The Glass Mehitzah:
Women Breaking Through the Barriers

by Deborah Resnick (jdresnick@earthlink.net)


Throughout the ages, the Jewish tradition has survived, and often has thrived. This is due to many factors, not the least of which is the Jewish woman. And through all those centuries, Jewish women have maintained Jewish homes, raised Jewish children, and verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serifted Jewish values and beliefs, often in cultural atmospheres of hostility and persecution. In order to ensure the transmission of Jewish beliefs and customs to the generations to come, they have needed an extensive knowledge of Jewish practice and theology. Unfortunately, while they were responsible for the care and nurturing of future Jews, they were usually disenfranchised from mainstream Jewish communal worship and study.

The Traditional Jewish Woman

Jewish women have been saluted and slurred, revered and reviled. On the Sabbath, at the Sabbath meal, many Jewish husbands rise and praise their wives with verses from a prayer based Proverbs, A Woman of Valor. This prayer honors women with the words of an ancient prophet who compared a valorous woman to precious gems. Yet, that same woman who is so praised, in a traditional home will not be allowed to sing zemirot, Shabbat songs, at her own table if there are un-related men present. That same woman who tends children while her husband hurries off to shul, is not counted in the minyan, the required ten adult Jews (men) required to recite certain communal prayers.

The traditional Jewish woman are exempted from many time-bound mitzvot (commandments) because, according to the rabbinic courts that have established these laws and interpret them, women are not able to perform these time-bound mitzvot because of their child-rearing and household duties. It is true that traditional women have many more familial responsibilities than the men do. They are much more restricted in movement, particularly on Shabbat. In addition, traditional women are often not only raising their children, but also working to support husbands who are still studying, an occupation which brings the highest honor upon a man. This places additional demands upon a woman whose day is already too short.

Jewish women, however, have always found ways to gain the spiritual experiences they sought. Charles Silberman, in his book A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today, states that Orthodox women have always created opportunities to learn and to practice their religion. Many women, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, have had intense spiritual experiences when participating in rituals they were formerly denied. They have created prayer groups, where they recited the daily services (without the communal prayers, they don't consider themselves to be a minyan), read from the Torah (the first five books of Moses, part of the Christian Old Testament), and given each other aliyahs (opportunities to recite the blessings over the Torah before the reading).

Orthodox and many non-Orthodox men were, and still are, uncomfortable with this, but have not been able to stop these practices, because they do not violate halacha (Jewish law). Among Jewish women, Orthodox women have the highest Jewish literacy rate, followed closely by Conservative women, but they have been the slowest to demand full partnership in all aspects of Jewish life. In this, Reform and Reconstructionist women have led the way.

The Changing Role of Women

Until the 1950's, Jewish women took a back seat (literally) in communal worship. The synagogue was frequently divided with a mehitzah, a partition, separating the men from the women. The reason given for this separation was that mixing the men and women would make it hard for the men to concentrate on their prayers. They would be more prone to less-than-prayerful thoughts, and would not concentrate on God.

The first groups to do away with the mehitzah were the Reform congregations. The Reform movement began in the middle of the 19th century in Germany. It was based upon the idea that it was not necessary to set us as Jews apart from the general population. Many Jews had already accepted many of the customs and practices of the goyim (non-Jews), and felt that their places of worship should be more in keeping with modern society. This led to a change in both the service and the synagogue. The service, previously in Hebrew, was rewritten to be read in English. The synagogue itself became modeled after the Protestant churches of the time, and the mehitzah was one of the first features to go. With the tearing down of one wall, was it so hard to know that others would soon follow? Reform Jewish women soon began to express their interest in more formal study and participation in the service. This met with great resistance. Already so much had changed, how could they possible retain their Jewish identity if all the barriers came down at once? So, the status of Jewish women remained virtually the same for another hundred years.

Late in the 19th century, and on into the 20th century, all women, including Jewish women, began to question their limited roles. They demanded the vote, they insisted upon equal employment laws; they demanded respect as women and as contributing members of society. And Jewish women demanded their place in the hierarchy of Jewish theological thought. Jewish religious life would never be the same as it was. Women had become empowered by feminism and an increasing self-confidence. They had begun to truly understand what they had been denied.

