An ongoing conversation with a deeply reflective and thoughtful, though not traditionally observant, Israeli friend yielded the following e-mail about Jewish laws of sexual modesty in general and Kol Isha, women’s voices in particular.
Whatever one thinks about these rules, my friend’s questions are really about the nature of what “really important” according to the Torah, what’s not, and who gets to decide. Those are essential questions with which all people that care about a tradition wrestle. I hope that his comments and my response are useful in your own thinking about what really matters in your own spiritual journey.

“Don’t recall the live broadcast of Moses coming down from the mountain with god’s voice exclaiming Kol Isha is forbidden but hey that’s me. I love your ability Brad to hide behind the text old baboons wrote ages ago providing you with a check blanko excuse for moral high ground no matter the circumstances.
What we have here a third or fifth derivatives at best, of a rule which belongs in Kabul. The Neanderthals feel under attack by the society they live in, so in a cowardly way, they took it on teenagers, I’m impressed.
Secular Jews know damn well that after we get the song and dance from the Orthodox about brotherhood, no compromise is ever made, and I challenge you for a concrete meaningful example showing about the Orthodoxy making a real compromises.
I’m not afraid of these halakhot (laws) since I live in a society which already abides by them in my very home. Fact is the Rabbinic dogma is found right here amongst us when we peel away the thin facade of intellectualism and liberalism.”

G, as always, the questions are smart and good, if a little harsh, and I want to respond to each of your four paragraphs.

1. What do you recall Moses coming down and saying? Was there a Moses? If he did exist, did he really talk with God? If he did so, is our Torah an accurate record of that conversation? and if it is, is that Torah limited to the Humash (Five Books of Moses)? Does it include the Talmud? Everything any rabbi teaches? This conversation?
I think Giora that you confuse what’s “really Torah” with those rules you can live with. And again, that makes you exactly the same as the typical Haredi Jew, and many other kinds as well, all of whome confuse Judaism with their own way of being Jewish. I simply prefer to admit that Torah manifests itself in many forms and that good people can disagree about what is and is not Torah, what is and is not essential.
2. I share your frustration about some of the inconsistencies in the RJC community, but are we without our own? It doesn’t excuse them one bit, but focusing on theirs does not excuse ours either.
3. You are 100% right about the abuse of clal yisrael (whole Jewish people)- and ahdut- (togetherness) based arguments which come out of the Orthodox world. They are typically nothing more than an excuse for granting Ortho’s hegemony in the name of unity. It is shameful. But it is not the whole story.
In fact, if it were, there would be no Haredi (ultr-Orthodox)movement, which is itself a response to the myriad ways in which Orthodox Jews, beginning in the 19th century, combined participation in the larger world while remaining orthodox both in their own minds and in the minds of others. They effectively re-defined, or at least made viable a new definition of, orthodoxy. That’s what freaked out the Haredim (plural of Haredi) and gave birth to their entirely modern and reactionary movement.
4. The fear to which I alluded is the one to which you alluded in your earlier message i.e. that our kids will run away from Judaism if we are “too strict”. That argument is simply the flip-side of the position that both you and I abhor — that unless we are that strict, our kids will fall away from Judaism altogether.