None of the people in this picture is Sadie.
(titled in honor of my friend Sadie, whose family were four-time returning champs on the all-new Family Feud, hosted by Al from Home Improvement)
Friday night, I went to services at Shira Chadasha, an "egalitarian modern orthodox" shul that meets at a community center on Emek. Usually, Orthodox synagogues have separate seating areas for men and women (and whatever separates the men and women -- a screen, curtain, wall, etc. -- is called the mekhitza). The idea, as Mike explained in his comment to my previous post, is that men are required to pray (and women are not), and seeing women and hearing their voices would be distracting. In addition, only men can lead a service, and only men can read from the Torah.
At Shira Chadasha, the liturgy is Orthodox, and there is a mekhitza. But (and this is a big "but" for traditional Jews) the mekhitza is basically see-through. And women are allowed to lead parts of the service. There are two podia (that's the plural of podium, for those of you who didn't take two semesters of Latin with Prof. Eddie Lowry, aka God), one on each side of the mekhitza, and the men can hear if a women is leading and vice-versa.
Also, on Saturday mornings (I've only been on a Friday night, so here I rely on other eyewitnesses), the mekhitza is pulled aside during the service so men and women can participate equally in the Torah service. How can they call themselves Orthodox, you may ask?
Well, it turns out that there's been quite a bit of recent Orthodox responsa (rabbinic legal opinions) arguing that women should be allowed to read Torah. The idea is that women are only prohibited from engaging in most positive (non-passive) mitzvot (commandments).
[Begin explanation that will probably make little sense to my non-Jewish readers] When we fulfill these mitzvot, we say a blessing before that includes the phrase "asher kiddshanu b'mitzvotav" ("...who hallows us with his commandments.") The idea is that by engaging these acts, we're fulfilling a mitzvah. But reading Torah is not a mitzvah, which is why the blessings over reading Torah don't include the "asher kiddshanu b'mitzvotav" line. Actually, it's hearing the Torah read that's a mitzvah, not the act of reading it out-loud. The authors of the aforementioned responsa argue that this entire idea, in addition to numerous Talmudic and Biblical pieces of evidence, is enough to allow women reading Torah. [end of confusing explanation]
I should note that this whole "whether or not women should be seen or heard during services" is entirely irrelevant to me, since I don't much care for the traditional Jewish attitude that men and women should have different obligations to (and different relationships with) God, religion, and spirituality. Jewishly, I'm an egalitarian in the full sense of the word. I don't bring this up to suggest that I'm superior or above the whole thing... It's just that this isn't my argument to have. I'm not Orthodox, so I'm not so worried about hearing a woman's voice while I pray.
So Shira Chadasha was nice enough, I guess. The services sounded good -- lots of Carlebach melodies and people who knew them -- and there was certainly some good ruakh (spirit). But I'm just not comfortable in a room with a mekhitza. There's something missing when I can't really hear the women.
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