Kol Isha II: Mutual Responsibility

To whose voice does kol isha apply?

Kol isha refers to a male hearing the voice of a female raised in song or used in a manner that fosters an intimate connection. Though there may be wider application when a man recites Shema or prayers or studies Torah, this prohibition generally applies to a man hearing the voice of a woman with whom relations would be considered “gilui arayot” (a severe sexual prohibition), such as a woman married to another man.

At first glance, Beit Shemuel seems to maintain that the voice of an unmarried female is not subject to the halacha of kol isha.

However, the term “penuya,” here may refer specifically to a single woman who is not a nidda. (This could be a young woman before menarche, or a woman who was widowed or divorced after menopause.) Today, girls typically become nidda with their first menses and remain in nidda until immersing in the mikveh just prior to marriage. Relations during nidda are considered gilui arayot.

Mishna Berura writes that kol isha does apply to the voice of an unmarried woman in nidda. This view has been widely accepted.

Given that nidda usually doesn’t begin before age eleven, Rav Moshe Feinstein only applies kol isha to the singing of females aged eleven and up, though he praises stringency.

Some other halachic authorities, including Ben Ish Chai, apply the prohibition at a younger age, though the reasoning is less clear.

Within the Family

There is halachic debate about kol isha within the immediate family. Some halachic authorities rule stringently, even for family members, at least from over age eleven. Here, for example is Rav Yisrael Pesach Feinhandler of twentieth-century Jerusalem.

Others do not apply kol isha within the immediate family, where laws of erva often receive more lenient treatment, certainly between (grand)parents and (grand)children, and to some extent between siblings. In many communities, siblings touch each other casually and similarly sing together, or to each other, freely.

Still others justify making a familial exception for a different reason, with potentially broader range. Rema ruled that a voice to which a man is accustomed is permissible for him to hear, and not subject to kol isha. Rav Yisrael Yaakov Fisher is lenient within the family along these lines:

Practice within the family varies widely and typically depends on some mix of familial custom and communal practice.

The question of kol isha also arises concerning a husband hearing his wife during nidda, when relations are forbidden as arayot but not all the laws of erva apply. In this case, Aruch Ha-shulchan rules stringently, because a husband may find his wife’s singing arousing, and arousal should be avoided during nidda:

In contrast, Rav Ovadya Yosef rules leniently on a husband hearing his wife sing during nidda. His logic is twofold: One, a husband is permitted to look at his wife for pleasure during nidda, and singing is a less stringent halacha than looking. Two, he will not be overcome by desire because he knows that they will be fully permitted to each other shortly, when nidda is over:¹

Although the practice of many communities is stringent in accordance with the view of Aruch Ha-shulchan, many others follow Rav Ovadya’s lenient view.

Another aspect of ‘whose voice’ concerns whether women have any parallel issue when listening to men. We have learned that our sages consider a woman’s voice in song or when used to build a sense of intimacy as potentially arousing to men or liable to lead to sexual transgression, and therefore introduced the prohibition of kol isha. Does the reverse hold true?

Sefer Chassidim, a medieval pietistic work, suggests that a woman does have a parallel prohibition of listening to men:

However, while early rabbinic literature does consider the possibility of women being prohibited from looking at men with intent to take pleasure, there is no parallel discussion of whether a woman may enjoy a man’s voice . As we have seen, the Talmud specifically distinguishes between the pleasantness of a woman’s voice and that of a man’s.

Influenced by these factors and by accepted custom, Rav Ovadya Yosef concludes that Sefer Chassidim’s statement is not accepted as halacha:

Still, Rav Baruch Gigi, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, has recently argued in the spirit of Sefer Chassidim that women should refrain from attending pop concerts with male performers if there is concern about the style or tone of the performance:²

As we’ve discussed, the prohibition of men or women listening to a singer if the context or content of the singing is inappropriate does not depend on kol ish or kol isha, but on the halachot pertaining to song. Men and women should weigh attendance at concerts based on context and content, not just gender.

