Drama in the Synagogue Group-chat
My shul has a slack, it is a bit cursed seeing a neighborhood and community try to keep in touch through a platform designed for panopticon micromanagement, but the vibes are surprisingly nice and the Rabbanit has done a good job of sanding off the corporate edges and making it work.
One such touches is a channel we can use to specifically ask her or each other halachic questions. Jewish law is so immense and nuanced that it is extremely common to find yourself at a grocery store being like "wait fuck they only have thoroughly washed lettuce, not triple washed lettuce, is that still kosher??" in which case its super helpful to be able to just ping a rabbi to double check. I decided to ask such a question after realizing that I don't know much about our practice of mechitzah (gender based separation during prayer). Very innocently I asked simply "can anyone send me sources on the halakha and history of mechitzah? I'm interested in learning more about why we do what we do". Surprisingly, when it comes to the halakha of sex and gender, people have Opinions. Who would have guessed!
It starts innocently enough, with someone sending the main sources used as the basis for the halakha, Sukkah 51b, a few other people chiming in on why they prefer the practice and all that, but then someone adds the Not Great answer of "mechitzah lets men focus on praying without being distracted by women, and it has the added side effect of getting women to focus too!"
oh boy!
a friend of mind quickly responds with "hey so I'm gay where should I sit?" annnndddd we're off! dozens on dozens of replies, the rabbi is nowhere to be seen (the HHD's are next week! what did I expect!), we're on our own and at each others throats. Slack is, uh, as you'd imagine, not the best place for heated conversations about sex and gender. Queer people were taking issue with heteronormative reasons for the mechitzah, people holding those reasons felt defensive, and allies (the majority) were pushing to give queer voices more room. We all agreed on this practice, otherwise we wouldn't be in this community, but we all disagreed on the reason, and in that difference we saw the ways we were apart from one another. It was a surprisingly necessary conversation, and thankfully two voices in the group shared texts and teachings and in centering those texts we were able to come to some sort of synthesis.
Quick summary of the halakha as I now understand it, so it is taught that the sages instituted mechitzah within the Temple during the sukkot sacrifice to prevent "Kalus Rosh" (lit. a light head). This is usually translated as "levity" or "frivolity", presumably with the connotation of sexual impropriety, but as we look at other instances of kalus rosh being used we find that uhh actually no that connotation is read into the text and it's not there originally. It is actually an extremely modern (<50 years old) practice of reading sexual connotation into that phrase. A plain reading of the text is actually backed up by other sources. What we find detailed in berakhot is that an ideal space for communal prayer is one without too much joy or too much sorrow, too much levity or too much solemnity, ect. Maybe this separation, like all separation in Judaism, is just part of building a certain focus and creating a space of sanctification.
Anyways, so during Shabbat yesterday we were all in person with one another, and I apparently am now "the mechitzah girl" lol, talk of the town apparently, people kept coming up to me and thanking me for kicking off such a conversation and sharing their thoughts and feelings and personal wrestling with the practice. One person even sponsored the lunch in honor of "the brave conversations we are having as a community" and gave me a shout out :>
The Rabbi is going to teach a shiur on mechitzah during sukkot, there's talk of starting a women's only tefilah group, there really was a buzz in the room about how we all feel on the Orthodox approach to gender and division. It was really cool!
At the end of shabbat during our communal dinner the Rabbi sits down next to me with an empty chair between us and just quips "oh it's kind of like a mechitzah eh" aaaa omg :>
Wild how much hay can be made over a ten tefaḥim tall barrier!