כשנשים רוצות לשיר

00:00 Speaker 1 This is Igris. We are in volume, excuse me, twenty-eight. I'll need a voice for this. We're in volume twenty-eight. We are in the year תשע"ג, exactly fifty years ago, and we are looking at a letter today from יט Tammuz, and, uh, the letter is very short. The story behind the letter is not only longer but variable depending on who you ask, and that's gonna lead us to different conclusions. So today is, um... We don't usually do something exactly like this. We're not necessarily gonna zoom out or zoom in. We're just gonna try to figure out what we're reading. So the Rebbe says in this letter is יט טב ל"ג. The Rebbe writes, "בסימן גדול." By the way, I thought maybe I'd make a share on סימן גדול. It's not gonna work out, but I figured the Rebbe uses this phrase sometimes when he's very upset at the writer, so I went into-- it's a little irreverent, but I went into Etz Chaim, hit the Igris button, and searched סימן גדול to see every time the Rebbe says סימן גדול, and it is not consistent what he says it for. It's, uh, it's for anything that particularly shocks him. It's not always a Halakhic problem. It's not always a Hashkafic problem. Sometimes it's that he already told somebody something and they haven't listened to him, so he's saying, "סימן גדול that you're writing to me again." It's not a consistent phrase, but it does show the Rebbe's very serious. The סימן גדול, I'm very, very surprised.

01:08 Speaker 1 "קראתי שאלתך," that i read your question. Uh, "במכתב המיום ט"ס מיום..." What is that? Is that ט"ס? Is that Tub? ט' like תש"ו. תש"ו. Why does he write-- ט Tammuz. Okay. That's on ט Tammuz. That's good. So in any case, he's, uh, very shocked about the question that he read in this letter, "בנגע לשירות נשים". Apparently, this person asked whether he could listen to women singing. And we're gonna look at the footnote, we're gonna see if there's more details, but that's what we have right now. Somebody asked about the Halakha regarding kol isha, regarding hearing a woman sing. The Rebbe says, "פסק דין ברור היא שבעשרת הפוסקים." It is definitely a פסק דין ברור. It's completely clear that it is asur. This is in עשרת הפוסקים. I don't know why you would even ask me if such a thing is mutar. Now, if you look below the line, and this is what we have in Igris, we have a very short story. The Igris short story below the line is, "קבוצת המבקרות בבית המכבד." There was a group of girls who wanted to visit a Beis Chabad. "בתנאי שירשו לכולם לשיר." It was on a tanai that they were all allowed to sing. So basically, a group of, uh, people who were not Harum came to a Chabad house and said, "Uh, we'd love to come visit you. We'd love to hear your Torah. We'd love to farbreng with you, but we're not gonna do this no singing thing. We want permission to sing." So

02:16 Speaker 1 a Shliah wrote to the Rebbe saying, "Look, I have on one hand a kol isha, which is an isur, but on the other hand, I have the opportunity to affect a lot of people. Is there any heter for me?" And the Rebbe says, "I can't imagine you would even ask such a ridiculous question. It's asur in עשרת הפוסקים." That is one version of this story. In that version of this story, what we gather from this letter is that there is no heter kiruv. And I think you'll find this in a couple of places in the Rebbe's work. Um, are you familiar with the term heter kiruv? This is something used to get thrown a lot, around a lot in modern Orthodox circles. I remember the phrase, uh, it's a big NCSY phrase, um, that there's a, that there's an idea out there on the books that's a wrong idea according to everybody, really, even according to the modern Orthodox who use it. It's the wrong idea that we can employ certain heterim in order to allow us to reach other Yidden who we wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. Perhaps, uh, allowing for mixed seating in certain settings, perhaps allowing, not, not in shul, of course, but perhaps allowing for a little more leniency in how we approach certain Halakhic issues as a way to get people in the door and then make them Frum. You know, a, a small sacrifice for a bigger payout, a Machiavellian way to view Yiddishkeit. The Rebbe is not

