When Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau sang along with a female choir…

Marie Bickof

I would like to draw the attention of those Orthodox rabbonim and others who opposed listening to a woman singing a mournful song to suit the occasion to an article that appeared in the Canadian Jewish News of July 21, by Eli Rubenstein, national director of the March of the Living, Canada.

Rubenstein was paying tribute to Elie Wiesel, in particular when they went on a March of the Living to the ruins of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Yom Hashoah in 1990. Wiesel gave a very heartbreaking speech of the terrible events when he was there.

I quote from Rubenstein’s article about what occurred after Wiesel spoke:

“And then, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and future chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, called upon the Toronto March of the Living student choir (composed of Tara Charendoff, Jillian Stronell, Talia Klein, Jennifer Goldhar, Jenny Lass, Dena Libman, Meghan Bochner and Jennie Blitz, accompanied by guitarist Hartley Weinberg and violinist Jillian Moncarz) to sing Hannah Senesh’s Eli, Eli (My G-d, My G-d).

“Rabbi Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor, sang along softly into the microphone. Soon, thousands of participants – survivors and students, educators and political leaders, from Israel and countries around the world – all joined in, amid the ruins of the crematoria singing the song that reminded us both of the beauty and fragility of life.”

Obviously from their names, the members of the choir are all young women.  

If someone as great as Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau is humble enough to ask a girls’/women’s choir to sing, and to sing with them, why do the South African rabbis believe that they are so high and mighty that they cannot hear a woman or women sing a mournful song in memory of those who lost their lives in such tragic circumstances?

These women are not dressed indecently, nor are they singing pop songs or even opera where their voices can excite a man. I am unable to see how a mournful song sung by a woman in these circumstances, can excite anyone at all, especially a man.

In fact, I remember seeing an article in the Jewish Report on other services held in South Africa where a woman (I’m almost sure from Klerksdorp) sang and there was no brouhaha over it and neither did the sky fall in!

I have enjoyed reading the Jewish Report from time to time when I have visited Johannesburg and am now subscribing to it electronically.

Thornhill, Canada