Parashat
Be-Shalah 5764/February 7, 2004
Lectures on
the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of
Prepared for Internet Publication by the
Inquiries and comments to: Dr. Isaac Gottlieb, Department of Bible, gottlii@mail.biu.ac.il
“And Miriam chanted
for them” – Kol Isha?
Dr.
Admiel Kosman
Department
of Talmud
From the plain sense of the
text we can deduce that women used to sing in the presence of men and
occasionally even along with them, as is evident from Scripture’s account of
the Song of Miriam in this week’s reading:
“Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel
in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with
timbrels. And
Miriam chanted for them (masculine suffix):
Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He
has hurled into the sea” (Ex.
Also Deborah sang a victory song with
Barak for vanquishing Sisera and
his army: “On that day Deborah and
Barak son of Abinoam sang: …”
(Judges 5:1).
[1]
Likewise we find that women sang and danced
before King Saul after David slew Goliath:
“the women of all the towns of Israel came out singing and dancing to
greet King Saul with timbrels, shouting and
sistrums” (I Sam. 18:6).
Ecclesiastes describes choral groups of “male and female singers”
(Eccles. 2:6),
[2] and the song of men and women
is mentioned also in the farewell words of Barzillai
the Gileadite to David (II Sam.
The picture presented by the Talmud, as we know, is quite different. There we find the statement, attributed to Samuel, that “a woman’s voice is indecent” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 24a). Indeed, not all communities have always interpreted this as a total prohibition against hearing female singing, but in actual practice, following various developments which we can not go into here at length, [3] later rabbinic rulings viewed this as a comprehensive proscription against hearing a woman’s voice raised in song. [4] In this context one should bear in mind that also joint singing of men and women was not viewed with favor, following the words of Rav Joseph bar Hiyya, in the Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 48a, who stated:
If men sing and women respond [in song to the singing of the men], this is licentiousness; and if women sing and men respond [in song to the singing of the women], this is like setting fire to chaff, for it kindles desire like a flame set to linen.
Clearly the discrepancy between the implication of the biblical sources and the view cited above requires explanation. An attempt to cope with this discrepancy can be traced back as far as tannaitic literature, in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, Be-Shalah (Horowitz-Rabin ed., p. 152): “‘And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.’ Scripture tells that just as Moses recited the song for the men, so Miriam recited the song for the women, for it says, ‘Sing to the Lord …’”
This homily apparently takes the stand that Miriam sang only for the women, so her singing was not for the men, neither in itself nor as a choir of women singing with Moses’ choir. [5]
Among traditional commentaries one can find other opinions which assert that in certain circumstances, one may hear in a woman’s voice spirituality and that these circumstances pertained on the occasion of Miriam’s song. For example, the Zohar, Numbers (Shelah 167b), says:
“Then Miriam the prophetess ... took a timbrel in her hand ...” All the righteous in the Garden of Eden listen to her [6] sweet voice, and several holy angels give thanks and praise along with her to the Holy Name.
These commentaries, according to the thesis I shall present below, have in common what we might call a spiritual-utopian bent. Halakhically these commentators had no choice but to express the spiritual potential of the female voice in utopian terms. In other words, those commentators who sensed great spiritual potential in the female voice assumed that this could be shown only under conditions that would pertain in time to come, when there would no longer be any evil inclination; at present the yetzer hara throws up a smokescreen of physical attraction that makes it impossible to sense the powerful spiritual vitality of the female voice.
For example, Rabbi Menahem Azaria of Pano [7] (1548-1620), having assumed that Miriam and the women who sang in chorus did indeed sing before men, [8] claimed:
Song was her intention, and one should not be strict [forbidding this] in any event, since the evil inclination does not exist in that world. [9]”
In other words, Rabbi Menahem Azaria assumed that the moment of spiritual elation in which Miriam and the women sang before the men on the shore of the Red Sea was an exceptional moment in which the quality of the World to Come penetrated into this world, making it possible to deviate from the general rule forbidding women to sing before men. Hence the female voice at that special moment was both prophetic and divine, enabling the men to attain special spiritual elation. [10] This is apparently what he meant in saying “Song was her intention,” namely song in the sense of the spiritual revelation that enabled this singing. Moreover, it should be noted that Rabbi Menahem Azariah was not referring here to a quality of song which was specific to women, rather to the general prophetic quality of song, which could be male or female. In fact, in such song the distinction between male and female disappears altogether, since it is altogether divine.
Another possibility suggested by Rabbi Menahem Azariah is that only Miriam sang before the men, the rest of the women joining her only with musical accompaniment of various instruments but not with their voices raised in song. Why was Miriam’s singing here considered permissible? His explanation is that the other women were ordinary people, incapable of “directing their minds to the atika,” [11] whereas Miriam was a prophetess and as hence could know that at this precise moment it was the will of G-d that a woman [she, herself] should sing before the men, even though the halakhah generally forbade this.
The last possibility, the most remarkable of those offered by Rabbi Menahem Azariah, is that behind every single woman stood an “angel” to whom Miriam turned when she requested to be joined in song, and it was these angels who sang along with Miriam, not the rest of the women. Perhaps this can be viewed as an interesting reflection of the notion that when an “angel” stands behind a “woman” then her song is inspired singing, so that even men can become spiritually elated by it.
