“Modern Orthodoxy” Moving into the Modern Age

Some time ago I attended a 3-day concert festival in Eilat. Classical music orchestra, male and female singers (opera and Israeli), classical and jazz pianists, even a professional whistler! The audience consisted of secular and modern-Orthodox alike.

Remember the old newspaper cartoon puzzle: “What’s wrong with this picture?” So what seems “off” about the above festival description?

If you can’t figure it out, that’s because the “contradiction” has become quite commonplace. It relates to Jewish religious law – halakha; the specific prohibition is called “kol isha,” the proscription against hearing a female sing, as this might entice men to do something that shouldn’t be done (I’ll leave what to your imagination).

So how is it that there were dozens of kippah-wearing men in the audience, even showing up every morning for self-organized prayer services – and then sitting in the audience listening to glorious female singing? The answer lies in a broader trend that is basically at one with the essence of the halakha itself.

As is well known, the root word of halakha is “walking” (la’lekhet). Not by accident is this term used for what might be thought of as immutable: Jewish religious law. But in fact, the halakha has always undergone change. In many (perhaps most) cases, the change has been to add more prohibitions through what is called “fencing” – keeping the adherent as far away as possible from doing the original prohibition. The classic case: not eating meat and milk products together, when the only thing that the Bible prohibited was cooking a lamb in its mother’s milk (obviously an issue regarding animal suffering and not a dietary one). Today, the Orthodox will have separate cutlery and even tablecloths for meat and dairy meals!

However, not everything moves in a more draconian direction. Kol isha is one example. In a world where the sexes were strictly separated, it might have made psychological (erotic) sense to prohibit women from singing in mixed company, and even prohibited altogether as their voice could carry over to those segregated by gender but in the same general environment. However, in the modern world such sex segregation is impossible legally, economically, and socially.

Given this “new” situation, a prohibition against hearing women singing makes little sense when men and women mix throughout the day, not to mention the ability to hear female singing without physical proximity (records, radio etc.). To my knowledge, no Orthodox rabbi has promulgated an official halakhic ruling permitting kol isha in all respects (a few do allow it in very narrow circumstances), but their Orthodox adherents have voted with their feet (and ears). The halakha doesn’t always need official rabbinical approval for significant change to occur.

Nor is this the only glacial change taking place. Here’s one other “social-oriented” halakhic proscription that is slowly losing force.

The Talmud has an interesting discussion regarding the question whether women should be allowed to read from the Torah to the congregation in synagogue (Talmud Bavli: Tractate Megillah 23a). The decision at the end was “no”. Why? Because if a stranger staying in town on shabbat should be in the synagogue and see a woman chanting the Torah portion of the week, he might think that no men in that town are capable of Torah reading, an obvious embarrassment for the menfolk!

Clearly, such “logic” doesn’t hold in an era when women work in professions alongside men. No one today would walk into a hospital ward, find three women doctors and think that men aren’t capable of being physicians.

There are other examples of “social modernity” changing Orthodox Jewish behavior. However, of even greater import is what’s up ahead. For example, what happens when bio-chemistry advances lead to growing meat from stem cells (with all the same nutrients, taste etc.) – leading ultimately to a state-mandated prohibition against slaughtering animals? Will such “meat” be considered “meaty” (fleishig) or pareve (neither meat nor dairy)?

In other words, it’s not merely social change but also scientific advances that will force the halakha to deal with modernity in positive fashion: kosher cheeseburger, anyone? In fact, if one really wants to, it is already possible to eat a strictly kosher cheeseburger with real animal meat and real dairy cheese. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a stretch but completely “kosher”: 1) Ritually slaughter a cow in proper halakhic fashion; 2) After it is dead, milk the cow! 3) Make cheese from that milk. 4) Put that cheese in a meat-burger. Voila! A kosher cheeseburger. Explanation: According to Jewish law, after ritual slaughtering, anything taken and used from a kosher animal is ipso facto “meat” – including the dead cow’s milk. Just don’t eat this in public, because then you run afoul of another restriction: mar’it ayin – others will see you and not understand the background, thus falsely concluding that one can eat any meat and cheese together.

If this sounds outlandish, it isn’t any different from weird, secular laws found in countries around the world. (There are many such head-scratching laws e.g., California bans eating frogs that have been in a frog-jumping contest!) In any case, the very “outlandishness” of this cheeseburger “solution” is evidence that the halakha is capable of original thinking to find solutions to pressing (and new) challenges. Whether such solutions emanate from above (rabbinical decisions), from the side (technological and scientific advances), or from the bottom up (social change), in principle the halakha has changed, is changing, and most certainly will continue to change.

How fast and in which direction – that’s the main remaining question.