Separating sexes still characterizes Orthodox shuls
About a year ago, Lake Park Synagogue, the small modern Orthodox synagogue on Milwaukee’s east side, replaced its high mechitzah, or barrier separating men and women during worship services, with a shorter one.
“The mechitzah used to be of dimensions that really did obstruct women’s view of the men conducting the service,” said Lake Park’s spiritual leader Rabbi Shlomo Levin. “I don’t think it was as inclusive of women as a mechitzah could be.”
Lake Park’s distinctive architecture also made this problem relatively easy to resolve, Levin said. The sanctuary is structured such that there are practically two separate rooms at right angles to each other on either side of the ark, one for men and the other for women. Therefore, the women are already mostly out of the sight line of the men during services.
This may seem like a small issue to the majority of Wisconsin Jews who are not Orthodox and whose Conservative-Reform-Reconstructionist synagogues don’t have mechitzot. In fact, some liberal and feminist Jews feel this practice to be downright offensive. (See sidebar.)
But to Orthodox Jews generally and especially in recent years, the mechitzah isn’t just a barrier between men and women worshippers. It is one of the most fervently maintained distinctions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews and their observance.
As Rabbi Mendel Senderovic, dean of the Milwaukee Kollel-Center for Jewish Studies, said, “It is important to the degree that if there is a choice between praying in private and praying in a synagogue without a mechitzah, Orthodox people would choose to pray by themselves.”
Moreover, if the choice is between a synagogue without a mechitzah and not going to synagogue at all, an Orthodox person should choose not to go to that synagogue, he said.
And to alter a mechitzah is not a light matter, either. As one Lake Park congregant said, change there took 20 years and four rabbis to achieve.
Why is a mechitzah so important? What are the reasons for having it?
Closing out frivolity
Senderovic and other sources trace the concept to a passage in the Talmud (Tractate Sukkah 51a). This describes a water-pouring ceremony at the Second Temple during the Sukkot holiday, and says that the Jews then built a special balcony for women to be able to see this, because when the women and men mingled “excessive frivolity” arose.
This was so important, according to the Talmud, that these Jews were permitted to alter the architectural plan that was said to have been a divine mandate (I Chronicles 28:19).
The rabbis of the Talmud cited as justification for this a passage in the prophetic book Zechariah (12:12-14) foretelling how at a time of disaster men and women would mourn apart from each other.
“At the time of mourning, when the passions are powerless, it is said that the women and the men should be separate; so much the more in the Temple, where they were occupied in rejoicing, and the passions can have power over them,” says the Talmud (Michael L. Rodkinson translation from the Internet Sacred Text Archive).
But what is this “excessive frivolity” that the Talmud rabbis consider to be such a problem? Senderovic said that many authorities understand it to be any flirting or teasing or any kind of interaction that would prevent a worshipper from “standing in awe” before God.
The emphasis in most of the literature is to prevent men from seeing women; but Senderovic cautioned that the idea is not one that critics frequently assert, that traditional Judaism says men have no self-control in the presence of women.
“It is not the idea that if there is no mechitzah everyone will go wild,” he said. Rather, because “the synagogue being the place where one stands in awe” of God, “even the possibility of frivolity is removed,” he said.
Given the Talmud text, one might think that the mandated requirement is for a balcony. Indeed, some Orthodox synagogues past and present follow that principle.
In the past, some Milwaukee-area synagogues had women’s balconies. Today, however, Congregation Agudas Achim Chabad in Mequon is the only one. This balcony is at the back of CAAC’s Chamoy Family Sanctuary and seats about 110 people, with space for a few wheelchairs.
Rabbi Moshe Rapoport, the synagogue’s program director, said that the choice was made at a meeting of the synagogue’s members. “Some women said they couldn’t see all the service” behind a mechitzah, he recalled; and “everyone wanted a balcony.”
Rapoport said he has received “a lot of positive feedback” about the result, with women congregants saying, “it’s nice to see everything” and that they “feel part of everything.”
‘Centrist type’
However, other congregations don’t like the idea. Rabbi Shmaya Shmotkin, spiritual leader of The Shul, a small Orthodox synagogue in Bayside, said the consensus of the women worshippers of his synagogue is not to have a balcony in the congregation’s future building on Brown Deer Rd. Instead, it will have a mechitzah, but what kind is not yet certain.
Senderovic and other sources said that there are different schools of thought about what a mechitzah should be. The strictest opinion is that men shouldn’t be able to see women at all, which means a mechitzah has to be higher than people’s heads.
However, if “frivolity” comes from ability to have social interaction, then “if the partition is as high as the shoulders, that would suffice” to prevent it, said Senderovic. A height of about 60 inches tall is generally considered the minimum acceptable, he said.
However, screening worshippers from each other does not necessarily require that women be placed in the back of the room or be prevented from seeing what is happening in the service. Some Orthodox synagogues position the mechitzah down the middle of the sanctuary, so both men and women can see the ark and the activities on the bimah.
Others have translucent curtains or one-way glass on them, so the women can see into and beyond the men’s section while the men can’t see the women.
It is likely one of these will be used at The Shul, said Shmotkin. “We are going to explore every available option that’s halachically [legally] acceptable and we’ll go with the best one,” he said.
Nevertheless, there have been and still are some synagogues that provide both separate and mixed worship for their congregations.
Congregation Anshai Lebowitz in Mequon has no mechitzah, but does have sections for men and for women on either side of its bimah, and a section for mixed seating at the back of the sanctuary.
Rabbi Bernard Reichman, spiritual leader of Anshai Lebowitz since 1965, said the custom began before he arrived at the synagogue, which was previously located on Burleigh St. in the city of Milwaukee.
Reichman said he has tried to bring back the mechitzah, but having the options is too entrenched a tradition in the congregation. He said about half the worshippers avail themselves of each option.
Still, congregants have changed their minds from time to time. Reichman recalled one family that threatened to quit if Anshai Lebowitz put up a mechitzah; but the family eventually became more strictly Orthodox and quit anyway to join a shul that did have one.
Still, in an era in which Jews “seem to go either to the right or the left” and are increasingly polarized, Reichman said, “I think there is room for a centrist type of synagogue” in which people can have mixed seating for a service that otherwise is Orthodox in content and style.
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