[Avodah] Kol Isha - HETER

[Michael Makovi]

>> So if there is no hana'ah / hirhur, then there is no issur either.
>>
>> Michael Makovi

> Arguably, it is more accurate to define kedei leihanot as:
> Only if there is no shred of desire to find hana'ah, even if that desire
> remains unfulfilled.
>
> R' Micha

That seems fair.

But, I don't want to quibble on exactly what hirhur / hana'ah is,
because if you really pushed me into a corner, I'd have to say the
fear of hirhur / hana'ah is that it will lead to illicit
relationships. If so, then I'd say that a man ought to be able to use
pornographic photographs of deceased women, since there's no fear
he'll have relations with them. But I'm not going to make that
argument, because I think it's going too far, regardless of how
formally logical it is. It'd be a "scoundrel with the license of the
Torah".

So I don't want to argue too much on exactly what hirhur / hana'ah is.

But R' Micha's statement seems fair, that illicit hirhur / hana'ah
includes even the mere attempt to find hirhur / hana'ah, even if that
attempt fails. If someone bought a pornographic magazine and opened it
up, only to find that it is devoted to some strange fetish that he
doesn't share, then I'd say he might still have violated an issur,
even though he never succeeded in getting the desired hirhur /
hana'ah.

>> 4) The Jewish communities of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Syria,
>> Germany, and Cochin were historically lenient....
>>
>> Michael Makovi

> Which proves nothing. You would need to show that they historically
> weren't being yelled at, despite violating the pesaq of their own
> community's rishonim. Most Litvisher women didn't cover their hair, but
> no one was pasqining it's okay. Just that it wasn't a battle they could
> win.
>
> R' Micha

Which is precisely why I combined both halakhic and historical
examples. If I brought only halakhah, then I could be blamed for being
hypertextual and ignoring historic minhag. If I brought only
historical anecdotes, then one could reply as you just did, that it
was a battle the rabbis chose not to fight. But the combination of
two, I think, is far sturdier and far less assailable.

Furthermore, some of these anecdotes of mine actually involve rabbis
themselves listening to kol isha, so it's difficult to say the rabbis
merely chose not to fight the battle. As the Egyptian testimony of
mine says, the rabbis of Egypt used Umm Kalthoum's tunes in the
synagogue, even though they knew exactly where they came from! I think
it's fair to say that this is an actual implicit permission to listen
to her.

> And RYYW [ = Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg] was only meiqil because
> it was to inspire kids who would
> otherwise seek clubs not particular to promoting Yahadus! You keep on
> invoking him, but RYYW didn't buy into any of your arguments except
> where there was a conflicting mitzvah involved!
>
> R' Micha

That's true, but it's not the whole truth. Rabbi Weinberg first
established that:
1) Kol isha is mutar when hirhur / hana'ah is absent
2) Here ( = mixed-sex youth groups and Shabbat zemirot) there is no
hirhur / hana'ah

Only then did Rabbi Weinberg invoke the Mordekai's eit la'asot lashem,
to be lenient in kol isha for the sake of saving the Torah.

And even then, Rabbi Weinberg said it wasn't really an eit la'asot
lashem anyway, since, he said, he had already established the
technical permissibility.

For Rabbi Weinberg, the need to "inspire kids who would otherwise seek
clubs not particular to promoting Yahadus" was a secondary
consideration. By the time he invoked that argument, he had already
proved the technical permissibility of what he was coming to permit.

Michael Makovi