A different approach to this
problem was taken by Rabbi Ephraim of Luntshitz, author
of Kli Yakar
on the Torah (d. 1619). He maintained
that the status of women’s singing changed in this week’s Torah portion because
the women themselves changed for a brief moment, climbing to the spiritual
level of men in their “receptiveness of prophecy,” and in any event at this
specific moment the men were presumably in no danger of becoming excited by the
women’s voices. Rabbi Ephraim’s
interpretation is based on a grammatical “error” which he found in the
scriptural text: Miriam turned to the
women, asking them to join her in song, in the following words, “And Miriam
chanted for them (Heb. la-hem, masc.):
Sing to the Lord...” (Ex.
The principle difference between the approaches of these two rabbis regarding a woman’s voice can be summarized as follows: Rabbi Menahem Azariah emphasized the change that occurred at this specific, miraculous moment in the inner world of the men, rising to a level of spirituality at which they could sense the spirituality of the female voice; whereas Rabbi Ephraim of Luntshits viewed the change as having occurred within the women themselves, rising to greater spiritual heights (which, as he said explicitly, was the level of men), and in any event the element in their voices which could entice men into sinful thoughts would disappear. [14]
[1] Ralbag
wrote on Judges 4:25: “Over the miracle
that the Holy One, blessed be He, wrought for Israel through the hand of
Deborah, she sang; and the mention of Barak does not
mean that he assisted her in making the song, for she herself composed it;
rather, Barak is mentioned along with her the same as
‘Then Moses sang’.” In other words, in
Ralbag’s opinion, the prophetess Deborah composed the song
herself and was assisted by Barak only in the
performance of the song, just as in our parshah
it says, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song,” which, here too,
should be understood as Moses having composed the song and the Israelites only
assisting him in singing it (see Yehezkel Kaufmann, ,
Jerusalem 1962, p. 133, commentary on v. 1).
[2] The Zohar
compares this chorus with Miriam’s chorus of women at the
[3] Saul J. Berman, “
Kol Isha” in: Leo
Landman (ed.), Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein
Memorial Volume,
[4] See the summary of opinions
presented in Rabbi Yehiel Michael Epstein’s
Arukh ha-Shulhan,
Hilkhot Ishut, Even ha-
Ezer 21.3. It
should be noted that several later posekim took
a more lenient stand, some permitting mixed
singing of sacred songs by men and women
together in certain circumstances. For
example, see the ruling by Rabbi Yehiel Jacob
Weinberg, Resp. Seridei
Esh, Part II, par. 8.
Also cf. Joel B. Wolowelsky,
“Modern Orthodoxy and Women’s Self-Perception,” Tradition 22 (1986),
65-81.
[5] According to Philo’s
understanding in Life of Moses, II.256 (Susan Daniel-Nataf
ed., II, Mossad Bialik,
[6] Apparently
Jochebed’s. Cf. loc.
sit.
[7] Rabbi Menahem
Azariah of Pano,
Lemberg 1884, Part IV, par. 36.99b.
These remarks by Rabbi Menahem
Azariah are better known from the other source in
which they are cited: Yalkut
Hareuveni on Exodus,
[8] As a second possibility.
The first one, he maintained, was that the
women who joined Miriam did so only as a secondary voice, responding to the central
male voice sung by Moses and his fellows.
According to the words of Rabbi Joseph, Babylonian Talmud,
Sotah, cited above, this is not strictly forbidden
but is merely viewed as “licentious” behavior (of which they were not extremely
wary).
[9] Meaning the spiritual
world. Compare with the remarks
attributed to Abraham’s servant Eliezer in the
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra
58a: “It is well-known that desire does
not exist in that world [the World to Come].”
[10] A similar interpretation to
the verse at hand was given by Rabbi Issachar
Eilenburg in Tzedah la-
Derekh.
[11] Atika Kadisha is the epithet given in mysticism for the One G-d, Himself alone. See Judah Liebes, Torat ha- Yetzira shel Sefer Yetzira, Jerusalem 2001, p. 51.
[12] Rabbi Ephraim assumes this
verse to be saying that in time to come women will rise to the level of
men. This position is evidenced
repeatedly by Rabbi Hayyim Joseph David
Azulai, in various places in his works.
For example, cf. “Nahal
Kedumim le-Parashat Be-
Shalah,” par. 21 (
[13] In this connection, it is
worth noting Rabbenu Bahya’s
comment on the verse at hand: “One ought
not to wonder that prophecy should come to a woman, for she is of human kind,
and is called man, as it is said: ‘He … called them Man’ (Gen. 5:2).”
Rabbenu
Bahya proceeded to list quite a number of women who,
according to tradition, received prophecy, and several tenets of the faith that
according to the midrash were revealed by
women. He concluded, “All this indicates
that womankind is not totally vapid, but has substance” (Rabbenu
Bahya, Be’ur al
ha-Torah, ed Rabbi Hayyim Dov
Chavel, II, Jerusalem 1994, p. 135.)
[14] Also cf. Tovah
Cohen, “Yihudah shel
Miriam ke-Manhigah,” , Bar-Ilan
Parasha page Beshalah
5760.