Before discussing a woman’s relationship to kol isha, it is important to clarify the halachic significance of a man’s intent, for which he bears full responsibility. Intent may affect whether a man violates kol isha in a couple of ways:

I. Active Intent Some halachic authorities draw a distinction between active intent and lack of it. Rambam, applying kol isha beyond Keri’at Shema, explains that whenever the Torah prohibits a couple from having relations and from approaching relations (engaging in sexually affectionate touch), rabbinic law prohibits the man from looking at the woman’s beauty with intent to enjoy its sexual attractiveness,³ and even from listening to her voice.

Tur and Shulchan Aruch paraphrase Rambam here, and write that a man receives punishment for listening to the voice of a woman who is erva to him only when he intends to derive pleasure from it.

Indeed, Rambam presents intent to take pleasure as central to the prohibition of a man’s looking at a woman. Seridei Eish argues that Rambam likewise limits the man’s prohibition in kol isha to when he listens with intent to take pleasure in what he hears:

Other halachic authorities reject leniency based solely on a man’s lack of active intent. Yere’im, for example, addresses a locale in which non-Jewish women would sing with great frequency in public.

Were lack of intent to take pleasure sufficient grounds to permit kol isha, Yere’im would not need to invoke the principle of “eit la’asot la-Shem,” meaning that there is no choice but to abrogate an aspect of Halacha (in this case, kol isha during Keri’at Shema) in order to ensure its survival (in this case the ability to recite Keri’at Shema).

Similarly, Chayyei Adam implies that a woman’s singing voice is always problematic for a man reciting Shema or learning Torah. His intent becomes relevant only when a woman speaks, not when she sings:

II. Negative Intent Rabbeinu Yona argues that if a man has no intent to take pleasure in a woman’s voice and also actively occupies his mind with other things, then the voice doesn’t prevent him from reciting Shema, or at least not from completing it once he’s begun.

In the nineteenth century, Ben Ish Chai makes a related claim, that a man’s intent not to listen may suffice to prevent violation of kol isha. His reasoning takes its cue from a Talmudic passage about involuntarily deriving benefit:

It is prohibited to wear sha’atnez (a mixture of linen and wool). However, a person selling garments made from sha’atnez is permitted to drape them over himself, so long as his intention is solely to display them for sale and not to benefit from them as clothing. This is permissible even if he could have displayed them on a rod, without potentially violating the prohibition. By analogy, Ben Ish Chai argues that a man hearing a woman sing without intent to listen is not in violation of kol isha.

We will see below that Ben Ish Chai allows for a woman to continue singing when a man in her presence recites Shema, and does not write that a man should stop her. This ruling likely reflects his view that a man hearing a woman’s voice involuntarily does not violate kol isha. Following his reasoning, someone who maintains that a man violates kol isha even without active intent to take pleasure could still recognize active intent not to listen as a means of avoiding transgression.

More recently, in 2017, controversy erupted over an Israeli army policy requiring religious male soldiers to attend military ceremonies that included vocal performances by female soldiers. Rav Elyakim Levanon expressed his opposition in the strongest terms.⁴ He later clarified his view to allow for these soldiers to use earplugs.⁵

Rav Baruch Gigi, on the other hand, permits soldiers to attend ceremonies with female vocalists:⁶

Summary

According to the view that kol isha depends on the man’s intent, the man determines his own intentions, what he can handle and how.⁷ According to the view that kol isha does not depend on the man’s active intent to take pleasure, a man‘s conscious intent not to take pleasure in hearing a woman sing may keep him from violating the prohibition. (Even according to those who reject intent as a factor, a man might be able to move to an adjacent space, or take another measure within a space so that he hears her less well.)

Intent-dependent situations are often less than ideal, and put a certain pressure on the man. Still, the views attributing significance to a man’s intent mean that a woman’s singing does not automatically entail a kol isha violation for a man.

Does kol isha create halachic limitations on women who wish to sing?

The specific halachic implications of kol isha for a woman who would like to sing are unclear. We have seen that all Jews should sing with tzeniut and without deliberate intent to build intimacy or arousal outside of the marital relationship. We’ve also seen that the prohibition of kol isha applies specifically to men.

Given that a woman cannot personally violate kol isha, why should she think twice about singing when she does not intend to arouse or build intimacy with men?

