Mechitza I: Purpose

Then Moshe and Benei Yisrael sang this song to God and they said: I will sing to God for He has triumphed greatly, horse and his rider He has cast into the sea…And Miryam the prophet, sister of Aharon, took a timbrel in her hand and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing. And Miriam called out responsively to them: Sing to God for He has triumphed greatly, horse and his rider He has cast into the sea…

Rav Pinchas says: on a Shabbat eve Israel stood at Mount Sinai, arranged with the men to themselves and the women to themselves.

Mishna: One should only stand to pray with koved rosh [seriousness]…Gemara: Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak said [we learn this] from here: “Serve God with awe and rejoice in trembling” (Tehillim 2:11). What does “rejoice in trembling” mean? Rav Ada son of Matna said Rabba said: Where there is rejoicing, there should [also] be trembling.

Our Rabbis taught: One should not stand to pray in sadness, and not in laziness, and not in levity, and not in conversation, and not in frivolity [kalut rosh], and not in trivial matters, but rather in joy of performing a mitzva.

Our rabbis taught: We do not practice frivolity [kalut rosh] in synagogues.

Whence is a woman in the azara [inner Temple courtyard]?

Sometimes a woman would enter [the azara], such as a Sota or a Nazirite for waving a sacrifice…and even when not necessary, there is no prohibition if she enters [the courtyard]…Still, it is well-stated “Whence is a woman in the azara?” Since it is uncommon for her to enter, as it is in synagogues and in batei midrash.

“The gate of the women” [Mishna Middot 2:6]…They [women] must enter there to stand over the offering of their [personal] sacrifices…

Our rabbis taught: At first women were inside and men outside, but frivolity [kalut rosh] ensued. [The sages] enacted for the women to sit outside and the men inside. Still frivolity ensued. They enacted that the women sit above and the men below. How could they do this? Behold it is written “everything [of the Temple plans] is in writing from the hand of God upon me to understand” (Divrei Hayamim I 28:19). Rav said: They found a verse and expounded. “And the land mourned, each family to itself, the family of the house of David to itself, and their women to themselves” (Zecharya 12:12). They said: Are the matters not a kal va-chomer (a fortiori)? Just as in the time to come, when they are occupied with eulogy and the evil inclination has no power over them, the Torah said men to themselves and women to themselves, now that they are occupied with rejoicing [on Sukkot] and the evil inclination has power over them, how much more so [should they be separated]!

And they surrounded it with a balcony that the women see from above and the men from below, in order that they not be intermingled.

That they would place the men by themselves and the women by themselves, as we learned in a mishna (Middot2:5) “and it was smooth at first, and they surrounded it with a balcony that the women would see from above and the men from below, in order that they not be mingled.” From where did they learn it? From a matter of Torah: “And the land will eulogize, each family to itself…” (Zecharya 12:12)

“And I will be for them a small Temple.” Rabbi Yitzchak said: These are the synagogues and batei midrash of Babylonia.

According to the Talmud (Megilla 29a) synagogues are to be looked upon as sacred Temples-in-miniature. It is, therefore, our duty to exalt them to the same level of holiness as our Holy Temple (may it be rebuilt soon in our day). Indeed, our fathers, in establishing two separate divisions for men and women in the House of Prayer thereby continued the system inaugurated in the Temple.

Prayer means communion with the Master of the World, and therefore withdrawal from all and everything….Clearly, the presence of women among men, or of men among women, which often evokes a certain frivolity in the group, either in spirit or in behavior, can contribute little to sanctification or to the deepening of religious feeling; nor can it help instill that mood in which a man must be immersed when he would communicate with the Almighty.

….When I sat in a separate space, I found my own space for prayer, one whose contours had nothing to do with who did or didn’t come with me to synagogue. As a college student seeking to define her own religious identity, I came to see the mechitza as a symbol of my independence, and of my ability to define my own Jewish experience irrespective of my nuclear family. As a woman among women, what I felt was not kinship (although I was among friends), but rather, the liberating absence of family structure. Now, as an engaged woman, I still enjoy praying independently, without reference to my partner, my new family. The mechitza has allowed me to claim prayer as a private space, in which I can shed my various roles and simply be myself.

Synagogue becomes one place where we can be with our own gender, something not without a pleasure all its own. So you can say the mechitzah exists to keep women out, that the genders are identical and all else is cultural conceit. For many of us, though, the mechitzah opens a door in, perhaps into a more concentrated experience of who we are and certainly into the presence of Gd where holiness and much direction lie.

As a little girl, I was both enamored of the women’s section at the back of my Orthodox synagogue and tormented by it. I lived for Saturday mornings, when my mother and I left our Brooklyn apartment and walked around the corner to sweet, friendly Young Magen David and the cozy partitioned area reserved for women only. It was its own world: intimate, charming, a place that encouraged friendship as well as prayer. Safe at last, I’d think, as I put the rough school week behind me. I’d take a seat next to my mother behind the wooden filigreed divider with clover-shaped holes. My immigrant congregation, made up of families who came from the Middle East, was so small that it was easy to follow the service from our area, and when the Torah scrolls were passed around you’d see women’s hands poking through the holes to touch the holy scrolls. Yet I also bristled at the divider and longed to escape to the men’s section. The men seemed to have such fun…

I don’t like the idea of women being sidelined in religious settings or anywhere else… That said, I knew that my male friends on the other side didn’t regard me as less intelligent or less able than they. We were separate for reasons of law and tradition in a religious setting, not because they were out to take away my rights or disrespect me as a human… That enabled me to be comfortable with the mechitza, and therefore with having it be a part of my experience of tefillah, even if I don’t love all aspects of it all the time.

We recite dirges there until the end of the first quarter of the night, the men in their synagogue and the women in their synagogue, And so, too, during the day we recite dirges, the men on their own and the women on their own, until almost a third of the way through the day.

