One of the saddest things weve read recently is news of the resignation of the chief rabbi of the Israel Air Force from a program that recruits haredi Orthodox men for the Israel Defense Forces over the issue of female singing.
The pertinent background is the well known population explosion of the haredi Orthodox community in Israel, alongside the longtime preference of that community to serve Israel through Torah study rather than military service. While the ideal of Torah study remains in place and surely is a bulwark for the safety of the state, it is becoming increasingly clear that as this subcommunity grows, not all of its young men are cut out for productive, long-term, full time Torah study.
In fact, a significant number of haredi young men are excluded from both worlds: the world of Torah study, for which they do not have the discipline or aptitude, and the world of employment in secular society, for which service in the IDF is a requirement. To have a significant number of Israeli citizens doing nothing productive is a prescription for individual frustration, social discord and, ultimately, a weakening of Israels security.
An important first step toward addressing this problem has been taken in recent years by an initiative from within both haredi society and the IDF: the enlistment of haredi young men in the IDF, within units that meet the religious requirements of the enlistees. This has increased the number of Israeli soldiers good for the IDF and has enabled these men to find productive jobs good for them. Its a win-win.
The numbers of haredi soldiers are not yet large, but they are growing and, perhaps most important, they engender a certain acceptance within the haredi community of the idea of its less scholarly men serving in the IDF. With haredi society growing dramatically, it is important to nurture this first step for Israels future.
Unfortunately, a major step backward completely needless has been taken by the IDFs chief of staff, Benny Gantz. He has confused a slew of contemporary social problems and disputes in Israel with a longstanding tenet of Jewish law that predates and, in fact, has nothing to do with the current disputes.
Those disputes involve the inexcusable, indeed sacreligious, harassment of young students attending a non-haredi school in Bet Shemesh; as well as the growing popularity of segregated bus lines in the haredi community and the more recent attempt to enforce the separation of the genders on the public streets of certain haredi neighborhoods. Our purpose here is not to revisit the voluntary segregation issue. What has happened from the secularists perspective is a breakdown in equality and social cohesion. Against this background, comes the objection of haredi (and other Orthodox) soldiers to listening to females sing in military contexts, and voila! To the secularists it seems that Israel has one more objectionable practice insisted on by the Orthodox part and parcel of the recent pattern.
And so, the IDF issues an edict: You cant be in the army if you refuse to listen to a female sing at a military performance. The haredi soldiers react: Youve broken your commitment to us to allow us to serve in the IDF while retaining our religious standards. And now the chief recruiter of the haredi soldiers says: I resign!
Whoa. Back up. The proscription of males listening to live female singing (kol isha) goes back a couple of thousand years to the Talmud. The proscription is well ensconced in Jewish law. This proscription did not originate in connection with contemporary disputes about buses and sidewalks and is not another example of haredi Jews seeking to alter the current social and religious landscape in Israel.
This proscription finds itself reflected all over the world in countless womens musical groups, who perform for women exclusively again, entirely unrelated to any recent occurrence in Israel or its armed forces.
Surely, whether a soldier does or does not listen to a female singing in a military setting has nothing to do with military performance. The singing flap does have to do with longstanding Orthodox (not just haredi Orthodox) reservations about serving in the military in a mixed gender setting, in which lax moral practices are expected.
A great first step to finding a creative way around this cultural divide has been found with the haredi IDF units, following the equally separate hesder (modern Orthodox) units. The IDF shoots itself in the foot by insisting that all soldiers engage in militarily irrelevant singing programs. Rather, the proscription of kol isha needs the IDFs intellectually honest acknowledgement as a longstanding point in Jewish law. For the IDF to force religious soldiers to listen to live female singing is a form of secular coercion, no less acceptable than religious coercion.
By all means, let the substantive arguments about voluntarily segregated buses, indefensibly harassed children, service in the IDF and the future of religious-secular relations in Israel continue. But keep a superficially similar yet substantively different issue out of the debate. All sides will benefit.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
