Our next guest blogger, Dr. Beryl Rosenthal, is an anthropologist, a museum executive, a non-profit fundraiser. At one stage, we raised our middle school kids together and became fast friends. At another stage, at Congregation Beth Israel she was my boss, as the chair of the education committee. She hates it when I describe her that way. Now rarely a day goes by without me talking to her. She is the sister I never had. Her take on mechitza, the traditional separation between the men’s section of prayer and the women’s section, is particularly relevant after a week of shiva minyanim with a mechitza and somewhat surprising for both of us. And written before this past week.
In conversation with my friend Rabbi Margaret on the role of women in Judaism, I noted that for me, a mechitza was not necessarily an anti-feminist structure. I had the pleasure of attending an orthodox shul in St. Louis that was different from any other I had ever been part of. No, I am not orthodox, but it was close to our house and we had very young children who were welcome there.
Bais Abraham was an old European-style shul with a forward-thinking, brilliant and compassionate Polish rabbi who had been through some of the worst of the 20th century. There was a high mechitza as well, segregating the women and young children from the men. It marked complete separation, of “otherness”. I kept thinking of my old, worn copy of “Purity and Danger”, and how under ultra orthodoxy, women were seen as something to be kept separate, as they were distracting, perhaps dangerous.
The feminist in me should have bristled, but I found it strangely comforting. The structure was a symbol of something else. It marked the boundary for a female community. Many of us were mothers of young children, and we watched out for each others’ toddlers as they ran up and down the aisles. We babysat each other’s kids. We ran all-female Rosh Chodesh services together, supported completely by the rabbi who was constantly being reprimanded by St. Louis’ chief rabbi for being so open-minded (!) Someone was always shushing the few matrons that sat in the back and talked through services. The same two elderly ladies were in charge of the kitchen for years. There was definitely an underground “power elite”.
We could talk freely about supposedly “Female Stuff” – not “plumbing-related”, but how to discretely help someone who needed financial help, who was organizing a shiva meal, and who would pick up an elderly congregant who could no longer walk to shul. It was about taking turns babysitting and reading to the youngest children downstairs during the High Holidays. It was about asking the men to build a ramp for aging congregants.
In point of fact, it wasn’t “Female Stuff” at all, it was the stuff of Judaic ethics. It was about taking care of people, of maintaining someone’s dignity. It was about being a mentsch in a very natural, “don’t-have-to-think-about-it” way. It was about walking the walk.
That, is the nature of community, and in that context, perhaps the mechitza helped maintain it.