The fact that the Shulchan Aruch did not mention the law of making a mechitza between the synagogue and the ezrat nashim is because then this question did not exist at all. For all synagogues were constructed in such a way that a thick wall divided the synagogue from the ezrat nashim, and it would reach from the floor to the roof and the sound of prayer would reach them [the women] by way of small windows or little apertures, that they would make in the wall, and it did not occur to anyone that such a question of whether we need a mechitza [or not] would arise.

Behold the essence of the law, that even if men are on one side and women on the other, they are prohibited from being without a mechitza, is, in my humble opinion, a Torah-level law. …A rabbinic prohibition would not override the prohibition [regarding the Temple architecture] of “all is in writing,” which is on a Torah level. So it is in the Yerushalmi Sukka 5:2 that they said about this that they made a rectification by adding to the structure [of the Temple], “from what did they learn it? From a matter of Torah” (see there). Therefore, it is called a matter of Torah. Even though the verse is only in the Writings…if it were merely rabbinic it would not be possible to add [to the structure of the Temple]. Rather it is certain that they were required on a Torah level to make the balcony …It stands to reason that it [the requirement of a mechitza] is on a Torah level in every place of congregating. And where there is no need to congregate, it was permissible even in the Temple [without a mechitza], for Chana prayed adjacent to Eli the kohen…

…There is certainly a requirement for the erection of a partition, and the synagogue which fails to erect one is guilty of violating a very sacred tradition. However, there is a basic difference between this wrong and that of the complete mingling of the sexes, for, as I indicated above, separation has its origin in the Bible itself, whereas the requirement of a mechitzah must be attributed to a Rabbinic ordinance. The Biblical passage from which the Talmud derives the interdiction against mixed pews [Zechariah 12:12 in Sukkah 51b], and also the Pentateuchic injunction, Let him see no unseemly thing in thee (Deuteronomy 23:15), deal with separation only. There is no mention, however, of segregation. The latter has been introduced in accordance with the old maxim, va’assu seyag latorah, “Make a fence around the Law (Aboth 1, 1) as a safety measure in order to prevent the mingling of the sexes.

They would establish in the Temple a place for the women above and for the men below, in order that they not mingle with each other.

The place of the women was above the place of the men, higher than it, in order that the men not gaze at the women.

They still would come to frivolity. That means that they would gaze at each other and wink their eyes. They [the sages] enacted that the women see from above and the men from below.

His [Rambam’s] intention in his commentary to Sukka is gazing of the sort that can lead to kalut rosh ….Even if his intent in his commentary is unclear, for halacha we only have what Rambam wrote in his halachot [Mishneh Torah]…that the purpose is that they not be mingled…but seeing on its own is not cause for halachic concern.

One who does one of these [Canaanite] practices is suspected of sexual transgressions, and it is prohibited for a man to signal with his hands or feet or to hint with his eyes to one of the women prohibited to him or to joke with her or to be frivolous…And one who looks even at the little finger of a woman intending to take pleasure from it is like one who looked at her genitalia.

…For the concern was solely gazing, for on the whole it is impossible to supervise this and to discern whether the gazing is intentional [for pleasure]. Rather in the end they [the sages at the time of simchat beit ha-sho’eiva] felt that there was gazing among the people and thoughts of sin and this is called kalut rosh…

One cannot deny that if they [women] really look [at men] for the purpose of sexual pleasure, women transgress like men. For “you shall not stray after your hearts and after your eyes” is a negative commandment that applies equally to everyone, for women are obligated in negative commandments like men… But just to see or to look at men without feasting their eyes, i.e., without sexual thoughts, as they see them regularly from the women’s section of the synagogue, certainly we did not find that our forefathers and rabbi were concerned about that.

For we believe that every prayer or praise or thanksgiving that mixes with any [sexual] stray thoughts, even of his wife, will not ascend on high before God and will not be received before Him. And therefore, we separate the women from the men in a synagogue to themselves, so that they [the men] not come to stray thoughts at the time of prayer and their prayer be rejected, Heaven help us …Since we clarified that a woman’s voice is akin to erva; if so, the voice that travels from the women’s section to the men’s section arouses stray thoughts and nullifies intentionality during prayer.

It was taught in the beit midrash of Eliyahu: …One should not stand in the public domain and pray, because [one is likely to be distracted by] the thoughts of others. And one should not stand among women and pray, because [one is likely to be distracted by] the thoughts of women.

For those people in the synagogue for whom prayer…is a profound communing with God and the transcendent, a great disservice is done, in my opinion, by placing others in a position where they can easily observe them. It demonstrates a lack of spiritual sensitivity to ignore the magnificent intimacy that takes place when one is praying — an intimacy that should remain private, if the laws of modesty are fully understood…[Once], during the final verse of lecha dodi — the one beginning with bo’i kalah where all turn to face in the opposite direction — I found myself looking down from my front row seat right into the face of a man who was clearly filled with love and ecstasy and communing with God and the Sabbath queen at that moment. I felt truly embarrassed, like a voyeur. That moment was not for me to see; and yet the synagogue’s design had let me see it, seated in the front row as I was.

One should not be concerned that during prayer they [men] will end up gazing [at women] for the purpose of pleasure. It is clear that what Rambam wrote [in his commentary to the Mishna] “that the men not look at the women,” his intention was that they not gaze for the purpose of pleasure, but mere seeing was not prohibited…That the young women pray out loud, there is no issue at all. The great sages of Ashkenaz, among them Rav Azriel Hildesheimer, already permitted men and women to sing Shabbat songs together, for two reasons: 1. Two voices [sounding simultaneously] are not heard. 2. Sacred songs don’t bring people to thoughts of transgression.