Re: A nice surprise?

[WINSTON WEILHEIMER <nusach...>]

robert, where is all this anger coming from?
You are usually more calm.

I do not believe that you are reading Shirona's posting properly.  What is 
with these pesonal attacks?  Not only is this not in the spirit of this 
list, but it is not a very good thing Jewishly.  What happened to Lashon 
Harah?  What happened to just good manners and civility?  You refer to 
Shirona as our correspondant.  Why do you not refer to her by name?  She 
also has a wonderful voice and i am happy and proud to play her music which 
is also very spiritual in nature.  I would encourage you to go to her web 
site and listen to her.  It is not a kol isha issue listening to a womans 
voice that is not a live performance, so there would be no halachic reason 
for you not to do so.

But as to your posting, Do you not look around when you go to a new shul?  
Do you not look around in your own shul?  When you are looking at the bima, 
is it distracting to those reading torah or the sheliach tzibur?  Are they 
or the kavanah in the room somehow dimished because members of the 
congregation are looking at them?  When you go to a family simcha, just 
because you kvell, does that make it a show?  I do not understand, but is it 
perhaps that there is an observant congregation that has come out of the 
18th century into the 21st that bothers you?  You say you respect Rabbi 
Adler, yet you attack him for his leadership.  Is that respect?

I intentionally called it observant, since without a mechitzah, you would 
not recognize it as orthodox.

you call Shirona statement "arrogent and self rightous".  You posting seems 
to fit the discription.

winston
**********************************************************************

>From: "Robert Cohen" <rlcm17 (at) hotmail(dot)com>
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: Re: A nice surprise?
>Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 23:02:43
>
>>For me it was a spiritual and emotional experience - seeing "frum" women
>>taking an active and awe inspiring roll in the service, as equal to men 
>>and
>>equal before G-d.  (I was watching the men during the portions where women
>>were leading, and they  seemed very comfortable. The husbands whose wives
>>were leading looked very proud.   It was all very natural...
>
>
>I have much respect and regard for Moshe Adler and am very interested to
>hear that he's overseeing a traditional but egalitarian service.  I would
>automatically incline to assume that he's coming from a thoughtful and
>serious place in doing so.
>
>Having said that:  Between the lines--or, actually, *in* the lines--of this
>posting are flashing yellow lights indicating some of the potential
>problems, perhaps, of such services.  *Why,* for example, was our
>correspondent "watching the men during the portions where women were
>leading"--or at any time, for that matter?  One of the reasons why many
>women that I've talked to about this, or whose thoughts I've read about 
>from
>other's writing and interviewing, *like* a separate space from men is so
>they *won't* be watched during davening--and I can't imagine that the men
>being watched here benefited from being watched--"spiritually and
>emotionally," as our correspondent puts it.  Nor do I imagine that the 
>women
>at the service would have experienced a deeper kavannah in their davening 
>if
>*they* were being watched.
>
>It's nice that the husbands of women leading the service "looked very
>proud"--though, again, nobody should have been noticing--but that suggests,
>again, *less* focus and intensity in prayer (or contemplation, study, 
>etc.),
>which is what a synagogue service should be about.  This service comes off,
>at least in this account, as more of a show-and-tell entertainment
>production--that's where one is appropriately "proud" of one's
>spouse's/children's/friend's home run, aria, etc.  Parents, etc., can't 
>help
>but kvell over their children's bar/bat mitzvah--uncles too.  But that
>should be the exception--and, indeed, in the synagogues, in my experience,
>where bar mitzvah is taken maximally seriously as a religious coming of age
>and not a pageant-with-party, even parents' kvelling is expressed in a very
>different way from at Little League.
>
>
>>Later I spent a good half hour talking with the Rabbi,  Moshe
>>Adler.  We should all be blessed with such Rabbis - open minded, 
>>spiritual,
>>a man who is in touch with his own conscience - and has the guts to act on
>>his beliefs.  Even in the face of a hostile "peer environment".
>
>
>I have, as I said, nothing but regard for Moshe Adler.  But Shirona is,
>sadly, again so wrapped up in self-righteousness that she imagines that 
>only
>those who agree with her are "in touch with [their] own conscience" or
>"[have] the guts to act on [their] beliefs."  It's a supremely arrogant and
>ugly notion--but Shirona seems incapable of recognizing that a rabbi who
>*doesn't* choose to go in this--i.e., her preferred--direction may be just
>as in touch with his conscience--and perhaps showing even more guts, since
>he has to defy, among other things, the limitless self-righteousness of 
>some
>(but not all) Jewish (and non-Jewish, for that matter) feminists.
>
>
>I admire Rabbi Adler, among other reasons, because, in my limited
>experience, he *doesn't* convey this kind of arrogant
>self-righteousness--but, rather, an earnest humility (one of the
>requirements of which is the knowledge and belief that one may be wrong) in
>seeking to hear what G*d wants of him at any given moment and to serve G*d
>as best he can.
>
>It's an example worth emulating.
>
>--Robert Cohen
>
>
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