03:17 Speaker 1 Machiavellian when it comes to Yiddishkeit, and as we see in this letter, somebody says to him, "I can, uh, reach a whole lot of people if you'll just let me, um, get-- do, do away with this little kol isha problem." The Rebbe goes, "You're out of your mind. It's a, it's a פסק דין ברור in עשרת הפוסקים." That's one version of the story. It's not the only one. I looked in, uh, Hiskashrus. Hiskashrus is a great resource for Igris because over the years, and there's many, many editions, and the back editions all exist. You can get the editions going back for, uh, for, for, for decades, and they frequently will include different letters and the background for different letters. There is a background in, in this letter that comes from reliable sources in Yerushalayim who say the story is not what it says below the line in Igris. So I'm tempted to believe that the, that the-- what we have below the line in Igris may be incorrect because the story makes a lot more sense from their perspective. I'll tell you the story they tell. They say that the Jewish Agency was getting very impressed with the activities of Chabad Yerushalayim as of the year nineteen seventy-three. So they decided that anyone visiting Israel through them, through the Jewish Agency, would, uh, in the year, in, through, in the summer, in like July, August, they would get a guided tour of the Old City, and that that guided tour would culminate in a farbrengen

04:19 Speaker 1 at Tzama Charedik, and that they thought, "Well, we're very impressed with Chabad. Chabad does this whole authentic Hasidic thing, but not in a way that scares our people." So their idea was to bring non-Frum people to Tzama Charedik for a one to two-hour farbrengen whenever they came to visit the Old City during their guided tour. The idea was they were actually very sensitive about it, the Jewish Agency. They understood that there was such a thing as Halakha and that we'd have to-- they would all have to keep it. So they said that they would have the boys and girls sit separately without a mechitza, which everybody seemed to be fine with, and that only the boys would sing, and that the girls would be told that they can only clap. This was the deal the Jewish Agency told the Tem-- told, told the, uh, the shluchim in Yerushalayim. The potential gains were enormous. The estimate was that about seven thousand people were going to get-- were going to pass through the Tzama Charedik over the course of that summer through the Jewish Agency, who would have made a lot of Alijah. Uh, there was some concern, however, that the girls were going to ignore the rules and sing anyway. You tell a bunch of young women who come to a farbrengen, "You, you clap and the boys sing," mistama they're gonna sing. So there was concern that maybe they would sing as well. Rav Asher Lemel, uh, Rav Asher, Asher Lemel Cohen, um, he's a...

05:19 Speaker 1 Do people know him? He's a, he, he's a, he's a feature in Chaba- You know him personally. Do you? Yeah. No, I know, I know- Yeah. Know of the Cohen family. He's a feature in a lot of, uh- The Pruzessimus, no?

05:31 Speaker 2 He was Rashashiv and Torah Zemes?

05:33 Speaker 1 Yes. And, um, I think so. He was at least in Torah Zemes. I don't-- But Rashashiv, I have no idea. Um, but he's also a-- He's a major feature in a lot of stuff we know about the Rebbe Shlita on Kay Hanam, because whenever there was a Shaila about Kay Hanam, we have Rav Ashlag testifies that he was able to go to the aisle, if he stood in a box. You know, a lot of our stuff that we know about Kay Hanam Bachlal came through him. In any event, he's a Rav, an important Rav. Uh, he asked Rav Zevin what to do. He said, "I, I see this, I see this turning into a problem." So he went to Rav Zevin, and Rav Zevin said that he would think about it, and he thought about it for a while, and Rav Zevin said at the end of the day that he was not sure. He didn't know what to do. And Rav Zevin said, "Would you please write to the Rebbe and ask the Rebbe?" Rash-Rav Ashlag said, uh, "No way. I'm not writing this Shaila to the Rebbe. Uh, I'm not doing it." And Rav Zevin said, "I'm begging you, do it, and if you do it, you can do it in my name. Tell the Rebbe it's from me, that it's not from you." Rav Ashlag agreed to do it on the condition that he could write it in Rav Zevin's name because he was embarrassed to ask the question, and this is

06:23 Speaker 1 the letter that we got in response. The letter that we got in response is, "Basiman galo kolasa shelasa mirta biyim tov, tov tambos." I'm shocked to read the letter that you've sent me about this Shaila, whether we need to be concerned that these girls are sitting in Semach Tzedek that are clapping, whether they're going to end up singing. "Venigel ishidas nashem. Saktin baral isam shasa poskim." It's clearly also in Shasa Poskim. What's clearly also according to this story? The way that his Kashas understood, the way Rav Ashlag understood it, the way that the people who received the letter understood it, was that the Rebbe was saying that it is completely also to have Kol Isha, and completely also even if it's in a group, and completely also to put them in a situation where we all know inevitably will happen and better to cancel the whole thing. And I believe, although it doesn't say in his Kashas what they did, the strong implication is that they canceled the entire thing based on this response from the Rebbe. So that's a very different story. This is not, uh, somebody asking, "Can I have Kol Isha in my base Chabad?" This is someone asking, "Can I put my-- Can I put people in a situation where they're likely to end up doing Kol Isha and the Rebbe possibly vetoing the entire program?" That's the version that, that's the version printed in his Kashas. And I will note that Rav Ashlag was totally right in being worried about

