Reply To: broadway shows

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#784779
HaKatan
Participant

Unless you get a personal psak otherwise, I would think Pac Man is basically on the money (perhaps they’re not 100% treif, but they are all definitely treif to various extents).

FACT: You are at least 99% guaranteed to negatively affect your neshama if you go to any performance that is NOT conceived, produced and acted by (pure) Torah-observant Jews. Simply, there has to be at least something in there, whether in concept, execution or both, that is kineged the Torah.

Shevet Reuven fell for Korach’s illogical arguments and rebelled against Moshe Rabbeinu who spoke to G-d face-to-face, Rashi says, because of their proximity in their encampments. But you’re sure you won’t be in any way negatively affected by going to an opera show? Really? It seems foolish and intellectually dishonest to bring raayos from what great men like these did in the times they lived in then for what could very well be personal or otherwise specific reasons/parameters.

In case this is not obvious: when you go to an opera show (or baseball game or anywhere else), you are subconsciously assimilating everything you see and hear. Now multiply that as needed given the emotional song and dance that goes on and it’s much more than subconscious (which is bad enough as you can’t defend it if you tried, unlike someone offering you a ham sandwich).

Besides the above:

The sexual debauchery of today was not what Rav Hutner allegedly went to see at an opera show. Also, since you’re not Rav Hutner, unless your Rav tells you it is okay, it is absurd to cherry-pick something he did then and take it as a carte-blanche heter for you. Incidentally, I don’t recall he recommend Opera in Pachad Yitzchak. Do you have a source for that?

Ditto for Rav Soloveichik, who, by the way, said that the more one can DISengage from modern society, the better! But cherry-picking and ignoring that is more convenient, of course.

Again, not every heter is universal or even close to it. Many are highly individual.

The technical parameters of kol isha are mainly irrelevant if you’re trampling on other issurei dioraysa and dirabbanan as those would in and of themselves forbid one from going to an opera performance. Such as, perhaps, Lo Sikrivu and uvichukoseihem lo seleichu for starters.

Whatever bein-adam laMakom aveiros you may choose to do are between you and G-d (and your Rav, if he permitted YOU to do it), but it’s certainly inappropriate to besmirch the name of great talmidei chachamim (who, as human beings, could have had special circumstances and/or could *possibly* have erred) to give yourself a faux heter to violate issurim chamurim.