FAITHHACKER
| Separate but equal? | |
 by Laurel Snyder, January 11, 2007
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The first time I found myself in a synagogue with a Mechitza, I was pretty confused. My father had brought me to Shaarei Tfiloh because he’d heard they were having trouble getting ten men together to pray, and he wanted to help. The community that had once belonged to the synagogue was mostly gone or dead, and as an Orthodox shul in a no-longer-Jewish-neighborhood, there weren’t enough Jews who could walk to the building anymore. So it was dying.
There I sat, peering at my dad from afar, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t figure it out of course. I was offended by being separated and left alone. It seemed archaic and chauvinistic to me. So I avoided seeing another Mechitza for years and years.
But then in Iowa, we had one at Hillel, because we had an orthodox service on Saturdays… and I had to rethink the wall. I had to try and find a way to see it as something besides a burka, a chastity belt, a ban on birth control.
I never fully came to a place of embracing the Mechitza, but I’ve since discovered that there are ways of thinking about it differently. It no longer upsets me to be around one. And there are resources out there… considered feminist voices supporting the Mechitza. I wanted to point you to a few of them today.
A synagogue in Jerusalem
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
A blogger worth meeting, and another one
And oh, hell… it looks like someone already made a list!
Now… maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about the Mikveh…
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Annie
if you're in New York
Darkhei Noam is a "Shira Hadasha-style" minyan. The Mechitza is even lower, and women participate heavily.
I can see how someone who didn't grow up with mechitza could find it alienating, but one way to think of it is that in this world we are almost always in coed environments. Walking into a space that is divided by gender can be a way of signalling a different, holy, or seperate space, as long as the divider is not oppressive.
Anonymous
separate but equal
as derrida pointed out so long ago, one cannot posit a binary opposition without prizing one inherently above the other. in this case, men are seen as normative an women derivative. now, i am a man, so i can never really know what it's like, and it is good that people are examining this phenomenon with a rational eye...
BUT:
when does reasoning become rationalizing? There is only an 'issue" with coed prayer environments if we are uncomfortable being around the attracting sex. it's our discomfort with sexuality and our embodied natures that makes it an issue. personally, i cannot davven in a mechitzah minyan entirely comfortably, because i know what it does and what it represents. and i am saying that as a man.
now, i am not denying that there is a special quality to davvening with one's own gender, but i am not willing to subject an entire group of jews to second-class status to accomplish that. if there were two services with equal opportunities, then that would be another thing entirely. separate but equal only works if the equal part is true... and (most importantly) it's VOLUNTARY.
this is why i think your endorsement of the mechitzah (as half-hearted and ambivalent as it was) smacks of disingenuousness.
to the above commentator, does it really take the (albeit mild) subjugation of women to make a space a makom kadosh? to me, it does the opposite. what makes a tefilah service holy is (to me, at least) the use of the siddur in the lashon kodesh, a community directing its hearts to God with commitment and intention.
Annie
seperate but equal as a choice
Anon- in this case the seperation IS voluntary. No one is forcing women, or men for that matter, to pray in a space that is uncomfortable to them. If you see the mechitza as subjugatory, then please, don't daven in that space. You say that you can't daven there comfortably, but I can't daven comfortably without one.
If I had a choice between a women-only, and a seperate-seating shul, I would always pick the former, but failing that, I find the latter to be an acceptable alternative. Yes, there are issues of chauvenism, sexism, and more in the Orthodox community, and some of those are heightened by the mechitza, but I don't think that that must be the case.
You say that what makes a Tefillah service holy is the use of "the lashon kodesh", by which I assume you mean Hebrew. Great for you, but many in the Reform and Reconstructionist movements would disagree. To them, a tefillah service can be holy in English, German, French, etc, etc. I think that you need to recognize that this is a case of "different strokes for different folks" and accept that what may read as subjugation to you reads as spirituality to someone else.
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