FW: kol isha

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

My computer is back after a week and a half of new series of computer 
troubles and although I don't have time for any of this, my inbox is too 
full of kol isha messages to throw them all out without a response.   So I 
will make some comments and on this and then finally go back to my own 
lists.  (Oh, I forgot, still have to buy a new monitor, because my old one 
died last week.)


Judith wrote:

>I really wasn't going to get into this one again! But since you put it
>this way Shirona, I'm with you all the way.(except the "America" part,
>please :)  ) Judith

Ditto, ditto.  I am with you ladies.  I graduated from the most
religious girls yeshiva in America, but I wouldn't walk into any
synagogue that has a mekhitse unless I am out of town and have no choice.

Someone wrote:

>Being fiercely critical of a code which one regards as demeaning is
>>>hardly disrespect.

Well said.

Alex wrote:
>Please!  If you want to let us in on your position, you can do it
>on-list.  You've extended this invitation to enough of us to go
>public.  I would submit that you don't know how much anyone who
>disagrees with you does or doesn't know about Halacha, and that you
>assume that a disagreement with your position could only stem from
>ignorance.
>or, as you say, give it the benefit of the doubt because of its
>endurance, I respectfully disagree.

Let me add to this.
Whenever any one gives you this rhetoric, what they mean is that they 
haven't had a chance to give you the rationalization and mystification men 
have honed for years on this point or that the listener hasn't bought into 
the argument yet.  It is the usual disrespectful style many Orthodox men 
have of telling you that if you haven't bought into it, it's because you 
have not studied Talmud.  The only way this argument ran for so long is 
because they made sure that women were never had access to the Talmud and 
thus couldn't argue Talmudically.  It was forbidden to teach women Talmud 
for fear that if any woman would master that argument style, she would gain 
the power to change things to their convenience.  Any man who attempted to 
teach girls Torah got serious sanctions from the religious authorities, so 
that only a handful of highly learned rabbis could get away with teaching 
their daughters, and even then it was done secretly, no matter how 
brilliant the daughters were.  They shut women out of learning, out of 
organizational power, relegated them to small sections behind curtains. 
 Freeing women from the requirement of fulfilling mitsves was extended to 
denote a prohibition against doing mitsves.  Well, they can't stop things 
now.  Once women began being educated, the genie was let out of the bottle 
and there is no way of getting it back in.

Most Orthodox Jewish today women don't believe don't believe in kol isha, 
but will not openly challenge it.  They have chosen to wait while others 
are studying in preparation for making the changes.

Trudi wrote:

>As  for Kol Isha, I still say that it is not something that I want
>to help perpetuate. I know all of the arguments for and against.
>Frankly, I view it as more a sociological phenomenon and Wolf is
>right as far as I am concerned. It is just a justification for
>keeping women in their place. Not all religious traditions are
>spiritually based. And it's time to call Kol Isha what it is: a
>mysogynist phenomenon of days gone by. If people are comfortable
>with it. Some women I know still wear sheitels.

I agree wholeheartedly that kol isha is men's means of keeping women in 
their place, but I don't know if we can say that it is simply or only 
misogynist.  It is also a rabbinical means of controlling men and making 
sure that they keep to Judaism, especially in the wide, open Diaspora.  As 
Margaret Mead once wrote, the success of a society is determined by how a 
society keeps the men occupied while the women are taking care of the 
babies.  Well if you keep the men occupied with duties and ritual requir  
ements, you have to buy them off with something to massage their egos and 
this is what was chosen.  Religion used to be in the hands of the fertile 
women, but was now assigned to the male realm and women have been told that 
they have to pay the price by suppressing themselves.   Whatever the life 
in early times were, this paradigm is not necessary or productive in modern 
times with its high infant survival rate, low birth rate, birth control, 
modern medicine, longevity, democratic governments, etc.   Don't have more 
time to explain this point further.