Although many men felt that feminism would have a weakening affect on Jewish life, exactly the opposite has happened. Sylvia Fishman Barach looked at the impact of feminism has had on the American Jewish community in her book, A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community, and found that there has actually been a very beneficial impact. Surprisingly, she found that Orthodoxy, potentially very limiting on Jewish women, has actually made the greatest strides in education of women. Orthodox women have been leaders in the quest for Jewish knowledge, and were among the first Jewish women to organize prayer groups and Talmud study for women. Ultimately, however, it was the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, which made the first forays into uncharted Jewish male territory - the rabbinate.

Women began taking for themselves the rituals and outward symbols of Judaism, including the tallit and the kipah, the headcovering traditionally worn by men as a sign of respect for God. Even these simple acts invited controversy. Many men felt that women were taking on these articles in a trivial manner, and not in a prayerful spirit. As April Witt reported in her article, "Yarmulkes for women meet growing acceptance", Congregation Samu-El Or Olom, a Conservative synagogue in Miami experienced an outcry when women began wearing tallit and kipot. Harry Milder, a congregant, expressed his indignation saying, "There are women in this synagogue who have taken over and want everything to be equal, that's not the way it is in the Torah.... Something significant is being trivialized. They are using it for show, and that's not what it is for." The implication in Mr. Milder's statement is that women are not interested in the spiritual and ritual attached to the wearing of ritual garments, they are only interested in making a fashion statement. For centuries, the tallit has been used to close one's self off from outside disturbances, in an attempt to achieve a one-ness with God in prayer.

Feminism and the Woman Rabbi

As Jewish women became aware of their ability to succeed in the male business world, they began to cast their eyes in the direction of religious vocations. The first female rabbi to be ordained was Rabbi Sally Priesand, in 1973, at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was followed closely by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, a Reconstructionist rabbi ordained by The Reconstructionist Seminary in Philadelphia. These and other women found prejudice and apathy, sometimes even outright hostility in their pursuit of their vocations.

Objections to female rabbis and religious professionals included questions concerning their ability to raise families and cope with the often-impossible demands of the clergy. Their ability to "correctly" interpret texts was questioned, and their legitimacy as Jews suspect. Dr. Rachel Adler, in an essay published in The Jewish Condition: Essays on Contemporary Judaism Honoring Rabbi Alexander Schindler, wrote, "Our revolution was to affirm that we had a perspective on Torah that the tradition did not know and needed to learn, and to refuse to be shamed into silence by the magnitude of what we did not know". She goes on to say that "gate crashing" will not go far in "talking our way in," and that joining a discussion that is framed in interests and topics outside of the experience of women is difficult, but not impossible.

The Future of Judaism with Women as Full Partners


In the new millennium, women will continue to demand and receive their portion of both the secular and religious worlds. Not only Judaism, but all religions will see an increase in women as full partners in the practice of their faiths. Eventually, a day will come when no one will comment on a young girl's decision to become a priest, rabbi, or minister; just as now the surprise at a young woman's vocation of doctor or lawyer rarely raises eyebrows. The synagogue will be a place of worship, not gender-based conflict, with the victors being all Jews, not just the women.

Men come to ritual and worship with a perspective born of thousands of years of history and tradition. They bring to Judaism the uniquely masculine sense of strength and vitality that is inherent in male-based worship. Women bring to faith the feeling, the intuitive perspective that questions differently the base of our beliefs. These two views, combined, can make a whole of what is now divided. In Judaism, God is seen as both male and female. In Genesis, in the story of creation, the creation of human beings is told as God created humans in God's own image, male and female, God created them. God is seen as a male, the avenging father, and as the Shechina, the female essence. Both are combined to be a complete being. We, as humans, can only strive to attain what God has always had, the complete integration of male and female.

source:http://judaism.about.com/library/2_feminism/bl_mehitzaglass.htm

Jacqueline Tan, Brenda Chin, Evelyn Teo
10A07

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