07:23 Speaker 1 writing the Shaila to the Rebbe, because look at the answer that he got. I mean, uh, he said, "I don't wanna send this to the Rebbe." Look at the answer that Rav Zevin through Rav Ashlag got back. It's even goggle that you'd even ask such a question. Okay. Uh, I do wanna do a little bit of a discussion about why this is so push it to the Rebbe, why this is Barur and Shasa Poskim, and why Rav Zevin might have not been so clear on it. Because you realize what we have here is that according to the story in his Kashas, Rav Zevin, a posek and a Rav in his own right, doesn't know how to answer the question, and the Rebbe says it's the simplest answer in the entire world. How can, um, obviously, you know, I don't wanna say two Tamid Chacham. I, I feel the Rebbe is a Tana, and everybody else is just a Tam Chacham. At the same time, how can two people who know Torah, one say it's a din barur, and the other one say, "I have no idea how to pass it," and you wouldn't think that. So it's a Gamara Masechas Brachos, kaf daled am alef says, "You're not allowed to say Shema in front of a naked woman." Halacha Lema'aseh, if you happen to pass a naked woman, you have to not say Shema at that moment, if you are a man. I need to get my voice back. Hang on, I have a water

08:16 Speaker 1 bottle. Let me try that. Maybe. Okay, what is nakedness? The Gemara says, "What's it mean that she's naked?" Amara Chista, sheik beisha erva, and it brings a pasuk. Says, kol beisha erva, brings a pasuk, and sar be-- sar beisha erva. Hair is a erva and brings a pasuk. So the Gemara gives us three things that count as erva for a woman, in which you're not allowed to say the Shema in front of her when she's not covering these parts, and that is her thigh, her hair, and her voice. This is brought down to Halacha in Shulchan Aruch. It's in Even Ha'ezer, um, twenty-one. It says, "Asu lishma el kol erva o lires sara." A person is not allowed to hear the kol of an erva. He's not allowed to hear the voice of anybody who he's not allowed to sleep with, of an erva. He's also not allowed to see her hair. Whether this is a din de'Rabanan is brought at length in the Sehemeth, and people generally assume that this is a din de Rabanan. Okay. So it sounds like there's an iser de Rabanan of Kol Isha. I'm sure you're familiar with it. I'm not telling you anything completely new, but maybe we're bringing some sources you weren't aware of, that, uh, a man is not allowed to listen to the singing voice of a woman. It seems this is an iser de Rabanan. I will note that the Beit Shmuel over there in Shulchan Aruch is more lenient than you would expect.

09:21 Speaker 1 He says, "First of all, this only counts if she's an erva." So he says a pnuyah would be completely fine. A single woman, you'd be allowed to hear her sing. I will note, though, that nowadays, single women are all ervas, right? Because a single woman nowadays, from the moment that she becomes a nidah, she doesn't go to mikvah until she gets married, and a nidah is a kind of erva for this purpose. So, uh, nowadays, every single woman, it would be asur for you to listen to her voice. But there used to be, it used to be that women, when they, um, you know, twelve, thirteen-year-old girls, when they got their periods for the first time, they would at some point in history, I guess, go to mikvah. So it wasn't always a sure, sure-fire thing that every pnuyah, that every single woman was an erva. But nowadays, every single woman's an erva. So this doesn't necessarily create a leniency for us. He also says that if a woman, if it's motzi to hear her voice, it's only asur to hear her while you're davening. 'Cause remember, the source in our Gemara Masechas Brachos was you can't say Shema in front of one of these nakednesses. So the implication from the Gemara is that it's not necessarily an iser to hear a woman sing. It's an iser to hear a woman sing if you're trying to daven or trying to say Shema. The, uh, the Shulchan Aruch and everybody else is coming in a little

