Sam2:
Although you probably meant it differently that I understand it, I agree with your statement that “just because someone may or may not be “MO” (whatever that even means to you anyway), their potentially vast Halachic knowledge is inherently irrelevant.”
This is true. The greatest talmid chacham in the world is capable of doing aveiros and also of being biased. And if such a person is mattir one or more aveiros due to his ideological bias, then it’s quite understandable that he would also be mattir a different issur due to that same ideological bias. Again, I wrote this and the above with all due respect to him, as indicated. I was sincere in that respect and equally sincere in its irrelevance to the topic at hand.
I felt the need to *respectfully* but unequivocally explain away this chilul Hashem that a Torah authority allegedly permitted this nivalah. In truth, by chilul Hashem, “Ain cholkim kavod laRav”, but I tried to be cholek kavod regardless and explain that it’s likely an ideological bias that could cause one to issue such a psak, yet with all due respect to his potentially vast Torah knowledge.
So I’m sorry you feel offended. But what is truly “disgusting” and “divisive” is when some who claim to be orthodox choose to trample on our Torah in the misguided pursuit of base and decrepit secular culture. Especially since your own Rav JBS said so himself that one should *avoid* secular culture if at all possible. Yet you proudly proclaim your religious pursuit of secular culture even when such pursuit is clearly kineged halacha.
Gavra:
What about the rest of it which is not Kadosh? Sensual music could, theoretically, be used to serve Hashem, as you posit. But sensual music created in tumaah without that requisite kedusha cannot. It reminds me of “Lama li rov zivcheichem amar Hashem”.
Regarding your second point referencing my point about pole dancing and your bringing up perfume, perhaps this will help explain it.
Say there were a perfume that was heavily and solely marketed to zonas. And for years, ever since its introduction, everyone who smells that perfume knows that the wearer is a zona. Not a businesswoman nor anything other than a zona.
Say some guy decides he likes the scent and buys it for his wife. Lets grant that he doesn’t want his wife to be a zona, but is buying it lisheim mitzva. But here is the problem. The brain knows this is a zona’s perfume. So there’s no way that improper thoughts will not go through his (and her) mind if she wears that perfume, even if the overwhelmingly vast majority of those thoughts will be pure.
The only exception to this is if he (and she), personally, *never* knew that this perfume is a zona’s perfume. Then, it would serve its purpose appropriately as it is, after all, only perfume.
The same goes for pole dancing.
The problem with Zumba, however, unlike the above hypothetical perfume and pole dancing, is that no such prior knowledge is needed for the music to negatively affect you. Music, as I wrote earlier, is the language of the soul. Again, you don’t need to have prior exposure to anything to be negatively affected by impure music. Nothing can save you from being negatively affected by impure music, other than not listening to it.
And the Zumba dances, too, if they were choreographed to be sensual, then that’s certainly inappropriate in public, as written above (even *if* the ultimate purpose is to enhance one’s individual relationship between man and wife).