Ari wrote:

>It's not necessarily an equivalent action, Winston. I can't speak
>to the specifics within the Orthodox community, but certainly within
>the feminist movement, all-women events are, in part, a reaction to
>a society that is male-dominant and often woman-exclusionary
>(hopefully, less so today, than 30 years ago, but certainly not to
>such a degree that the issues have become irrelevant), nor are such
>events as common, or as large, or as economically significant as the
>men-only events.

Correct, but I just want to add to this.  Women get together in feminist
seyders to discover, restore, and/or develop the feminine aspects of
important Jewish religious life and rituals - an arena from which they
have been, for many centuries, denied a role or input.  It is also a
means of gathering for strength and support in their/our attempt to
restore that feminine sensibility in general Jewish ritual.  Once those
things will be worked out, there will no longer be any to limit this
to just women.  Second, because making halakhic peysakh preparations in
your own home are so difficult, Jewish women are exhausted by the time
the seyder happens.  A women's seyder is probably the only real
opportunity women have to focus on the text, meaning, ruakh of Peysakh
without worrying about the kneydlakh and if everyone got served properly. 
The men sit like kings at the table and they are the slaves, especially
on Peysakh.  Now, of course, since I choose to follow all peysakh rules
halakhically in my kitchen, I have of course willingly enslaved myself
on this yontev.  I should also tell you that I am always planning to go
to a feminist Seyder and have yet to get to one myself.


Jordan wrote:

>When I speak of Jewish Jurisprudence and Orthodoxy, it
>is only because the Orthodox movement is taking on the chin on this list 
over
>Kol Isha.

And why should it not be?  Why should any man be able to sing and dance 
where ever and when ever he wants, be he spiritual or not, and a woman, no 
matter how spiritual, simply because of her gender, is not allowed to? 
  When you have Orthodox congregational leaders telling a woman singer who 
is to perform for women that they will not advertise her concerts, in case 
a man might be tempted to go it, why does the women's anger surprise you? 
 Exposing men's potential weakness is the big fear, while a woman's 
talents, spirit, or religiosity counts for dirt.


Hanna Yaffe wrote:
>>>
>I know the power of the voice, both male and female, and I can appreciate 
that there are some men who are on a spiritual path, and a beautiful voice 
could distract such a person, but such people are really rare, and it's a 
real shame that many of us suffer because the mainstream orthodox 
community, and its leaders cannot find the courage to say Yes, but keeps on 
saying NO, even when there are plenty of loopholes, and a way could be 
found to be lenient.

Don't worry, they are not going to be saying no for long, because there are 
too many orthodox women who have freed themselves to pursue the kind of 
spiritual life men have always enjoyed and they now want to express their 
voices.  It not only that they are expressing their voices, but it has been 
undeniable that when they do, they have something worthwhile to say, 
something equally good if not better than many men.  Books with women's 
talumdic commentaries are now beginning to come out.  These voices can no 
longer be squelched.  They will no longer be able to hold women back by 
saying that "modesty" is required because men have no self-control.

