Responsum: On the Permissibility of Music

The scholar Nehemiah bar Obadiah of Gabès, Tunisia, maintained an ongoing correspondence with Hayya Ga’on and asked him many practical questions, including this one concerning the propriety of listening to music. Nehemiah was afraid that his community’s custom of listening to celebratory instrumental music might violate a seemingly broad talmudic prohibition. Based on lived tradition, Hayya permits music at weddings and occasions of religious significance, pointing to an Arabic genre that was popular among Jews in medieval Iberia, and widespread throughout the Islamic world. Hayya closes this Hebrew responsum with a relatively restrictive position on women’s performance in mixed-gender settings and also discourages women’s performances in all-female settings, concerned that it will lead to “other problematic activities.”