Haredim Ban Male Singer Due To Kol Isha

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The songs of 20-year-old Eliyahu Faizkov, a yeshiva student from Netanya, were recently banned by haredi pirate radio stations because his voice is uncannily feminine.

"At first my songs were received positively by the haredi radio stations," Faizkov told the Ynet Web site. "But I suddenly noticed that they stopped playing my songs. It was as if someone confiscated them all. I contacted the stations to find out what was going on and the answer I got was precisely what I had feared, 'Your voice is too feminine.'"

Apparently, listeners had called in to complain about Faizkov's voice.

According to many Orthodox rabbinic authorities, Jewish law forbids men to listen to a female singer's voice, even if it is taped and even if the listener does not know what the woman looks like. In Jewish law, listening to a singing woman's voice is compared to viewing parts of a woman's body that are normally kept covered.…

[Hat Tip: KK.]

Comments

[Dag]

I don't know broadcast rules in Israel, but I wonder how legitimate Pirate radio stations are in the first place

[MoChan]

......

I can't believe they're doing this when there are young boys in the Yeshiva/Miami Boys Choir who are singing there because it is a way to have a high-pitched/feminine voice without breaking the overly-exagerated rules of Kol Isha while (and it is allowed by Rabbis) while there are situations like this.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

Welcome to Insanity Planet.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

I can't believe they're doing this when there are young boys in the Yeshiva/Miami Boys Choir....

The Taliban קנאיים haven't made it to our shores yet.

[Peter]

So the Haredim are getting sexually aroused by this guy's voice? There really are big problems in the heimishe velt.

[will]

Shmarya, this is insane. Where does it say that the songs were religiously banned due to kol isha? The listeners complained because they did not like his voice. They knew the station was't playing kol isha. This story proves nothing about religious extremism, only what type of singing style is popular in the chareidi world. Try again.

[Shmarya]

Don't read alll that well, do you?

Apparently, the audience of pirate haredi radio stations such as Radio 10, Kol Haneshema and Radio Beit Yisrael does not want anyone to receive the false impression that they are transgressing Jewish law.…

Menachem Toker, a popular haredi disc jockey and radio broadcaster … said he would play Faizkov's music on his own hassidic music show, which is broadcast on Radio Jerusalem, a legal station, predicted that the ban on Faizkov's music would probably destroy his budding career.…

[Dasha]

To use the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, this is defining deviancy down.

[ShmorgelBorgel]

The ynet article on the same subject has an audiolink with him singing, which can be heard here

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3416179,00.html

[ShmorgelBorgel]

The ynet article on the same subject has an audiolink with him singing, which can be heard here

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3416179,00.html

[ShmorgelBorgel]

And here is the English version of the same article--also with an audioclip

He isn't quite Zehava Ben or Ofra Haza, but he is pretty good.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3417632,00.html

[Bava Kama Sutra]

It The charedim are right and it goes the way too. If you date a girl with a deep voice you will end up giving oral sex to guys, not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Nachman]

This issue is straightforward.
Unlike children's voices which sound like "children", this unique voice does indeed sound feminine. You need a keen ear to nuances to establish that this is actually a male voice. It threw ME off for a moment. The issue is elementary, a radio staion catering to a specific community will play only material accepted by its listenership. In our case, it is only due to people calling the radio station requesting that they no longer play EC's music that the radio station discontinued to air his music.
But then again, Scotty can't relate to this 'cause HAREDIM ARE FANATICS!

[The Monsey Tzadik]

On the first time we returned from exile we had femalre singers. Now the Taliban idiots rule

Ezra 2:65, "...and they also had 200 men and women singers."
Nehemiah 7:67, "...and they also had 245 men and women singers."

Atrscroll Translation

[Yochanan Lavie]

The Yeminite Jews also had a tradition of female singers- for mixed audiences. That's the diwan tradition Ofra Haza came out of. The talmud says Kol Isha applies to a woman singing provacatively to a man who is trying to say shema. That is a very limited set of circumstances.

