Kol Isha

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

Shira and Trudi,

It wouldn't help.   Orthodox congregations do whatever their top bananas 
tell them to do.   This issue has to be dealt with at the highest 
rabbinical venues -- yeshivas, rabbinical schools, and kollels.   In the 
past 20 years, orthodox women have arisen in many places fighting this. 
 There are slowly more and more highly learned women halakhic scholars who 
are learning the issues and the structures of the winning arguments that 
will be necessary to make real halakhic changes to happen.   They will be 
making their cases in the next 5-15 years and I do believe that real 
changes will happen by the next 20 years.   Since the ruling was made 
within halakha, the only way of it is through Halakha and nothing short of 
a universal halakhic ruling will be acceptable to the Orthodox powers that 
be.  They  know that they will soon be overturned and have thus now gone as 
far as protesting against the crop of women minyans.  A women' minyan is 
where women do all the davening, leyning and singing in their own service 
and where there isn't even the theoretical chance of titillating a man. 
 But you see, since the real issue for thousands of years has been the 
suppression of women's political powers in all its potentials, they don't 
want women establishing a parallel, separate but equal dominion among 
themselves.  Kol isha is not a problem in a women's minyan, but they are 
now finding every excuse in the world to suppress these new venues for 
women to express themselves fully as Jews on shabes and holidays.  But once 
the genie has been let out of the bottle, they will never be able to put 
them back in the kitchen pregnant and barefoot.

So, yes make a lot of noise, never participate in any part of this system, 
but you also have to understand where the real change has to happen. 
  Arguing with any one particular synagogue is not going to achieve 
anything.   You know there is a new radio program in Staten Island, NY, 
where an Orthodox rebbetsin has made a radio program consisting of 
religious feminine music.   I have a article about this that I was planning 
to post here but my broken computer problems have set me so far back so far 
with e-mail that who knows when I will catch up, but I do hope to get to 
this article soon.   (I will find a good way of dealing with the copyright 
issues.)  I haven't heard the program myself yet (I could have this morning 
but forgot to turn it on), but these are the kinds of strategies we have to 
use to get real changes going.  This rebbetsin does it at the Kingsborough 
Community College radio station for free and I think that this kind of 
thing we should support and help happen everywhere.   Making a catalogue of 
all kinds of religious and semi-religious singing, recording, and songs for 
radio producers, concert organizers, and performers to access would be very 
good.  These are some of the ways to speed this process along.   Men want 
all the powers to themselves in religious life and that's what has to be 
fought.   Putting women's spirituality on the map is how a major way to 
fight them.


Somebody else wrote:

>I would suggest consulting with Rabbis in the Orthodox community who are
>sympathetic in general to the (halakhic) inclusion of women and gently 
press
>them on establishing a position.

They can't as long as they are Orthodox.   This is an inflexible ruling and 
there are no mixed choirs for Orthodox.

Steven Singer, thanks for you wise remarks.

This is also definitely where discussions of kol-isha belongs.


Reyzl





----------
From:  meydele (at) ix(dot)netcom(dot)com [SMTP:meydele (at) 
ix(dot)netcom(dot)com]
Sent:  Friday, September 24, 1999 12:15 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Kol Isha

There are certain beliefs which I can respect, although I do not agree with 
them, and there are
others which I profoundly reject on every level, intellectual and 
emotional.  The utter
objectification (sorry about the feminist terminology - it fits here!) of 
all women and the
extraordinarily demeaning and anti-socialized view of men underlying the 
principle of kol isha
as practiced in certain portions of the orthodox Jewish community is highly 
offensive.  Jews who
are kosher are forbidden to eat pork.  Does that mean that a kosher Jew who 
walks by a barbecue
restaurant will be driven wild by the smell of barbecuing pork ribs and 
turn into a ravenous
wild beast who will be compelled to eat pork?  Do the rabbis require the 
kosher to avoid the
smell of pork, fearing their baser instincts will overwhelm their 
principles?  In their most
extreme manifestations, religious strictures which restrict women because 
men are perceived as
(potentially) uncontrolled beasts are part of a way of looking at things 
which, I believe,
engenders a frighteningly repressed society which tacitly condones certain 
forms of violence to
those outside its protective folds.

>From the perspective of this list, the principle of kol isha is antithe  
tical to what I perceive
to be the underlying principle of this list: an interest in and desire to 
learn about and
disseminate all forms of Jewish music.  We are an inclusive bunch.  I would 
not object to a list
gathering which is held at a kosher restaurant because I do not want to 
exclude any members who
are kosher, even though the issue is irrelevant to me personally. The 
principle of kol isha
excludes a substantial portion of this list from performing and prevents 
the observant from
studying or learning about an important aspect of Jewish music.  I am 
personally angry about the
lost performance opportunities for women and want to support in any way 
possible the efforts
within the observant community to change this restriction.  I feel 
differently about this
restriction than I would as an ethnomusicologist studying some group to 
which I am not related.
I am a Jew, and I have an interest in how Jewish beliefs shape Jewish 
society - all aspects of
Jewish society. Simply acquiescing to the limitations of the more vocal in 
a group because we
must "respect" their beliefs is not a way to effect change.  I realize the 
purpose of the
planned musical series is to publicize and create support of an ailing 
shul, and controversy is
not always recognized as an effective way to gather support.  But it can 
be.  I urge the
original poster (enshuldik mir, I have forgotten who it was...) to foster 
discussion within the
shul on just this issue.

Shira Lerner

Shira Lerner




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