# 2 Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants in Halacha

[Music] which talks about here is that inaudible from mid-space we'd like to now discuss bezoshem how this is affected by the contemporary usage of hearing aids and cochlear implants which give new ability to be able to hear and thereby also to speak and to listen to mit's face which otherwise they couldn't how this affects in numerous applications before we speak about the laches let's first just describe and understand the machias the facts of these technologies what a hearing aid is what a cochlear implant is the similarities and the differences between them a hearing aid is actually a miniature microphone system just like a pa system in a auditorium takes the voice of the speaker and projects it amplified over much larger area that people could hear what he says of which otherwise they would not be able to hear the hearing aid picks up with the microphone sounds and speech around it and amplifies it and puts into the ear of the of the of the wearer it's making me be able to easier for him to be able to hear at a louder volume that which otherwise he will not be able to hear it's a miniaturized microphone system what i have what happens is that he wears a little unit usually by the ear sometimes in the ear it has a microphone that picks up the sound and then it's amplified by the aids technology reproduces a sound that's exactly the same but louder and and and and delivered right into the ear canal right next to the eardrum and that way it's a much stronger louder signal sound that he's able to empty here which otherwise wouldn't be able to hear um nowadays they have digitized um digital uh hearing aids that they have multiple functions they're able to filter out background sounds and just focus on the on the speech they could be directional they could have different functions of being attached to a telephone or to bluetooth or streaming but the functionality is always really the same which is amplifying and and producing a sound stronger and louder than the original sound a cultural implant by contrast does not amplify does not reproduce a sound does not make any sound whatsoever it does not put anything into the outer ear or to the eardrum at all and that way it's completely different than the uh than the hearing aid instead what a cochlear implant does is that it bypasses the problem area which is in the inner ear of the cochlea where the hearing receptors the little hair cells thousands of them that receive the sound and bring it to auditory nerve are located and are damaged in a hearing impaired person with the neurosensorial hearing loss and it bypasses that and delivers the sound straight to the auditory nerve which takes it to the hearing center of the brain the way it does this is having a surgically implanted electrode unit under the skin behind the ear that's the electrode goes right into the inner ear and right up to the auditory nerve on the nerve and then when it picks up the sound it delivers it right right to the auditory nerve and the brain hears it how does it pick up the sound when it's inside the head there's an outer unit an external unit which has a microphone and transmits the sounds that it picks up with radio waves into the in the internal unit and the internal unit then sends it along to the auditory nerve and and unable to hear it wait it does that it has to take the mechanical sound the acoustic vibrating sound of sound waves and and transform it into an electronic signal that stimulates the auditory nerve which is the exact same thing that the natural ear does in a normal person's hearing how does normal hearing work it's the same way the speaker with their voice creates a vibration sound mechanical acoustic sound which goes sound waves through the air and then hits the ear and collected goes to the eardrum of the listener and that vibrates the eardrum and the middle ear pieces until the inner ear the cochlea responds with all those sound sensors and somehow miraculously within the flow submarine is able to then change that mechanical sound into electronic neural signal which then the the auditory nerve takes up to the brain the cochlear implant does the same job as as the normal kolkata would do and takes the vibration make it into a nervous signal and deliver delivers it to the nerve of the brain so this way a both a hearing aid and a electron and a cochlear implant are electronic inventions that are helping hearing but the in the hearing aid is reproducing an amplified louder sound that's so much the original sound while the cochlear implant is simply taking the original sound and delivering it to the nerve and to the brain without reducing another sound at all because it bypasses the problem area of the cochlea of that with the damaged hearing cells the sound that comes to the nerve and the brain the sound that they're that the listener actually hears that with the hearing aid the cochlear implant wearer is much clearer much higher quality than that of a of a hearing aid hearing it is only making it louder and louder but the inner ear is still damaged and it's still having trouble processing all the frequencies the sounds of what they're listening to i'll give you a personal example when my son that was hearing impaired and for years wore a hearing aid and eventually then got a cochlear implant after being activated with the implant he turned to me and told me abba i'm hearing things i never heard before i never knew that birds tweet and chirp i never knew that running water makes a rushing sound i never knew that you could hear the wind rustling in trees these are environmental background soft sounds that you don't focus on like someone speaking to you and hearing it didn't pick up but the cochlear implant did and like was a cochlear implant the speech itself delivers it delivers a speech sound so much clearer and easier to understand that makes such a difference for the wearer and this makes a huge difference a huge difference a logically now for the developmentally for the jewish hearing impaired before the before the advent of the cochlear implant which was just began in the uh late 1980s and only became popular after that now it's tens of thousands of if not many more that are wearing cochlear implants become the standard but before that until the 1980s wearing hearing