Stop silencing female voices

EMILY SINGER

On Friday, Nov. 11, hundreds of women and men gathered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa to sing out in defence of women’s voices. The event was called Is This What Ervah Looks Like?, referring to a statement in the Talmud that “a woman’s voice is ervah,” frequently translated to mean indecent. Religious Jews often cite this talmudic quote as a proof that it is forbidden for a man to hear a woman sing.

The “sing-in” was organized on Facebook in response to the marginalization by the religious establishment of women’s voices in Israeli society and to a barrage of incidents in the news over the past few months that persuaded organizers that it was time for Israeli women to be heard.

Recently, for example, four religious cadets walked out of a performance at an army event – against the orders of their commander – because a woman began singing a solo. Earlier this fall, at an army Simchat Torah celebration where a group of female soldiers were dancing separately from the males in the room (on the other side of a refreshment table), they were asked by an army rabbi to move to an area that was further away and separated by a tall, thick bolt of canvas. Many women were so upset that they left.

In Jerusalem, Charedi thugs have been vandalizing advertising posters that portray women and have even set alight city buses displaying these ads. Companies such as the Honigman clothing chain and the Israeli organization ADI, that encourages organ donation, have acquiesced and removed women from their advertisements in Jerusalem, leaving the streets bereft of female images.

In the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim, men and women were segregated with a thick cloth along the entire length of the street for the holiday of Sukkot. Even Jerusalem city councilwoman Rachel Azaria was excused from her post on the council for petitioning the High Court to put a stop to this practice and to enforce their own ruling that segregation of public areas is prohibited.

Then there is the recent Ministry of Health ceremony, at which women were seated separately at the back of the room. At this event, two women who were being honored for their work in the area of medicine and halachah, were not permitted to come to the stage to receive their awards – a man was appointed to collect the awards in their stead.

Despite laws forbidding the practice, there are segregated buses that run through Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods, where women are expected to sit at the back. There is also a Charedi radio station that refused to allow women to appear on their broadcasts, until they were begrudgingly forced to open their phone lines to women for one hour on Sunday mornings. In addition, the Ashdod-based Israel Andalusian Orchestra agreed to pull female solos from their schedule to appease religious season ticket holders.

King Solomon, in his biblical love story Song of Songs sings out, “Let me see your face; let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet; and your face is lovely.” A woman’s voice is not “indecent” here, rather it is beautiful.

Indeed, Rabbi Saul Berman suggests that ervah is better translated as potentially sexually distracting. The passage of the Talmud referred to above states specifically that a man should avoid hearing this ervah while he is praying, as this can cause him inappropriate distraction from his intimate communication with God. When the Talmud says that a woman’s voice may be distracting, this is not an imperative for women to hide their voices, but rather a suggestion to men about when it is appropriate to listen to them.

In recent times, what began as guidelines for men to behave appropriately became growing restrictions on women. As women on billboards and on television appear less and less clothed, the religious community has reacted by focusing more and more on how their girls dress. Berman argues that this process has had an unintended effect of focusing disproportionately on sexuality. Girls are taught that their bodies are sexual and, therefore, dangerous. Some communities have come to measure a girl’s religiousness and spirituality by the length of her skirt and the height of her collar, as well as how separate she is from boys in her daily life.

A year ago, I moved with my family to Maale Gilboa, a religious kibbutz in northern Israel. My husband and I love religious life on kibbutz, where boys and girls work and socialize together on a daily basis, and “modesty” means behaving with sensitivity to the people around you.

While most Orthodox rabbis today maintain that it is forbidden for a man to hear a woman sing, Rabbi David Bigman, head of Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, the yeshivah of the religious kibbutz movement, has ruled that the prohibition does not apply in our community (except in cases where the singing is truly inappropriate). He explains that we are nowadays accustomed to hearing women’s voices and it is, therefore, no longer experienced as inappropriately distracting. He further points out that both psychological and spiritual factors should compel us to stop silencing our women and girls.

On Nov. 11, while people were gathered in Israel’s major cities to sing out against the religious establishment, a group of women from nearby religious kibbutzim decided to get together for a small sing-in on Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu. We felt that, as members of the religious kibbutz movement, we have a different experience and a unique message. While there was some disagreement among the group regarding details of Jewish law, there was a strong feeling that the goal should not be to speak out against religion, but to advocate for education about Judaism’s true values, including justice for and the dignity of every human being, including our girls and women.

Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer living in Israel. She is currently working on two books. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation from 1996 to 2004.

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