Kol isha may be ok (but poor translations are not)

ADDeRabbi reports on a rabbinical ruling that a man might be permitted to listen to kol isha, the voice of a (singing) woman, under certain circumstances. This is certainly good news, though many will dispute this ruling.

He wishes, though, that the reporter writing about the ruling could translate comprehensibly from Hebrew to English. The translator reported that the rabbi in question said that among the factors to be taken into considering would be " . . . the woman's vestige, and her body language". I think he meant "vestments", not "vestiges" (Rav Bigman himself refers, in Hebrew, to "levush", which I would translate here as "garb" or "costume", and not the archaic or ritualized "vestments", and certainly not "vestiges")." As the holder of a BA in French, I object, on principle, to such inaccurate translating.


For the benefit of my newer readers, I've written ad nauseum about kol isha--do a search of my blog and you'll find maybe a dozen posts that mention it--but this series was probably my most thorough treatment of the issue, though I was quite correctly taken to task for painting the entire Orthodox community with a Chareidi (fervently right-wing Orthodox) brush--many Open, Modern, and/or Centrist Orthodox have other interpretations of this law.

• Damned if we do and damned if we don't (part one)--the anecdotal evidence
• Damned if we do and damned if we don't (part two)--the textual evidence
• Damned if we do and damned if we don't--my conclusion