[Avodah] Kol Isha - HETER

[Michael Makovi]

> This is an extremely serious misrepresentation and distortion of the
> Rambam.   He does not permit kol isha, as you seem to believe.
>
> Rn' Toby Katz

My interpretation of the Rambam is explicit in Rabbi Yehiel Weinberg.
Rambam says something like assur l'histakel b'etza ketana kedei
leihanot, v'gam lishmoah kol shel ha-erva. Is there any possible
interpretation other than to say (as Rabbi Weinberg does) that both
kol isha and etzba ketana are conditioned on kedei leihanot?

As for the Aharonim...

I realize my interpretation is cavalier, but what can I say? The
rishonim will interpret kol isha based on time and place, and Ra'avad
and Ra'avya both limited it to singing based on this, whereas the
clear peshat of the Gemara (as well as the interpretation of Rambam
and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid) is that is that kol isha includes even mere
speech. How can the Aharonim say that hergel is an illegitimate means
to limit kol isha, when they rely on the hergel-limitation when they
say kol isha is limited to singing? I cannot think of a more explicit
contradiction! They are relying on hergel at the very moment they say
hergel is not a legitimate factor! If you reject hergel, then you MUST
say that to speak to a woman violates kol isha. And if you say kol
isha is limiting to singing, that itself is a legitimation of hergel.

Read Rabbi Howard Jachter's article (cited in my essay), for example.
It's an excellent article, and a very useful one, to which I am
indebted. But it's rather frustrating to see him discuss Rabbi
Weinberg at length, and then conclude that no posqim have allowed
hergel to mitigate the prohibition. Excuse me?? Isn't that EXACTLY
what Rabbi Weinberg did?? He discusses Rabbi Weinberg, but by the end
of the article, he seems to have entirely forgotten all about him.

It's one thing to say that hergel is theoretically a legitimate
mitigating factor BUT that there is insufficient hergel nowadays to be
meiqil in practice. It one wants to argue with me on metziut, and say
that contrary to my argument, there IS hana'ah / hirhur in kol isha
even today, that's an argument I'll hear. I presume that Rabbi
Weinberg, for example, would argue that there IS hana'ah / hirhur in
kol isha, except for in zemirot and religious youth-group choirs. But
to argue that hergel is not theoretically a valid argument in the
first place???!!! That contradicts the explicit words of Rambam and
the Tur-Shulhan Arukh, as well as several other rishonim.

I'll also note that Rabbi Yehuda Herzl-Henkin, in his criticism of
Rabbi Saul Berman, endorses Rabbi Berman's criticism of the aharonim.
In Rabbi Henkin's words, "Still, parts of his discussion are
illuminating, regarding the achronim, and his call for examining the
practical parameters of kol b'ishah is well taken."

So if someone wants to say that there IS hana'ah / hirhur in kol isha
today, that seems to me to be a reasonable argument. But to say that
it doesn't even matter whether or not there is hirhur / hana'ah in the
first place, that is an incredible argument that flies in the face of
the Rambam.

Michael Makovi