Potentially for two reasons: tzeniut and mutual responsibility. When Halacha considers something to be a form of erva, it is assumed that a person would not reveal it, as a matter of tzeniut. Additionally, Jews bear responsibility to help each other observe mitzvot, as a matter of ahavat Yisrael and areivut,⁸ and the mitzva of lifnei iveir lo titen michshol (Vayikra 19:4, “do not put a stumbling block before the blind”) prohibits us from leading others to transgress Halacha.⁹

Let’s look more closely at the halachic debate over how these considerations, both of which depend to some extent on community norms, can affect when a woman sings.

I. Defining Kol Isha When is a woman’s voice considered a form of erva? The more one views kol isha as context-dependent, the more possible contexts exist in which a woman can sing with tzeniut.¹⁰ (We discuss contextual considerations in the final installment of this series.)

II. Assessing Responsibility How much responsibility is borne by whom? When and to what extent can men reasonably be expected to take active responsibility for their intentions or reactions in a way that is halachically meaningful, and how might that affect a woman’s halachic accountability when she sings?

Halachic authorities approach these issues in a range of ways. Rav Yissachar Eilenberg, for example, considers a woman’s voice to be erva in a wide variety of situations, and minimizes men’s ability to control their urges. This leads him to instruct all women not to sing audibly in the presence of men other than immediate family members.¹¹

Rav Eilenberg acknowledges the complication of limiting a woman’s expression even when she has no intent to violate halacha or to arouse, but he does not see a way around it. This view has been embraced by many Jewish communities in which women are taught to refrain from singing audibly in the presence of men.

In contrast, Rav Shlomo Ganzfried focuses on a specific situation in which kol isha is of great concern, namely, when a man is reciting Shema. While he prefers that a woman refrain from singing, he leaves room for a man to find a way to handle the situation on his own.¹²

Ben Ish Chai also singles out situations of particular kol isha concern. He takes matters one step further, though, and does not suggest that a man ask a woman to refrain from singing, even when he recites Shema, learns Torah, or prays within earshot. Rather, he places responsibility on the man to go to another room or adapt his learning if the voices are audible to him at those times.¹³

Note that women and girls in his community (Baghdad of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) would customarily sing in a variety of contexts, whether putting babies to sleep or gathering around a bride on the eve of her wedding, and that Ben Ish Chai expresses no reservations about these practices. Other historical records also attest to a range of women’s singing in a range of communities.¹⁴

In Practice

As above, the question of a woman singing in a given situation hinges on two core halachic issues: Would men hearing her clearly be violating Halacha? At what point does her responsibility for supporting observance of this halacha intersect with a man’s responsibility to observe it?

Given the range of approaches to answering these questions, practice often depends on communal norms for addressing them. As a rule, people should be respectful of a community’s or a host’s practices. Halacha recognizes local custom, minhag ha-makom, and urges compliance with a host’s wishes whenever possible and permissible.¹⁵

It is also incumbent on everyone in any setting to be mindful of the halachot of not embarrassing others, whatever their practice may be.

What about a situation in which a household’s practice, or song in another setting, will diverge from the practice typical of the community? In the case of hosts serving a dish at their table that they know does not meet their guest’s kashrut standards, Mordechai writes that the hosts need to inform their guests of that fact. His suggestion could also be adopted here.

This course of action is similar to a distributor of recordings or videos clearly indicating that a woman sings on the recording or video, without making a halachic determination for others as to whether this presents kol isha concern. (We look at the halachic status of recordings here.)

Beyond the question of the impact on men of a woman’s singing, some halachic authorities have written about the potential impact on women of not singing. In his responsum permitting singing zemirot together, Rav Yechiel Ya’akov Weinberg raises this consideration:

In short, there are cases in which the spiritual needs of the women in a given community may lead that community to rely on more leniencies with kol isha.

Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein argues that a similar calculus should apply today:¹⁶

Rav Lichtenstein’s assessment of the National Religious or Modern Orthodox community leads in the direction of leniency. It might not hold true, though, in communities in which women’s singing may be far more limited to start with.

His emphasis on ‘legitimate pesak‘ reinforces the significance of awareness of halachic factors that can mitigate considerations of kol isha. In some situations, a woman might not sing. In others, a woman might find a way to sing that minimizes the halachic difficulties it could present for the men around her.

In our final installment, we turn our attention to what contextual grounds for leniency might be relevant to assessing situations in light of kol isha, with special attention to religious song.