10:20 Speaker 1 bit more strict in saying that this should apply across the board. The Beit Shmuel says that if it's a woman who you're allowed to listen to, like your wife, you're still not allowed to listen to her while you're davening, which means that your wife, who's not a nidah, who you're allowed to listen to her sing, you wouldn't be allowed to listen to her sing while you daven. Which might explain why we, uh, why we sit separately in shul, even people who are not ervas, right? You're not al pi halacha. We're not allowed to sit next to our wives in shul. Might be because even your wife, who you're allowed to listen to, 'cause she's not a nidah at that time, it would be asur to hear her sing while you're davening. Oh, just throwing that out there. There's a Beis Shammai. The Beis Shammai is brought in the Beit Hillel, but it's also everywhere. Beis Shammai says that it's asur to listen to anybody sing except for your wife. That's, that's the only exception, and that, uh, including he knocks out pnuyah too, he knocks out amani. He says, "Only your wife is-- Your wife is the only one you're allowed to listen to sing," and, uh, still not while you're davening He also says, and this is what's going to be important for us, that this even applies if multiple women are singing and even applies if these women are singing zmiras. So there's a Perish of Beresheva that says that if you're in

11:16 Speaker 1 a setting like a Fabrangan and Tzemach Tzedek and there's a couple thousand women there and they're all singing together and they're singing holy things, they're singing zmiras and nigunim, it is also for a man to hear this. It would seem to be a clear cut din. So why was Rav Zevin struggling and why is this not psakt in Bruda? Possibly because of a chasan sefer. I'm saying it with a nun, believe it or not. The chasan sefer is the grandson of the chasan sefer. And although he may have had some really original ideas in psak, I will note that he did not have a very original idea in naming his sefer. So the chasan sefer, who is the grandson of the chasan sefer, thought perhaps we could mater it when there's multiple women singing together because of the din of treichelus. You might have heard of this hefter before. It comes from him. He's the earliest source we have for this hefter. There's a din of treichelus le mishdame, which is that if I hear two people laning Torah at the same time, I can't hear either of them. So it's as if I'm not hearing either kriya. Based on that, there's a, the chasan sefer wanted to say that if two women, two or more women are singing at once, they're two, they're not distinct voices since they're all mixed into a choir. But le mishdame, you can't hear them. And perhaps there's room to be lenient to allow men to listen to a

12:15 Speaker 1 group of women singing. The Srideish, who I always mention when I can because he is one of the seven or eight famous Yechiels ever to live. Rav Yaakov Yechiel, Yaakov Yechiel, I think. Rav Yaakov Yechiel Wein, might be Yechiel Yaakov. I think it's Yaakov Yechiel. Yaakov Yechiel Weinberg, the Srideish, who by the way also gave the Rebbe Smichel. We talked about this in one of our prior Yigris Yerim. He has a chuvah where he writes that Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch and many other German Rabbanim were lenient based on this chasan sefer. So it sounds like at least the German school of thought, we have a Srideish, we have a Rav Hirsch, we have a chasan sefer, maybe some grandson of a chasan sefer. We have an idea out there that maybe we can listen to a group of women sing and it's not going to be a problem. However, the Titz Eliezer and the Sheva de Levi soundly reject this. Basically, all Poskim reject this Srideish. They have two big reasons and they're both pretty clever. Reason number one is that treichelus applies to words, not the sound of a voice. So if two laners are laning, I'm not going to be able to hear the kriya, right? I won't hear the words, but I'll hear the sound of the two people laning. And the Isser here isn't hearing the specific parts of what they're singing. It's hearing their voice in general. So it doesn't sound like treichelus would give us a hat there. There's

13:16 Speaker 1 a second reason that seems to knock this Srideish out of the water. And that is we allow treichelus by Megillah because Megillah is a dever chavid. That's the din, is that two people can read Megillah at the same time. And we're not worried about treichelus because we have a rule that you focus on things you really want to hear. And your yetzahar really wants to hear a woman sing. So it's going to focus. This shows up in chovas that a woman singing is chavid to a man in that he would listen to it more carefully. The Titz Eliezer, his lashon there is devarav einam nechem klal. His lashon is that this idea in the Srideish is not correct at all. There's no hat there at all to have a group of women singing together. Between me and you, I'm not convinced the Srideish actually held like this either, despite what he writes in this chova, because there's another chova from the Srideish where somebody asked him about boys and girls singing together in a German choir. And he said he was relying on a steichemed that allows men and women to sing together and not relying on treichelus, which he thought was a bad smara. And I will add that that steichemed that he's quoting actually doesn't exist. He's probably referring to a steichemed that allows women to sing zmiras in front of men because men don't get hanot from hearing zmiras. But that's actually not a steichemed. It's the steichemed quoting the dibrei chefetz,

