So, a woman sang

GILAD STERN

It hardly seems a big deal, and it shouldn’t be a big deal. It was a return to communal sanity after about 10 years in which the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies had banned a woman’s voice in song, in order to appease the demands of some religious leaders who felt that they could not allow themselves to hear a woman’s voice in song. The Cape Board should have asked the religious leaders to maybe leave when a woman sang, if it was unacceptable to them. 

But the Board of Deputies, effectively told half of all Jews, namely the women: “Be silent. You may be seen, but not heard, in song at least.” In doing that, the Cape Board failed its constituents and broke the law of this land, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of race or gender.

So, last Sunday, Caely Jo Levy sang a Yiddish song, Mir lebn eybik (We will endure) – composed by Vilna poet Leyb Rosenthal, who was murdered in the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia – at the commemoration.

We achieved this significant milestone after a decade of exclusion of a female singing voice, and only after a section of the Jewish community, including myself, approached the Cape High Court’s Equality Court. 

We did this when the Cape Board refused the entreaties of women’s groups such as the Union of Jewish Women and Bnoth Zion WIZO, to end the unseemly gender discrimination. 

We argued that there were other remedies for being sensitive to religious feelings, other than silencing all women! There was a public controversy, but in the end the Cape Board of Deputies agreed to end the ban rather than going to the High Court. We settled on a win-win process:

The formula agreed to (following an order of court) was that the ceremony would have two parts: The initial section would include a woman singing solo. So, last Sunday, the ceremony started at 10:30, with thousands attending.

After the initial section, at 11:00, while the names of young victims of the Holocaust were being read out, the religious leaders entered discreetly. I was at the gate – I counted four of them. 

It was dignified and subtle. We achieved something utterly simple and logical: Whoever didn’t want to hear the singing came half an hour late. The ban on women singing was consigned to history. That is as it should be.

Earlier this week in Israel, the national Yom Hashoah ceremony, at Yad Vashem was broadcast on TV, with President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the two Chief Rabbis – Ashkenazi and Sepharadi – present, as well as others, including former Chief Rabbi Lau. 

A female singer with a wonderful voice, sang on three occasions, the last one being the singing of Hatikvah. 

It seems that it is religiously acceptable for a female soloist to perform at Yad Vashem, carried live on all TV channels, and in the presence of the Israeli Chief Rabbis. That is as it should be. 

 It is, or should be, unremarkable. I hardly imagine that the Israeli Chief Rabbis are lax in their observance of religious strictures.

Cape Town Jewry has now aligned itself with normative practice in Israel, and with the norms of South African society, which abhors discrimination, for all the obvious historical and moral reasons. 

The ceremony was moving and dignified. So, a woman sang… It really was no big deal. 

Gilad Stern is a management consultant, while at work, and a mountaineer instructor when not at work.