aids they don't always do it and they weren't able to really learn to speak and and and uh and and become oral and the and the in the common way of education was manual was with signal with sign language and whether a signing person is considered to be a bardos is questionable we talked about that yesterday there's a good reason to say yes but they became now isolated in their own little world of the the the signing manual world they weren't part of the regular school system mainstream yeshivas khadar and basiacovs and it affected their lives and halacha status became somewhat of a question but what since the uh since the the common diagnosis of a newborn being hearing impaired within a few months or weeks they get again cochlear implants they speak like everyone else speaks maybe some with some speech therapy necessary but learn to speak normal and they've all become now in this generation as opposed to earlier mainstream regularly achieve a regular hater regular-based jacob regular kylo all the way up because they're regularly speaking and and talking people and therefore there's no question in the world that they are madame or vaynerchumay at very least if not madaba and shomaya that's a huge huge difference that the coca-cola implant has made but let's talk about fulfilling mid-space fulfilling mitsvice that i usually listen to by hearing most people listen to kiddish i say it was by being said by the head of the family or abdullah or likewise creates kriya satyra and creates a megillah by the valkyrie in the shoal and slowly the kia chauffeur by the baltokaia many mitzvahs that we do part of zakhar many mitzvahs that we do not by every single person reading it himself or doing it himself but we would say with shameakone with listening is considered blackly like speaking and it's uh with connecting into the speech of the speaker by listening into it and understand being part of it part of the conversation shimaya kona that's that that's a speech is attributed to you as though you said that kid is yourself or that abdullah yourself shame is predicated upon shimaya upon his hearing if a person can't hear then he there's no shamir khan and he can't believe he would say by listening if you can't hear what's being said what if you could only hear by in by an artificial means by electronic uh invention of a hearing aid or cochlear implant is that considered to be hearing the voice of the speaker to be itsy with or is that not this is a major halachic issue one of the major postman that took up this whole subject both in the technology and studying how the electronics of it work and the aloha which he mastered as well and that analyzed that the um a hearing a hearing aid or a microphone does not deliver the original sound of the speaker the voice of the speaker but a duplication a replication of that just like a telephone you're speaking a long-distance telephone or international telephone you hear what the person is saying right you don't hear his voice shouting across the country right you hear the voice that went into the speaker of the phone that he was big into and was sent electronically wireless or wire by wire either way across the country in electronic form and then in your unit your speaker your telephone unit it reproduces that sound exactly like his sound or practically almost indiscernibly the same and you're hearing him what he says but you're you're not actually hearing his direct voice you're hearing a machine speaking to you and a machine version of someone says it's not even mid-space it's not a barca yuva we all know the mission that says questions by listening to someone that's not muhammad that mitzvah the machine is not even so it's like a tape recorder it's like a a uh you know something you would be speaking that's not a bar mitzvah you can't be outside listening to machine speaking so how can we go to the listen to a telephone or a radio where nowadays post corona we could say a zoom how could it be that you could see the face you could hear that you hear the speaker or the balcony laying the magilla on the zoom but it's a reproduction of the original voice it's not the voice itself of the speaker and therefore you can't be honest with it this opinion was followed and adopted by nearly all the postgame inheritance trial in his day diane and across the board almost all the postcards israel with the exception of the great hazonis himself salman himself writes that he spoke about this with the with the kazanish and the khazanish disagreed because says ledaity according to his opinion his dost tyra came and shall call hanishma since the voice that you end up hearing knows why they call hamadambir was created by the speaker's speech this the voice of the speaker is what makes the speaker the voice that you hear akulazan nishman beyond kaderich madabra which you're hearing instantaneously live stream not like a tape recorder playing being played over afterwards absolutely because it's possible this is considered to be like actually hearing him speak or take up or the on the chauffeur that the chevrolet person is blowing which you're hearing through the microphone or through the hearing aid zone itself says he doesn't understand and doesn't agree but the kazonish is a major pacific um agree with that as well that you you'd say with everything else besides takiyah shiva which he had an issue about but very significantly for us from major fine scenes across the block of the igor maisha in the pacific door of america poskins in igris maisha or hayam two places and second helix and the fourth highlights that you said by listing hearing through a hearing aid is considered a hearing unlike it was a telephone or a microphone or a radio or a zoom it's all the same idea because it's reproducing it simultaneously and identically and he explains it so beautifully he explains from maisha that sound and hearing even by in normal healthy people is a process there's the vibrations made by the speaker there's the sound waves that are in between there's the sound that hits and vibrates the the the eardrum and the middle ear and the inner deer there's a transformation from the mechanical vibration sound acoustic sound into electronic neural signals that the that the cochlear inner ear does and then sends it up to auditory nerve there's a lot of steps that are on along the way and