Barring women from Hashoah singing is an embarrassment

Rabbi Sa’ar Shaked

The Board of Deputies has rejected all attempts to compromise outside of court, including the offer that a woman will sing only the anthems at the end, or that independent mediation will take place.

Maybe for the first time in this country, Jews are going to have to ask the state to decide in an internal dispute. This could have been avoided if the voice of the majority of South African Jews, who are not comfortable with this kind of discrimination, was heard.

It is no secret that an ultra-Orthodox minority have managed to seize power in Jewish communities around the globe. What 10 years ago was the demand of a few extremists has made its way into the mainstream. And there are other issues, too, around female dress codes: the latest case in the news is a water park where girls were asked to use the slides with their clothes on rather than wearing swim suits. Or the IDF memorial day in the city of Sderot where women are now, suddenly, not allowed to sing.

We still hear regularly about discrimination against women in public transport (in Israel) and on El Al flights. Unfortunately for El Al, the airline was sued this February by Renee Rabinowitz, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, who was asked to move seats on a Tel Aviv flight because an ultra-Orthodox man refused to sit next to her.

Sadly, it is undeniable that public space in Israel has become more and more constrained for women.

We might have hoped that these kind of things would not infiltrate South Africa. It is sad that the rabbinic leadership is playing a divisive role rather than an inclusive and uniting one. It doesn’t have to be like that. Many South African Jews remember the times of late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris who would never have allowed such a deterioration. 

However, this struggle to allow women’s voices to be heard, will not be determined in court, nor by any chief rabbi. It will be sorted out finally when the silent majority have had enough of this mockery in the name of Judaism.

The right “not to be offended by women’s voices” must not be allowed to overcome the right of those voices to be heard.

Beit Emanuel Progressive Synagogue

Parktown, Johannesburg