kol isha, agency, and women reading torah

[cellio]

Ok, I realize that Friday isn't the best time to post about a partly-baked halachic issue, but hey, I post things when I think of them. C'est la vie. (Hmm, is there a corresponding Hebrew idiom to "c'est la vie", perhaps one that would be easier to spell?)

There is an issue in halacha called kol isha, which literally means "a woman's voice". The idea is that a woman's voice -- specifically a singing voice, according to B'rachot 24a -- will arouse men in the same way that seeing her hair (or certain body parts, and I don't just mean the naughty bits) will. So just as women are to cover their hair and wear modest garments to keep men from sinning, so too are they to refrain from singing around men. (Well, at least solo; being in a group can mitigate.)

I'd long assumed that kol isha is the reason women can't read torah (except in women's groups) in traditional communities. But I've thought of an argument against that position, which probably means that either the argument is wrong or this isn't a kol-isha issue to begin with. (I tend to assume that no halachic argument that turns out to be correct would be original to me, because I don't have the vast knowledge base yet.)

Ok, here goes. There is a state that people and objects can be in called tamei, which is a sort of ritual impurity. (This is sometimes translated as "unclean", but it has nothing to do with physical cleanliness.) If, for example, you come into contact with a corpse, you are tamei for a period of time. You can transmit that status to objects that you touch, and they too are tamei for a period of time. The only time this really matters is in worship -- it really only mattered when the temple stood (nothing tamei inside the courtyard), but I wouldn't be surprised if the concept applies to worship more generally in some ways. (Like, can a coroner ever lead services? I have no idea. But this is a tangent.)

I have learned (can't cite a source but believe it to be valid) that a sefer torah (a torah scroll) can never become tamei, no matter what it comes into contact with. (It can become non-kosher (pasul), but that's completely different.) So, why can't a sefer torah be tamei? Because it contains words of torah, which are inherently holy and can't be made impure. If so for the written form of torah, so too for the oral form? Isn't chanting torah, conveying the words from the sefer torah, inherently holy (and thus not lewd or suggestive)? Can such a reading (if done correctly) be made inappropriate in any way?

There are arguments (having to do with agency) for why women can't lead services, but torah-reading is different. Men are obligated to pray and can't be led by a woman who isn't obligated, but no one is obligated to read torah. People are obligated to hear torah being read. So I don't think the agency argument applies.

I can think of two issues that would arise from this. First, if the prohibition really is about kol isha, wouldn't that imply that a woman could read torah but not chant it? Kol isha is about singing. (And I've been to traditional congregations where the reader read without chanting, so this seems to be permitted.) And second, if agency is really about doing versus hearing as I've speculated, does that mean that women can do other things which we must hear but not necessarily do, like blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashana and reading the megillah on Purim?

I plan to ask my rabbi about this when we meet next week, since it was studying kol isha with him that set this speculation in motion to begin with.

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Jonathan would do better at this than I, but I'm going to try.

The mitzva is neither to read the Torah nor to hear it, but to learn it. By reading the Torah, the baal kriah is learning it in behalf of the congregation, as well as enabling it to learn. He's acting as their agent.

Here's the kicker. An agent for a mitzvah must have the same level of obligation for that mitzvah as the person who appointed then. I can, and do, make motzi or kiddush for a crowd because men and women are under the same level of obligation then. I cannot lead a service for men, even if I had the Hebrew skills and singing ability to do so, because men have a higher level of obligation and I cannot be their agent. I can lead a modifed (nothing "public", such as kaddish) one for women because, as women, the obligation is the same.

This is what makes megillah reading interesting - there are several opinions out there that, as the obligation to hear (and reading = hearing in this case) is the same for men and women, a woman can read the megillah for men.

(Kol isha is less of a factor than you might assume, since the issur may only in regards to shema. That is, a man may not recite the shema if he can hear a woman singing or can see a married woman's hair. This last includes his own wife. Kol isha has no halachic bearing during other times, although it has become custom in some places for men to avoid the singing of women not their relatives, and there are arguments about extending it further.)

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

Yes, a few Ortho shuls have mixed megiallah readings. This is one of the odd cases where there is an obligation on women to do something in the shul (odd only because it's somewhat time bound).

There is no shaliach relationship with Torah reading, just like there isn't one for Kabbalat Shabbat.

You need a minyan to read Torah, but it isn't the same as normal davenening.

[ginamariewade.livejournal.com]

(Kol isha is less of a factor than you might assume, since the issur may only in regards to shema. That is, a man may not recite the shema if he can hear a woman singing or can see a married woman's hair. This last includes his own wife. Kol isha has no halachic bearing during other times, although it has become custom in some places for men to avoid the singing of women not their relatives, and there are arguments about extending it further.)

Really? It's just custom and not law? Learn something new every day.
Back in the old days on soc.culture.jewish there was a long discussion about kol isha and some dude was going on about how
awful it was for women to sing in public and how Barbra Streisand was just terrible because she had released a recording of Avinu Malkeinu. My understanding of his argument against it was not that she was saying holy words on a pop record but that it was kol isha. And another dude chimed in about how it was good that this was the rule because he found it erotic to the point of distraction to hear women singing and humming. And so on and so on, so that the gist of the whole thing was that women should not sing in public where men could hear, and proper Jewish women don't sing.

And it was about that time that I decided for sure that I did not want to be Orthodox, because I like to sing, and it's the best, most joyful part of me.

So I'm actually pleased to learn this.

[magid.livejournal.com]

It's just custom and not law?
A firmly entrenched custom in some communities, however.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things - many right-wing Orthodox Jewish men never hear women sing, and they're told it's erotic, so when they do hear a woman sing, even on a recording, it *is* erotic.

It's like ankles at the beginning of the 20th C. Since one never saw more of a woman's leg than her ankles, and those rarely, they were sexy. Ankles today? Hardly noticed unless they're out of the ordinary in some way.

(Which is why I think that this trend to show more and more of the body is anti-sexiness. Whatever that implies.)

[cellio]

Thanks for the point about hearing versus learning. I didn't know that.

Here's the kicker. An agent for a mitzvah must have the same level of obligation for that mitzvah as the person who appointed then.

Aren't we all obligated to study torah, though? I mean, if this were a public reading of codes or something I could see the argument that men are considered more obligated than women, but for the written torah itself?

Kol isha is less of a factor than you might assume, since the issur may only in regards to shema.

Interesting. That's what the discussion in the talmud is about, but I hadn't followed the thread into other sources. And to hear some men talk, it's much broader. :-) Thanks for the information!

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

No, women are not obligated to study Torah.

And I was wrong to some extent - it's not an agency thing. (Although it is for Megillah.)

And it *may* only be in regards to shema. There's a lot of discussion on this point. However, it's certainly not to the extent it's become in custom.

On the other hand, you can't discount custom.