Decibels and Deuteronomy: The Torah on Loud Music

In 1959, my late mother had her sweet 16 celebration. The party favor for the girls was personalized cigarettes. I wish I could ask my mother whether the cigarettes were personalized with her name or of each girl. Anyway, if anyone has a box of them in an attic somewhere – I would love to have it.

This apparently was not a unique gift. I don’t think I ever got to tell my mother, but I found in my research for my forthcoming book, “God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah is True” that Presidents from Kennedy onward handed out personalized cigarettes as a White House gift until President Reagan switched to jelly beans.

My mother and I often spoke of this story as an example of how one of the wonderful things about America is how quickly and profoundly it can change for the better. A practice that is standard in one generation can become unthinkable – even unthinkably funny – a generation later. We often spoke of what practices in our day would be equivalent to the personalized cigarettes of 1959. And we came up with one that definitely should be – if we, participants in society, make it so.

The story of what this is begins around ten or twelve years ago. Erica and I told Eli Beer that he is the most hard-traveling person we have ever known – to meet with United Hatzalah donors and attend United Hatzalah events all around the world. We told him that he was too old to be making that many trips flying economy, especially as he always had work on the plane and needed to be fresh when he landed.

We told him that we were making what would be our first and only conditional contribution to United Hatzalah. We would make an additional annual contribution – to be used specifically for him to fly business class. He resisted mightily, on the grounds that he wanted every dollar possible to go to the organization. We thanked him for saving us the money. When he saw that we were completely serious, he relented.

It turned out to be a good investment. On one of his trips to or from Israel that year, a fellow passenger passed out – I think it was diabetic shock. Eli immediately commanded the situation, getting what he needed from the plane staff and saving the patient. When he sat back down hours later, a fellow passenger in business class asked him how he did that. He explained that he was the leader of the United Hatzalah, and a lifelong volunteer himself. She ended up contributing $2m.

A few months later, Eli was again in business class – this time flying from Miami to New York. Nothing dramatic that time – just the usual for Eli; reviewing documents and dictating in Hebrew for the entire flight. The man next to him on that flight asked him what he was doing, and he explained. Eli’s fellow passenger offered him a ride from the airport to New York City – and a great friendship had started. The passenger was Joel Sandberg.

In March 2020, Eli got a very early and severe case of Covid. He was hospitalized in Miami and Joel, a physician with privileges at the hospital, arranged for and oversaw Eli’s care while he was intubated – twice. Just as Eli saved the life of the passenger on the Israel flight, Joel saved his in Miami.

If Joel had just saved Eli’s life – of course, dayenu– it would have been enough. But Joel and his wife Adele had also (well before then) become dear friends of Eli and Gitty, of Erica and me – and very generous supporters and involved board members of United Hatzalah. Joel and Adele have been friends and role models for Erica and me – as parents, as Jewish leaders, and (in so many ways) as people.

Why is all of this relevant? Because of one of the many things Adele taught us. Adele taught us that every exposure to loud noise – as defined as greater than 75-80 decibels – leads to hearing loss that can never be recovered. She has recently published a children’s book on the subject – part of her work to share this important and practical truth. Every study has confirmed that she is right. She told us to put an app on our phone that detects decibel levels. We did.

The app registers noises way above 75 dB – regularly 95-103 (which is extremely dangerous) – at the weddings and Bar Mitzvahs we attend, due to the music. This is not a uniquely Jewish phenomenon, of course. Our Evangelical friends said that the music in their church services and celebrations often get as loud. Concerts (indoor and outdoor) often register similarly.

This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. First, a test for whether music is any good might be whether anyone is tempted to blast it. Take any of the great singers of the past 75 years – Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Boone, Willie Nelson, Etta James, George Strait. The one thing that they all have in common is that no one would reasonably think to play their music at dangerous decibels. That is because music that is genuinely beautiful – music that inspires, evokes or uplifts – is not well experienced loudly.

So it is not like loud music is a (high) price we pay to enjoy celebrations. Not only is loud “music” really just bad sound – but it makes it sometimes impossible even to hear the person sitting next to you. It is ridiculous – even more, sad – for a milestone to be celebrated with pounding sounds that damage everyone’s hearing while making conversation impossible. And the foam earplugs that are sometimes made available don’t really solve for anything (they probably reduce the noise by 10 dB) – and are best used as a signal that the event is too loud. The only safe and responsible thing to do at such a “celebration” is to leave it – which I routinely do, emailing Adele, “95 decibels at this wedding, I’m out again.”

This problem is especially the responsibility of Jews and Christians who love the Torah. In Deuteronomy 4:15, Moses tells us: “You shall guard yourselves very much.”

This is universally understood to be a commandment to take care of our health. We, as an American society, have done this exceptionally well with cigarettes – to the point where handing out personalized cigarettes at a Sweet Sixteen, a widely practiced custom in the lifetime of some readers of this column, is a historical curiosity.

We should do it again with loud music – so that our children and grandchildren ask us, ”Is it true that celebrations were so loud in the 20s that hosts actually handed out earplugs?”

Adults in school and synagogue communities should make it clear that they do not want their children exposed to music that has been irrefutably demonstrated to irreparably damage their hearing at “celebrations.” Rabbis should condition doing Bar Mitzvahs and weddings on the celebrations being at a maximum of 80 decibels.

There could – or at least should – be no principled opposition to this, especially (but not only) for people of faith. One who wants to follow the guidance of the Torah cannot reconcile the commandment to “guard yourself very much” with playing loud music at a religious celebration – or, perhaps, being around it at all. God gave us the gift – and what a gift it is – of hearing, and it is not ours to ruin so that we can listen to blaring sounds at the cost of human interaction.

How is the alternative? Wonderful. The best upbeat songs – I am thinking of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees– can be fully experienced at around 80 dB. And for perhaps music’s best purpose – the cultivation of love? Just put on the Hoagy Carmichael classic “The Nearness of You.” The question is not whether this ineffably beautiful love song is better than anything played loudly – that’s obvious. It is whether the best version is by Willie Nelson, Johnny Hartman, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald.