[Avodah] Yemenites on Kol Isha

[Michael Makovi]

I've heard hearsay that Yemenites have some leniences on kol isha,
that religious traditional Yemenite Jews listen to women sing. A
Yemenite friend of mine says his Yemenite friends listen to women sing
without a problem, and I made sure to clarify with him that he meant
punctiliously observant Yemenites who actually truly kept Yemenite
minhagim and didn't just wear their Temaniut on their sleaves out of
mere ethnic pride. And I remember reading an article in the Jerusalem
Post about a recent aliyah of several Yemenite families; the article
said that when a Yemenite woman (no husband) and her children got into
a cab, whose driver happened to be Yemenite, they (the woman and the
cabbie) started singing Temani zemirot together.

Does anyone know of any textual evidence for anything I've just said?
Or, something similar regarding other communities? (Rabbi Marc Angel
testifies in one of his books that traditional Judeo-Spanish
Turkish/Balkan Jews permitted women to sing Ladino romances (ballads)
solo before men.)

I've been asked to write an article on leniencies for kol isha, and
I'll mostly be basing it on Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg's notice that
according to Rambam and Sedei Hemed, kol isha = etzba ketana = assur
l'hanot (hirhur) = mutar if no hana'a. (Sedei Hemed thus permitted kol
isha with eulogies and dirges, since he said there's no hana'a, and
Rabbi Weinberg permitted with zemirot. But obviously, theoretically,
this whole heter opens the door to any leniency based on time and
place.) Also, Rabbi David Bigman points out that this solves a
puzzling difficulty in the Shulhan Arukh: the SA says that we follow
Rambam on kol isha ( that kol isha = etzba ketan and not kriat Shema),
but that it's good to be strict and follow the Kriat-Shema shita as
well. Rabbi Bigman notes that if Rambam meant that kol isha is
forbidden all the time, then what senseless kind of stricture is the
SA making (you cannot be more strict than a blanket issur if that's
what the Rambam meant!)? Rather, says Rabbi Bigman, the SA is saying
that kol isha is forbidden like etza ketana (i.e. assur only where's
there hana'a/hirhur), but that it's good to be strict and avoid kol
isha during kriat shema even if there's no hana'a/hirhur at all.
(Rabbi Bigman points out that contra Rabbi Saul Berman IIRC, the kriat
shema shita is a stricture, not a leniency. Rabbenu Hananel, following
the Shema shita, says kol isha is forbidden with one's wife during
Shema and kal va-homer with ALL women at ALL times, even to merely
SPEAK to those women.) If anyone knows of any literature on this in
general, viz. kol isha being permitted where there's no hana'a, I'd
welcome such references as well, but I've already gotten a pretty
solid case on the theoretical shita; I'm more interested in people who
followed it l'maaseh like Rabbi Weinberg and Sedei Hemed and the
Judeo-Spanish etc.

Michael Makovi

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me. Thanks!