14:22 Speaker 1 which is brought in the steichemed and the steichemed argues on it anyway. Bottom line, I'm not even sure what the Srideish holds. So the Srideish is the very famous side lehatir for this that people rely on when they have groups of women singing together. He's rejected by just about everybody on a smara basis. And also, he seems to reject his own smara in a subsequent chova. So there's not necessarily as much wiggle room as one would think. So when the Rebbe says, sak din barur, one way to understand this is that kol isha is clearly aser and kol isha even in a group is clearly aser. So it is possibly a, it's either straightforward him saying this is the majority of Poskim what they're saying, or as one student in a Chabad Yeshiva wanted to argue in one of these kevitzim that come out. You know, the Eitz HaChachma has a list of every kevitz that every yeshiva has ever put out that's been put into print. So I found in the kevitz one bachar wanted to argue that this letter is the Rebbe paskening against the Srideish. I don't know about that, but that's one way to read this. Another way to read this is based on the Hiskashas story, the Rebbe's saying we can't allow this situation because the girls will inevitably sing and it's a sak din barur that it would be aser if they sang in a group. That's a little more nuanced and that would be the Rebbe siding with

15:26 Speaker 1 everybody except the Srideish. And you can imagine then where Rav Zevin was maybe grappling with it. Because then the question came to Rav Zevin as there's a hefter in the Srideish to have a group of women singing together and we told them not to and we're not sure they're going to. And on the other hand, there's a major gain possible that thousands and thousands of people are going to come close to the Yiddishkeit through it. And that might be why he wasn't ready to necessarily say aser, aser, aser. However, the Rebbe has a completely clear view of this and goes, look, we're dealing with a din of sak din barur and shas and peskim. We're not messing around with it. The most interesting angle of this entire letter is probably not the halachic angle, but the hefter kiruv angle, which we hinted to a little bit earlier. And I want to end on that and then open the floor for a brainstorm because I know I've seen other examples where people wrote to the Rebbe or asked the Rebbe, can they be a little more lenient in a certain area in order to allow, in order to enable them to run Chabad house activities or bring people close to the Yiddishkeit? I believe the Rebbe's answer is typically no, but I would be interested in hearing if anybody else can recall other instances like this, other stories like this, where the Rebbe either gave a hefter in the names of better outreach work or like

16:28 Speaker 1 our letter said, you're dealing with a sak din barur and shas and peskim where there's no wiggle room allowed whatsoever. It's my sense that it's going to be the latter far more than the former. It is my sense from this letter, what we draw from this letter in our personal lives is that there's a temptation frequently to water down Yiddishkeit in order to make people frum or in order to make Yiddishkeit more palatable, especially in the workplace. We talk to our coworkers. We sometimes lie a little bit about what the traditions are and what things say, or we cheat in the halacha just a little bit in order to make Yiddishkeit more palatable. I think we have here very clear from the Rebbe that at least when it comes to a sak din barur, the issa b'shas and peskim, that there's simply no room at all for that in our outreach work. Okay, I am opening the floor. Does anybody have a, you can comment anything, but specifically if you have other examples of this phenomenon where the Rebbe was giving a, the Rebbe was introducing a leniency or a chumra in response to somebody asking about a Chabad house activity, I'd be very interested in hearing it.

17:29 Speaker 2 So it is a little surprising in general because I did, you know, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of Jewish organizations and schools that consider themselves Orthodox that use the two koilas hefter for having women sing in public. It's something that I've seen myself in places and organizations. So it's very interesting that this is not something that is even a discussion. Like, you know, like, you know, the Rebbe doesn't even say like, even though that there are shitas that may blah, blah, blah. It's like barur, like shas and peskim for sure not. And there's no like, no leniency or room to move. So I'm a little surprised about that. There's other situations of things in Chabad houses like that I've heard in the past, maybe this is not considered leniencies, but there was questions about seeing a tikvah at Chabad events or Hava Nagila. There's, you know, mechitza situations where, you know, there's clear pisuke dinim for Rav Moshe about what would be considered a kosher mechitza where from what I understand the Rebbe had a completely different shita and was much more machmir than that. So, I mean, there are a lot, there's like a plethora of stuff that the Rebbe was much more machmir on.