Is Halacha for Crazy People?
In a very sad event last week, a young daughter of a shliach in Israel was tragically killed in a school-bus accident. The whole story was horrible.
At the shiva, the little girl's grandmother, the famous Miriam Swerdlov, spoke about taking the good with the bad and mi k'amcha yisrael and so on. She also sang a song with the women at the shiva, one of the tunes that reflected the idea of the Jewish people never forsaking Hashem no matter what evils befall them.
Her speech was recorded. The blog that posted the video on youtube initially deleted the singing segment. Later it posted the full version and warned that it contains KOL ISHA and is intended FOR WOMEN ONLY PLEASE.
Kol Isha is a halacha in which men are not allowed to hear women singing so that they should not get aroused and come to sin.
Okay, now I acknowledge that it is possible that there is a man out there who could be aroused by a 60 year old woman singing a niggun with a bunch of other women at her three-year-old granddaugher's shiva. Anything is possible.
But if halacha is going to cater to that, if halacha is going to take those people into account, why doesn't it consider the man who is turned on by the very sight of any woman in the first place? Why doesn't it take into account the man who might be aroused at the sound of male singing? Surely there are more men aroused by male singing or even conversation, say in shul, than would be aroused by Miriam Swerdlov humming a tune at a shiva house. No?
I know, I know. Some people are going to start talking about boundaries and slippery slopes and how halacha has to have fixed parameters. Because if we allow men to hear this, then maybe we should let men hear women singing at a farbrengen or at shul. And from there, I guess, it is a quick and direct path to permitting all female rock bands and wet t-shirt contests and mud wrestling.
Really, though? Is that answer enough for you? Is the slope really that slippery? Halacha doesn't have any mechanisms to permit some forms of kol isha but not others? I doubt that. So what's the deal here? How difficult would it really be for rabbonim to matir women's singing if it is in a religious context?