This whole complaint that a voice beautiful voice of a bal-tfile can 
distract people from their spiritual path has been made about many (male) 
cantors, hence hasidism's avoidance of operatic cantors and encouragement 
of congregants (male of course) finding their own voices in the prayer. 
 But a male bal-tfile with a beautiful voice is still sought after, while 
women with any voice, beautiful or not, is squelched.  If you take away a 
person's voice, you take away the person's power, and hence this is what 
kol-isha is really about.  Women were/are not asked to find their own 
voices, because the powers that be didn't/don't want women asserting 
themselves in any way.  In Europe and in America, they had shuls and 
shtiblakh for every trade and economic groups, but no one ever encouraged 
or allowed women's tfile groups.  It was considered foolish, degrading, and 
abhorrent for any melamed to even teach girls how to pray, even if they 
wanted to or even if they were wealthy enough to have others taking care of 
the children.  (You can even see that social policy expressed in the 
wonderful Yiddish film/play "Grine Felder".  Even after girls yeshivas and 
seminary were established in post-War years, girls/women were not 
encouraged to find any spiritual voice in any place or anywhere, moreover, 
they were restricted to immediate family.  It is only now that frum girls 
succeeded in secular education and saw that they are able to achieve 
equality with men in every field of endeavor that they realize that they 
can tackle Talmud too.  This is what will make a difference now.  Various 
institutions and circles have arisen in the last 10 years to prepare 
Orthodox women for Talmud instructions and now, even the rabbinate.  As 
several educators and rabbis have said, getting women prepared for the 
rabbinate has not been difficult.  In fact, a whole group of women are 
already ready.  Getting rabbis (male) to break rank with the brotherhood is 
what has been difficult.  Many, many girls are now seriously studying in 
Israeli yeshivas.  Drisha Institute in NYC, in fact, prepares women for the 
rabbinate, but can not bestow that title on them.  The good news is that 
two Orthodox women recently received Orthodox smicha (=rabbinical 
ordination).  One, however, won't tell the name of the rabbi who gave her 
smicha for fear of the reprisals he would suffer from the rabbinical 
syndicate :).  (She already got a position in a Conservative synagogue in 
Switzerland.)  So, soon, soon, the Orthodox men won't be able to stop these 
Orthodox women and kol isha will be made inert.  Orthodox feminist 
conferences are extremely successful and about 1500 women came to the one 
last year in NY.  (This year's conference is supposed to take place now in 
February but I don't have any details on that.)  What the rabbis discovered 
when they forbade women from attending a Queens, NY Orthodox women's tfila 
group 2-3 years ago, their prohibition inspired such groups to multiply 
three-fold.   Less than a dozen existed at that time and about 50 sprung up 
less than a year later.   They already see that they can't control the 
women as well as they used to.

They could invent things like shabes clocks, shabes key rings, automatic 
elevators, answering machines, sealed & frozen kosher food, selling 
chomets, etc. to get around halakha, but they have refused to make any 
changes to free women from the unfair and unjust, ancient, self-serving 
male interpretations of Torah.  All this while they made up a variety of 
rules, regulations and stipulations to close women off from the legal and 
social discourse on the issues that effect women and their lives.  Don't 
worry Shirona, it's only a matter of time now.  More and more Orthodox 
women are mastering the texts and they, with the help of Rabbi Saul Berman 
(someone I have dearly loved since first studying Talmud with him in a 
mixed gender class thirty years ago in Boston) will make the necessary 
changes in Orthodoxy.  Chareydi, I don't know, but they will significantly 
change in a generation or two, as they already have in the 20th century. 

One way you can help this is by supporting/advertising women's yeshivas, 
Orthodox women's prayer groups, Orthodox women's publications (good for 
gifts) and program's like Rebbitsn Michelle Gartner's program and forming 
other events/concerts/recordings/stations for women's spiritual voices. 
 HUC in New York has had several such concerts and events and it would be 
good if people re-created those programs and/or repertoires in concerts in 
their local communities.  These are some of the many ways of fighting this 
thing and of speeding up the process.  I think that having conservative 
women cantors rather than Reform women cantors in developing and performing 
good programming would probably be more helpful in breaking down the 
Orthodox camp.  You can get together with women rabbis from JTS to help 
develop various programs in your local area.  These are the kinds of 
actions that will help get kol isha changes made.  Orthodox men and rabbis 
have to see spiritual Jewish women in their community wanting such things 
for them to feel that must stand aside when the female scholars (and a few 
courageous men) will stand up to present the legal arguments for the 
changes.  In fact, when enough men will see women insisting on releasing 
their spiritual voices, they will support the legal arguments coming in the 
next 2-10 years.

That kol isha rulings offends us, we know that.  That we are upset about it 
and that we won't walk into a shul where these rules apply, many of us 
already do that.  The important thing is what are we going to do about it. 
 No, sitting in the men's section is not the answer.  :)    Sing Shirona, 
sing and keep on singing and get other women to sing with you, no matter 
who is present.  That's the answer, I think.


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky


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