that's called shamia that's what the torah calls listening hearing so he says this is doing the same process even the hearing aid that does reproduce a second a second sound right but that's part of the same process and as long as it's part of the certain process that's happening instantaneously at the same time the same way same the same the same sound than it is that consider if it's considered to be of hearing the same sound as well and therefore um well therefore ramiche is occurring so wearing a hearing aid and listening to kiddish or could or have dollar order chris mcgillin and such gets involved in them in a significant mechanics of contemporary basketball and therefore what should a person do it was able to be outside of deus to be able to fulfill the missile coin to everyone of course that would be best so some people depending on the degree of their hearing loss it's it makes it easier to be able to wear the hearing aid but without hearing aid i can also hear especially if i sit up close stand right right next to the person that's speaking and he's speaking very loud let's say it creates magilla the valkyrie and show lanes are very loud for the whole seaboard to hear and you stand right next to him you might be able to hear it even without your hearing aids and then you'll be able to see the holiday that's according to everyone takiyah schaefer in particular i want to mention a show for sound is much louder actually three times louder than north regular speech regular speech is in the area of 35 decibels in volume while the shover blowing is in the area of 110 decibels in volume three times louder so it could be that person can't even hear people shouting at him who will be out here the show for sound especially if sound stands right next to it so if they're able to do that that's the best way to do it the holla the yards are going to everyone but what happens if a person is not able to do that it doesn't work for him he's not able to hear especially megillah they read very fast i can't follow what i can i i get totally lost right so then you do have major pisces to rely on nonetheless than ramesha feinstein in america or his own nation the secrets are going to inertial reviews of angle before that as well but i asked him that that say that you could be uh with a with where with with a hearing through a hearing aid so although it's a much larger pie skin you could be out like that and certainly by drobonos you could say a sauvignon on the cooler so um and if you have no other choice do the chauffeur like that at least you'd be it's according to the spice gum that's a story with a hearing aid if it could take it off then it's possible to do it yourself kiddush is not so hard to say grease mcgill is not so easy to say so it depends on what a person is able to do if they can't do it themselves then if they could lay it if they can't lean out themselves then listen without it if you can't listen without it listen with it and you'll be i'd say according to a major biscuit a cochlear implant though is another story a cochlear implant has a major advantage in our locker over the um the hearing aid and that is that as we mentioned before a cochlear implant does not amplify and does not reproduce does not duplicate does not make another sound that doesn't make any sound at all it takes the original sound of the speaker the voice of the speaker or the sound of the shaper and it delivers it to the auditory nerve in an electronic neural signal just like the regular the inner ear does by every normal hearing person there's no other sound that's being heard there's no second sound that's being duplicated like a telephone does or like a microphone does or like a hearing aid does the coc implant doesn't make a second sound that's being made by a machine that's not a barclay uva rush limousine's argument let's say you can't be used with a machine speaking doesn't apply when it's not the machine speaking the machine doesn't make any sounds whatsoever there's no other sound besides the original speaker the original sound of his voice or the sound or the sound of the shaper now it's true that it's still artificial it's still not a natural hearing that that is that is a locking point but the main objection that was raised against the hearing aids was the microphone is the duplication of a new sound being made artificially by a machine and that that sound that you're listening to is not a valid sound to listen to with to beyonce mitzvah by the cochlear implant there is no second sound that's being being created and therefore that objection doesn't apply so it's quite possible maybe not absolutely necessary in mulch but it's quite possible you know if you were to hold that you're not going to be i'd say listening through a microphone telephone or hearing aid you could just be it's a mitzvah by listening to it through a cochlear implant most people that wear cochlear implants don't have an option of not wearing it and listening without it and therefore they should certainly listen with their hair and their cochlear plant on and that way they'll be out say um according certainly according to rabaisha and zonish that say the ufc was a hearing aid and it could be that over here there's a there's a reason to say that everyone would agree that you'd be out say because you're hearing the original sound of the person actually speaking or reading the magillum or blowing that chopper even the mute and the deaf will be able to get up and sing and dance and be able to have the power of speech the mute will burst forth with a song which is the fulfillment of the the vu of the islam the eyes of the blind will become light they'll be able to see her and the ears of the deaf will be able to hear and they'll be able to listen and the lame will be able to get up and and dance and jump the taron roshan elaine and the mute will be able to sing forth in song which resented that in haiti i just want to conclude again that this pamphlet that has all these alakaz and sources and much more about shabbos than usage and such is available from the ou it was published by them recently republished and they could be contacted at 35 212-613-8234-212-613-8235 82 34 or email at our way at ou dot org o u r w a y r way at o u dot o r g thank you very much i wish you a visitor to be able to be shamiyah and because of thank you