[Avodah] fashion models and opera singers

[Chana Luntz]

RTK writes:

> But it would be OK for a woman to perform for a non-frum 
> Jewish man, who might well be found in an opera house?   
> There are at least some Jews living in every city in the 
> world big enough to have an opera house, and it's reasonable 
> to assume that Jews -- being among the most cultured and 
> affluent people in every city -- will sometimes go to the opera.
> 
> If it's not OK for a Jewish man to hear a woman sing I don't 
> know how it can be OK for a Jewish woman to sing in a venue 
> where there is a very high probability that at least one 
> member of the audience is a Jewish man.

To understand why this would be so, you need to understand the halacha
of lifnei iver.  RZS referred to it in his post, but it may have been
difficult to follow for those who do not know the sources.  As simply as
I can, the case discussed in the gemora (see Avodah Zara 6a-b) is where
a nazir (who is forbidden to touch wine) is handed wine by somebody
else.  And the gemora there refers to two different scenarios.  The
first is one where this all takes place on the same side of the river.
That is, the nazir could just as easily have gotten up himself and taken
the wine, just that the other person has helped him.  The second case,
ie "two sides of the river", is where the wine is on the other side of a
river and that means that the nazir could not get the wine himself, he
was dependent on another person (maybe a person with a boat) to get the
wine for him.  

The comparision to the opera singer case would seem pretty
straightforward.  If this particular opera singer did not sing, somebody
else would, making it a same side of the river case.

There is a terrific summary of the issues involved in this by R' Michael
Broyde in his book, the Pursuit of Justice, which discusses halacha and
the practice of secular law (I only have an old proof, so I am reluctant
to quote page numbers as they have probably changed, but will quote some
key passages).  Of course this issue is one that can be easily faced by
a litigation lawyer.  What happens if a Jewish person comes to you and
insists that he wants to litigate against another Jewish person in the
secular courts, even though that transgresses the issur of arkos?
Assuming that you are not the only litigation lawyer in town, we are
once again in "same side of the river" territory, ie if you don't act
for him, somebody else will.  Can one take such a client?

R' Broyde summarizes the approaches amongst the rishonim as follows:

"Thus three approaches can be found with regard to aiding one who wishes
to sin.  Maimonides maintains that the biblical prohibition is always
violated by aiding.  Rabbanu Nissim (Ran) belives that biblical law is
violated only when others cannot also execute the act; Tosafot maintains
that when there are others who can - and will aid the violater or he
could act alone, neither rabbinic nor biblical law is violated."

R' Broyde goes on to say:

"The classical codifiers of the law have taken a number of approaches to
this topic.  Rabbi Yosef Karo, writing in the Shulchan Aruch, when
dicussing whether one can sell items to a non-Jew which might be used in
his (idolatrous) religious practice, apparently adopts the approach of
Maimonides (or at least Ran) and concludes that it is prohibited to aid
a person in the commission of a sin, although others will aid him if one
does not (Yorech Deah 151:1).
Rabbi Isserles (Rema) in his glosses does not agree with this position.
He quotes the position of Tosafot that when others can aid the sinner,
it is permissible for any other individual to aid him as well.
Additionally, he quotes the position of the Ran, that this is prohibited
according to rabbinic law.  He concludes:

"The tradition is in accordance with the first opinion (Tosafot); pious
people (literally, spiritually elevated people) should conduct
themselves in accordance with the second opinion (Ran)"

The classical commentary of the Shakh adds yet another rule.  He states
that when dealing with a person whom one is not obligated to prevent
sinning (footnote, ie either an apostate or a non-Jew ...) all
authorities (footnote, Ran and Tosefot) agree that if others will aid
him if the prospective facilitator does not or if he can do the whole
act himself, it is entirely permissible to aid him.  The basis of the
rabbinical prohibition to aid sinners is to separate them from sinning.
Thus according to Shakh it is permissible to aid a non-Jew or a Jew with
no fidelity to Jewish law when others can aid them, since there is no
obligation to prevent such a person from sinning.  It is only in the
case of generally observant Jews, according to the Shakh, that the two
opinions of Rabbi Isserles (Rema) are relevant.
Rabbi Ezekiel Landau adds his own insight to the opinion of Shakh.  He
states that according to Shakh, any time a person knowingly violates a
particular rule, that person is to be classified as a "Jew with no
fidelity to Jewish law" for the purposes of the prohibition to assist
this person in a violation.  Thus, according to this opinion, a lawyer
can aid even an apparently religious Jew in an improper lawsuit provided
that the religious Jew knows he is violating Jewish law."

