With Memorial Day and Independence Day being observed this week, the kol isha issue is once again in the news.
In an incident last week frum soldiers participating in a ceremony on a military base requested ear plugs to be used when the female vocalists performed. They were attending the base’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.
The base commander declined a request from hesder soldiers to insert ear plugs or ear phones from a music device as women performed. He did however permit them to bring in sifrei Tehillim, to be used during the kol isha portion of the event.
There are likely to be additional cases this week, as Wednesday 3 Iyar 5772 is Memorial Day followed by Independence Day on Thursday.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
Perhaps next time they bring their own and quietly plug their ears without a formal request? Under the radar so to speak. Hmm… we could call it stealth technology listening.
This is like raising issues about kol isha or not serving yoshon only at Xmas day parties.
In addition to the overall sad irony of this unrelenting and unnecessary religious repression in a “Jewish” State, it’s also ironic that you can’t say Tehillim nor any other davar SheBiKedusha while these women are singing.
So I’m not sure why the Tehillim were helpful other than being a much better place to look than the State-mandated and imposed gilui arayos.
May Hashem redeem us all with the true geulah BB”A.
The fact that the army “invited” (well, ordered) Hareidim to attend something with women singing should be understood to be deliberate harassment. An analogy, common in American courts, is where a firm schedules a “business lunch” (i.e. a meeting, held at a restuarant) at a restaurant one of whose features is the presence of under-dressed women (e.g. a traditional “Playboys’ Club” or “Hooters” or a “strip club”). American courts have found that though they are not “harmed”, women who are required to attend can cite this as indicative of a pattern of “creating a hostile environment.”
If the leadership of the army in Israel goes out of it way to created a “hostile environment” for frum soldiers, why should we take them seriously when they try to recruit frum soldiers? Even if all hareidim were super-zionists (and frankly, many would be quite content to be an autonomous ghettoized kehillah within an Islamic state, the pre-1914 status quo ante), why would anyone join an army that is hostile to them?
This is a deliberate attempt to push religious soldiers out of the leadership of the IDF, to maintain the secular hegemony of the officer corps.
All this is going on at the same time as former IDF commander Ashkenazi iscomplaining about the lack of interest among Hareidim in joining the IDF.
HELLO!–commander Ashkenazi. Wake up and see what your own officers are doing!
Even those haredim who would be content to go back to the pre-1914 status quo, know that that isn’t an option. If the medinah should chas vesholom fall, the streets will run with Jewish blood. And any surviving kehilla would not have the Great Powers to protect them from the usual Arab depredations, as they did in the last century or so before WW1; when the Arabs inevitably started in with pogroms, blood libels, forced conversions, etc., the same world opinionmakers who had driven the medinah into extinction would tut tut and do nothing. Almost all haredim know this well, which is why whenever there is a crisis they daven for the soldiers.