Re: kol isha--redux!

[Joel Bresler <joel.br...>]

>For all the sources in the article, (and lets be fair, the article was 
>written for educated Jews, so
>it was not the job of the article to explain who each authority was and 
>when he lived),

Hi, Roger/Ronan.

This (by your lights) uneducated Jew was expressing his personal 
frustration with the article. As I wrote, it was hard for me to track who 
was saying what when, and what the practice was when and how it evolved. 
Hard to see how that counts as unfair criticism. Or maybe it counts as fair 
criticism of my Hebrew school education <wry grin>

I would be happy if you or someone else would take the time and effort to 
elaborate.

I again thank Robert for posting the reference. Those that weren't 
interested in it presumably didn't bother to follow the link.

B'shalom,

Joel

At 09:57 AM 1/9/2002 -0500, r l reid wrote:
>Note: my point is the the last 2 paragraphs.  You can skip the
>two between here and there.
>
>I dropped off the list because I'm overly annoyed with the
>perpetual kol isha discussion (will all those whose minds
>have changed as a result of kol isha discussions on the
>jewish music mailing list please identify themselves...
>[sound of crickets chirping,  a train in the distance,
>the gentle woosh of cars on the highway three miles away in
>the silence of the night.] Thought so.) and eight months later
>it's still going.
>
>So why not get my licks in too?  For all the sources in the article,
>(and lets be fair, the article was written for educated Jews, so
>it was not the job of the article to explain who each authority
>was and when he lived), I find one striking omission, even granting
>that we are (thank God) rabbinical Jews, not Biblical Jews.
>
>In Exodus 15, starting at verse 20, we have the recounting
>of Miriam's leading the Israelites in song, instrumental music,
>and dance.  Actually the Isaraelites are identified by the pronoun
>"them", which loses gender specificity in English.  In the Hebrew
>in verse 21 the phrase is "vata'an lahem Miryam".  "lahem" is
>the third person plural *masculine* pronoun, and in Hebrew if
>the object described by that pronoun is mixed gender, then the
>masculine pronoun is used.
>
>It could not have been simply a women's group because then the pronoun
>would have been lahen, not lahem.  Far smaller points of practice
>than this have been determined on even less that the difference of
>a single letter, a nun vs a mem.  Yet this "smoking gun" is never
>brought into the argument.
>
>roger/ronan reid
>who thinks women's voices and physical attraction are two of God's
>greatest gifts to humankind and no amount of assimilation of
>Christian Testament prudery will convince me otherwise
>
>
>--
>r l reid        ro (at) rreid(dot)net
>
>Az mir vil shlogn a tsimbl, gefintmin a shtekn.
>



Joel Bresler
250 E. Emerson Rd.
Lexington, MA 02420 USA

Home Office:    781-862-4104
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Reflections on Sept. 11, 2001 at: http://joelbresler.tripod.com/Reflections.htm

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