BTW, what do they make of tranny Israeli singer Dana International? S/he sounds like a woman, too.

Anyway, I find boys' choirs creepy and homoerotic. I would rather hear woman sing a religious song. If the content is not sexual, how can it be arousing?

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

Anyway, I find boys' choirs creepy and homoerotic.

I'd rather listen to nails scratching a blackboard.

[rebeljew]

Monsey tzadik

And also the women sang at the Red Sea. The woman sang before the women and the men before the men, all in the confines of separate rooms, separated by a six foot mechitzas. Oh yeah, and they all had $2000 sheitels on.

Silly MT.

[armchairpundit]

This is not a Haredi ban per say. The stations that dropped his records did so because callers were complaining that the station was playing kol isha. They were afraid of loosing listeners. No rabbis have come out against listening to him. Ironically one station that still plays him is a legitimate(legal non-pirated station)one.It is hard to say if the callers would not listen to an explanation that it was a young man with a high voice. The fact that it is mainly pirated stations that are afraid to play him says more about the stations, which by probable nature are always more paranoid about their own legitimacy than about real community sentiment. Personally I think that these stations should worry that their broadcasts might interfere with aircraft radio transmissions(considering the aircraft in that area are mainly taking off and landing as well as security issues)than if people will think that they are playing Pat Bennitar.

[Dag Dagan]

You forgot to mention that they also banned anything by Bon Jovi which was done before 1991 when he had a long hair and looked and felt like a woman

[Leonard Goff]

Is "Jewish law" only Orthodox law? Don't Conservative and Reform have laws; and therefore wouldn't these laws be "Jewish"? I believe Orthodox make up only seven percent of Jews. You are perhaps Orthocentric.

[Neo-Conservaguy]

"He isn't quite Zehava Ben or Ofra Haza, but he is pretty good."

I hope your comparison to Ofra Haza's Z"T stunning catalog of work was a joke. She was the best ever - in multiple languages.

[Alex]

maybe they're just trying to say that this singer sounds like a faggot.

[Nachman]

A JEW is Orthodox otherwise consider yourself a fine PERSON at best but that's it. GET IT THRU YOUR KNUCLEHEADS! YOU ARE NOT RELIGIOUS!
There are individuals who naturally hate everything "religious", hence reform, conservative and all other DO-NOTHING forms of Judaism.
I do not accept any lame excuses. You don't want to be religious? Fine, it's a free country but cut all the crap about the Haredim.

[Alex]

Nachman- one does not have to do anything to be Jewish. Genetics are sufficient.

[Isa]

The Lebanese women singer Farouz is better or at least equal to Ofra Haza.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

maybe they're just trying to say that this singer sounds like a faggot.

What sound does a bundle of sticks make?

[Neo-Conservaguy]

Fairuz ( نهاد حداد) (Nouhad Haddad) is good, I'll give you that, but from what I've heard, I'd still give the tip of my hat to the beloved Yemenite daughter of Israel we still mourn. I'll have to check out more Fairuz to better appreciate her work - just not during my Shma'.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Q: What sound does a bundle of sticks make?

A: The same as one hand clapping.

[Nachman]

Alex,
You know very well the difference between being a Jew and BEING a Jew...

[ShmorgelBorgel]

Yochanan asked "BTW, what do they make of tranny Israeli singer Dana International? S/he sounds like a woman, too. "

I think I recall reading some prominent rav, at the time Dana International was just becoming famous declaring that she was a man and that she should say "she lo asani isha". I think she said say "she asiti et atzmi kirtsoni"!

But seriously, I remember reading that.

[Alex]

Nachman- by BEING a Jew, do you happen to mean wearing bland borin black and white suits, having long messy beards, and not being allowed to have a girlfriend, and finding novel ways of making one's life difficult in the name of God?

Feel free to do that if you want, but thats not my kind of being a Jew.