I wonder what my younger self would think - if suddenly transported to the world in which we live today.
My parents were religious Jews who grew up in pre-Holocaust Europe. The religious values they absorbed stayed with them for life. I was raised according to those standards in post-Holocaust America. Although the world of European Jewry and American Jewry could not have been further apart culturally, the primary tenets of observant Judaism did not diminish in the slightest. Shabbos, kashrus, family purity laws (mikvah) were strictly observed, and Torah study was considered paramount.
But for my parents, living in the New World meant adapting to those parts of the culture that did not contradict halacha in particular and Torah values in general. So we owned a TV and occasionally went to a movie as a family. In short, we led a pretty normal American Jewish life without abandoning observance or Jewish values in any way.
It wasn’t only my family that lived that way. The acknowledged head of the Orthodox community in the city where we lived – Toledo - was Rabbi Nechemia Katz, who was also Rav Moshe Feinstein’s brother-in-law. Rabbi Katz was my father’s posek, deciding difficult questions of Jewish law. Our families were good friends, and we would often go to the beach together. (Yes, you read that correctly.) What may be little known is that Rav Moshe used to visit his brother-in-law in Toledo on occasion. That is how I met Rav Moshe. One year when I came home for Shabbos Chanukah (from Telshe) my father and I walked over to meet him on Friday night.
This, in a nutshell, is what life was like for Orthodox Jews in America back then (early 1960s).
The idea of mixed-gender seating in any arena (other than a shul) was not an issue. It was as normal as apple pie. Men and women were often seated together in various forums, such as concerts or banquets. No one gave it a second thought.
Fast forward to today. The following was published in Arutz Sheva:
A letter published in the sector’s Yated Ne’eman newspaper and signed by all the leading Lithuanian-Charedi Torah scholars announced the establishment of a new rabbinical committee called “Shira Kehalacha” (Song According to Jewish Law). The new committee will oversee the performance industry and act as a kind of “kosher certification” for the music world.
The committee’s directives include a complete ban on mixed-gender performances, even those with full separation. Male singers are prohibited from performing in front of women in any setting. Exceptions will only be made for events within synagogues under strict supervision.
Simultaneously, singers and producers are required to sign a commitment to adhere to these rules. Anyone who refuses will be subject to a ban.
Male singers can no longer perform in front of women?!
Wow!
To answer the opening question: I would think I had suddenly been transported to mars!
Not all that long ago, I was lamenting the fact that Charedi publications decided not to publish any pictures of women. No matter how modestly they were dressed. I am not going to go into the reasons this is such an egregious break from practices widely accepted by the Charedi world until recent years. Nor why this is so patently unfair to women. I simply want to note the direction in which the mainstream Charedi world is going, which is an extremely disturbing pattern of ever-increasing but unnecessary separation of the sexes.
It began with separating men and women at wedding banquets. That spread to separating them at fundraising banquets. Charedi institutions routinely had mixed-gender seating back in the 1960s. You will never see that happen again.
There was an outdoor concert held in Ramat Beit Shemesh many years ago. They had a section for separate seating. And a section for family seating for those who wanted to sit with their families. Because of that, one of the city’s leading Charedi rabbis crashed onto the stage at the very beginning of the concert and broke it up! Telling everyone to go home..
In one Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood where extremism is the norm, there has even been violence perpetrated in the name of gender separation.
How did this happen? How did we come to a world where mainstream Charedim are now living under what can only be described as extremist rules of gender separation?
I used to think it was the influence of a world that had always lived by such standards: the more extremist Chassidic world. They had always gone to great lengths to separate the sexes. They still do.
At a time when non-Chassidic Charedi weddings had mixed gender seating (in the 60s) Chassidic weddings were never mixed. Men and women always sat in separate sections of the banquet hall. Sometimes in separate rooms - or even separate nearby buildings when available.
I saw it as the non-Chassidic world not wanting to be outdone in ‘Frumkeit’ by the Chassidic world. If ‘they’ can have separate seating, ‘we’ will too.
When magazines stopped publishing pictures of women - even though it had long been acceptable in the non-Chassidic Charedi world - it was also because of the Chassidim, who never published such pictures. Not wanting to lose readers of that very large demographic, they chose to cater to their standard. Only now they claim they are following their Poskim.
Did their Poskim suddenly discover it was forbidden after decades of permitting it? Forgive me if I am cynical about that argument.
And now we have reached a level of absurdity that is both laughable and harmful at the same time. The idea of banning family seating at a concert as a matter of halacha is as absurd as banning separate seating at a fundraising banquet. Or even at a wedding banquet. (The latter may have been more understandable at a time when women were rarely found in the public square. But nowadays, when women are as ubiquitous as men in public life, that is no longer the case. See here.)
There is no Halacha barring the publication of pictures of women, regardless of what those magazine Poskim say. There were far too many pictures of the wives of Gedolim published in Charedi publications of the past to suddenly declare that it is forbidden. By doing so, they imply that the previous Poskim were wrong and that this generation of Poskim knows better. That is a major insult to the Poskim of the past.
Concerts that have family seating are not forbidden by Halacha either. I had in the past attended many such concerts in Chicago that were sponsored by Charedi institutions. The Poskim who now say they are forbidden place themselves above the previous Poskim who permitted it.
Not that any of my complaining about it will help. The move to the right has become the ultimate decision-maker. In the Charedi world, the more stringent one becomes, the more devout one feels and thereby closer to God. So they will abide by these rulings and continue along increasingly extremist paths. Morphing into a Judaism that will be unrecognizable from that of their grandparents
What about the rest of observant Israel that refuses to buy into these extremist ways? Are we considered unrepentant sinners who defy Torah authority in their eyes?
Maybe.
But who cares?
All that matters is the truth.
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