTP:jonjack (at) uclink4(dot)berkeley(dot)edu]
Sent:  Friday, September 24, 1999 11:20 AM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Re: Kol ishah

Even as a man, I quite agree with and share Judith's feelings.
Incidentally, the issue of a man hearing a woman's voice (kol isha) goes
back to rabbinic texts.  As usual, the original proscription widened and
widened with time; it was a saying of one particular rabbi and had to do
only with the problem of a man being distracted while trying to say the
She'ma by hearing a woman singing.  This was expanded to encompass ANY
hearing by a man of a woman singing.  By the way, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, z"l,
HATED this pseudo-issue and I heard him argue vehemently (in his usual
style, even viciously) against its stupidity and a-halakhic 
presumptuousness.

Jonathan Schorsch


At 03:20 AM 9/24/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Lynn asks how we feel about this - I guess "feel" is the word here, since
>how I feel about it isn't necessarily how I THINK about it.How I THINK 
about
>it is my nice, value-expurgated, tolerant, ethnomusicologist way.  But how 
I
>FEEL  about it is the same  negative way I feel about the many times I've
>had concert offers withdrawn or cancelled here in Toronto (never mind the
>times the offers simply haven't been there for the same reason) because of 
>Kol Ishah. I am furious about it. If men feel spiritually feeble enough 
that
>listening would be detrimental to them, they needn't come. (read both
>Maimonides and the Muslim Al-Ghazzali on the issue; both exist in English
>translation).
>This contradiction is not limited, for me, to this issue - does anyone 
else
>have a similar set of reactions? Judith




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