Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig – Modern Orthodoxy Pulled into the Modern Age
Awhile back I went to a 3-day concert festival in Eilat: classical music orchestra, opera and Israeli folk song singers (male and female), classical and jazz pianists, even a professional whistler! The audience: secular and modern-Orthodox alike.
- Here’s my question: do you remember the old newspaper cartoon puzzle: “What’s wrong with this picture?” So, what seems “off” about the above festival description?
If you can’t figure it out, that’s because the “contradiction” has become quite commonplace. It relates to Jewish religious law – halakha; the specific prohibition is called “kol isha,” the prohibition regarding males hearing a female sing, as this might entice men to do something they shouldn’t do (I’ll leave to your imagination what exactly).
So how were there dozens of kippah-wearing men in the audience, even showing up every morning for self-organized prayer services – and then sitting in the audience listening to beautiful female singing? The answer to that involves a broader trend that is basically at the core of the halakha itself.
The root word of halakha is “walking” (la’lekhet). Not by accident is this term used for what some people think as being unchangeable: Jewish religious law. But in fact, the halakha has always undergone modification. In many (perhaps most) cases, the change has been to add more prohibitions through what is called “fencing” – keeping the adherent as far away as possible from performing the original prohibition. The classic case: not eating meat and milk products together, when the only thing that the Bible prohibits is cooking a lamb in its mother’s milk (obviously an issue regarding animal suffering and not a dietary one). Today, the Orthodox will even have separate cutlery and different tablecloths for meat and dairy meals!
However, not everything moves in a more restrictive direction. Kol isha is one example. In a world where in the far past the sexes were strictly separated, it might have made psychological (sexual) sense to prohibit women from singing, as their voice could carry over even to those segregated by gender. However, in the modern world such sex segregation is impossible legally, economically, and socially.
Given this “new” situation, a prohibition against hearing women singing makes little sense when men and women mix throughout the day, not to mention the ability to hear female singing without physical proximity (records, radio etc.). To my knowledge, no Orthodox rabbi has promulgated an official halakhic ruling permitting kol isha in all respects (a few do allow it in very narrow circumstances), but their Orthodox adherents have voted with their feet (and ears). The halakha doesn’t always need official rabbinical approval for significant change to occur; it can advance from the bottom up as well.
Nor is this the only slow but steady change taking place. Here’s one other “social-oriented” halakhic proscription that is slowly losing force.
The Talmud (Talmud Bavli: Tractate Megillah 23a) has an interesting discussion regarding the question whether women should be allowed to publicly read from the Torah in synagogue. The decision at the end was “no”. Why? Because if a stranger staying in town on Shabbat should happen to be in that synagogue and see a woman chanting the Torah portion of the week, he might think that no men in that town are capable of Torah reading – obviously embarrassing for the menfolk!
Clearly, such “logic” doesn’t hold in an era when women work in all professions alongside men. No one today would walk into a hospital ward, see three women in the ward, and think that men aren’t capable of being physicians.
There are other examples of “social modernity” changing Orthodox Jewish behavior. However, of even greater import is what’s up ahead. For example, what happens when bio-chemistry advances lead to growing meat from stem cells (with all the same nutrients, taste etc.) – leading ultimately to a state-mandated prohibition against slaughtering animals? Will such “meat” be considered “meaty” (fleishig) or pareve (neither meat nor dairy)?
In other words, it’s not merely social change but also scientific advances that will force the halakha to deal with modernity in positive fashion. Here’s a head-scratcher for you: how to eat a completely kosher cheeseburger? If one really wants to, it’s already possible to eat a strictly kosher cheeseburger with real animal meat and real dairy cheese. Admittedly, this is a bit of a stretch, but it’s completely “kosher”: 1) Ritually slaughter a cow in proper halakhic fashion; 2) After it’s dead, milk the cow! 3) Make cheese from that milk. 4) Put that cheese in a meat-burger. Voila! You now have a kosher cheeseburger.
The explanation: According to Jewish law, after ritual slaughtering, anything taken and used from a kosher animal is ipso facto “meat” – including the dead cow’s milk. Just don’t eat this in public, because then you run afoul of another restriction: mar’it ayin – others will see you and not understand the background, therefore falsely concluding that one can eat any meat and cheese together.
If this sounds outlandish, it isn’t any different from weird, secular legislation found in countries around the world. (There are many such head-scratching laws e.g., California bans eating frogs that have been in a frog-jumping contest!) In any case, the very “outlandishness” of this cheeseburger “solution” is evidence that the halakha is capable of original thinking to find solutions to pressing (and new) challenges. Whether such solutions emanate from above (rabbinical decisions), from the side (technological and scientific advances), or from the bottom up (social change), the halakha has always changed, continues to change today, and most certainly will change in the future.
How fast it’ll change, and in which direction – that’s the main remaining question.
