(RNS) — No sooner did Vice President Kamala Harris enter the presidential race than the Republicans began mocking her voice — and more specifically, her laugh. Former President Donald Trump branded her with the nickname “Laffin’ Kamala” — as if it were somehow unseemly for a human being to express joy through laughter.
Of course, Trump is not the first to belittle a woman by mocking what comes out of her mouth.
As Elissa Bassist wrote in Mother Jones in 2022, “Everyone hates the sound of a woman’s voice.”
Bassist quotes Jordan Kisner, from a 2016 article in The Cut, explaining why: “The voice is too something — too loud, nasal, breathy, honking, squeaky, matronly, whispered. It reveals too much of some identity, it overflows its bounds. The excess in turn points to what’s lacking: softness, power, humor, intellect, sexiness, seriousness, coolness, warmth.”
To which Bassist adds, “And that’s just for white women.”
How unusual, how unfitting, how … unmanly to speak and laugh in such a high-pitched timbre — and heaven forbid, if Harris ever sheds a tear. Mark my words, there will be a totally manufactured cry-sis up ahead if she ever does. A woman can never be accepted on her own terms. She must be knocked down to size, caricatured as crazy, emotional, out of control, unstable and therefore scary. She is either too sexy — and accused of using sex to get ahead — or not sexy enough and mocked for being too cold or too unattractive.
Compare that to the Bible, which although it was composed in an era steeped in misogyny, features women’s voices prominently, from the Book of Ruth to Esther to Song of Songs.
It is worth noting that the first reference to laughter in the Bible comes when Sarah, a woman, hears that she is about to have a child at an age even older than that of recent presidential candidates. In Genesis, a woman’s laughter is not only seen as normal, but the child she was laughing about is in fact named after that wholly understandable reaction — “Isaac” means “laughter.” The Torah is laughing with Sarah, not at her. Her voice is respected — treasured. In fact, shortly after this incident, Abraham is commanded by God to listen to Sarah’s voice.
Of note: The first biblical weeping is also done by a woman — in the very same chapter as Sarah’s laughter — but this time by her counterpart, her handmaid Hagar. It’s as if to say that while male voices may boom and resonate, the widest range of honest, natural expression — the complete spectrum from laughter to tears — is best captured by a woman’s voice. And indeed, ancient cultures are filled with laments specifically chanted by and composed for woman.
Until, as happened in Judaism and other faith traditions, they were silenced.
As Jewish history progressed from the biblical to the rabbinic era and beyond, attitudes toward hearing a woman’s voice regressed, until they were shut out nearly totally.
The culprit here is a controversial Talmudic concept known as Kol Isha (literally, “A Woman’s Voice”), which like many religious restrictions has taken on a life of its own, expanding in scope over the centuries, as female voices have continued to be suppressed and demonized.
There may have been reasons within a premodern patriarchal society to reduce a woman’s public role — I won’t debate that here. But Kol Isha is particularly insidious, inviting suppression, harassment and physical abuse — as has happened all too often in our day. You need look no further than the Women of the Wall, a group of women who have prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for many years, and never without serious — and often literal — pushback by Orthodox authorities. Once a woman becomes an object of scorn, or an object of temptation, or even an object of love, she has become, irrefutably, an object.
The Kol Isha controversy stems from a Talmudic discussion where the sage Samuel calls the voice of a woman ervah, meaning “indecent,” “shameful” or “lustful,” in asserting that the Sh’ma, Judaism’s central prayer, must not be uttered while a woman is singing. For, as the passage states, “the voice of a woman is indecent” (kol be-ishah ervah); it would be an improper distraction from concentration on holy things.
The idea that an unmuffled female voice can lead men into a state of uncontrollable lust is insulting to women and men alike. Are guys so incapable of keeping our zippers zipped that we have to demand that women keep their lips zipped?
The first wide-ranging prohibition of a woman’s singing voice didn’t occur until modern times. In the journal Conservative Judaism, Emily Taitz writes that Jewish women were heard publicly throughout the Middle Ages, as teachers, entertainers and professional dirge singers, even within the synagogue itself. Rabbi David Golinkin’s responsum on the subject suggests that in the Talmud, Samuel may not have been referring to a woman’s singing voice at all.
The fact that such restrictions have become more pronounced over the past few decades mirrors the increased oppression of women in some quarters of the Muslim and Christian worlds. As feminism has taken hold, the reaction to it has been equally strong, pulling society both ways, to the left and to the right.
With female cantors and rabbis now proliferating in the non-Orthodox world, and becoming a reality even among the modern Orthodox, there is no turning back on this issue. My conscience will not allow me to participate in ceremonies that give undue deference to Kol Isha — for instance, purely secular celebrations of Israel or Holocaust commemorations where a woman’s voice should be heard loud and clear. How absurd it is to hear the songs of Naomi Shemer or the poetry of Hannah Senesh having to be sung by a man.
The silencing of women’s voices has led to absurd extremes, such as the photo-editing of female government ministers completely off the front page of an Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper a few years ago.
See the original photo below, followed by the photo-edited front page.
The group photograph of the new Israeli government, left, alongside the version edited by the Yomleyom weekly newspaper. (Original photo by Israeli government)
One wonders how that newspaper will handle the very real possibility of a female American president. What will happen when she visits the Western Wall? How will ultra-Orthodox media react when she speaks or sings or laughs?
Will the voice of Kamala Harris be silenced?
Jeremiah (33:10) prophesied of a time when the joyous voice of the bridegroom and bride would be heard once again in the streets of Jerusalem. Evidently that time has not yet come at the Western Wall or Mar-a-Lago, where women’s voices are minimized and ridiculed.
Kol Isha is coming dangerously close to becoming the Jewish version of what we criticize in extreme conservative religious cultures: the subjugation and humiliation of half our population. We need to reverse this trend, in Israel and in Jewish communities everywhere.
And it’s time for politicians to stop laughing at Kamala Harris’ laugh. Maybe they should listen to what the woman is saying rather than how she is saying it. Because the arguments coming from Kamala Harris’ mouth this week have been pitch-perfect.
(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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