End of quotations from R' Broyde.  Note that I have some difficulty with
this Dagul Mervava (ie the R' Landau quote) as it seems to me that if
this were so, one could never have a case of lifnei iver or the
rabbinical form with a nazir (ie the primary case in the gemora) as
surely every nazir knows that touching wine is prohibited.  But be that
as it may, the key thing is that lawyers have quite a lot to rely on if
they take on a case from a non religious Jew to sue another Jew in the
secular courts, and, it would seem by fairly easy analogy, so would an
opera singer singing in front of a non religious Jewish man in the
audience.
 
Note that this issue comes up in a whole myriad of contexts - your
husband may well face it, at least indirectly, if he sells CDs and such
to not such religious Jews - how does he know they won't play them on
shabbas?  Might he not be aiding them in that averah?  But as you can
see, there is a lot of halacha that should mean such products are not a
problem.

> --Toby Katz

And RAS writes:

> Can the same thing be said about a frum female who wants to 
> wear a bikini at the beach - it's those men looking at her 
> that are transgressing, not her?  And, since these men are at 
> the beach (where there are other women dressed in a similar 
> fashion), there's no problem with "lifnei eiver." I think we all would
agree that this would, in fact, be 
> wrong.
> 

And in fact I have heard similar arguments for allowing a woman to wear
a bikini on the beach, so I don't thing the agreement is as universal as
you think.  Of course if the beach can be seen by a religious Jew with a
proper reason for being there (eg on his way to work) then if you hold
by the Ran rather than Tosphos, there would seem to be a rabbinical
prohibition.  If the only Jews on the beach are those with no fidelity
to Jewish law, then one would have thought the same arguments ought to
apply - although again one might need to consider the extent to which
viewing erva is an issur even for non Jews.  One slight difference
though between the beach case and the opera singer case is that it is
not as though there are specific spots at which people gather to see
bikini clad women, and if one woman does not take that slot, another
will.  That is, it is always possible that a woman might turn up in a
bikini and discover that she happens to be the only woman on the beach
and that there might just not be anybody else prepared to display at the
relevant time.  However in the opera singer case it is very clear that
if this woman does not sing a particular role, somebody else will be
hired to do so, making it much more like the lawyer case referred to
above.

>  If so, how is it different than singing at the opera 
> - both are "displaying their erva"?
>

The interesting question is - where is the issur regarding "displaying
erva" if not located within lifnei iver?  As mentioned in my previous
posting, R' Getzel Ellinson learns it out of lo yireh bach ervas davar.
That works more easily for the bikini case (which is really about
seeing) than kol isha  - and really works very well for, say, a beach in
Israel (which could be understood to be machanecha).  It works less well
for a non Jewish private beach in America, say and with some difficulty
for a non Jewish opera house.  The other prohibition I cited, lo yiye
kadesh, might also be applied to a bikini wearer perhaps - if one can
argue that that is the garment of those of improper sexual behaviour.
Of course defining a woman to be a kadesha based on these types of
actions would make it much more difficult for kohanim to ever marry, so
I think that mostly poskim have shied away from such a position.

There is of course a whole literature on what it is improper to display
even when going to the bathroom and more on whether a woman can display
erva to other women, and to the extent that these areas are not
sufficiently covered by a bikini, then these discussions would be
relevant here too.  However I am not aware of any strictures upon a
woman singing in private or in front of other women so there is nothing
useful there to apply to the opera singer case.
 
> KT,
> Aryeh

Regards

Chana