Good Fences Make Loud Neighbors

I grew up davening in a minyan without a mechitza, and I pretty much didn’t experience a mechitza at all until I got to my modern Orthodox high school. After 14 years of attending services every week with my family, and davening every day at school, suddenly having a wooden screen between me and the pimply-faced skinny boys in my class just seemed totally stupid. I was not distracted by them. I cannot imagine that as a pimply faced overdeveloped girl I was much of a distraction to any of them, and it was in high school that I learned about what I have found to be the main and most problematic consequence of the mechitza: it just encourages people—especially women—to ignore the davening, and instead chat with their neighbors.

In case you were wondering why this is coming up today, it’s because Sukkot is supposedly the anniversary of the first mechitza. See, during the time of the Temple they’d have this huge party during the intermediate days of Sukkot. The party was called Simchat Beit HaShoevah (literally, the celebration of the water drawing house) and there was all manner of singing and dancing. "Whoever did not see the Simchat Beit Hashoeva," says the Mishna (Sukkah 51a), never saw true celebration in his life. The celebration was in honor of the water libations that were performed on sukkot, and the libations represented tbe rainy year that we hoped God would give us. Anyway, the parties were huge, and there was apparently some levity involved (I know, levity at a party—crazy!) and the rabbis decided that the best way to avoid this was to construct a special balcony for the women so they could watch without being involved and thus wouldn’t cause any levity. Snazzy, eh? And apparently the whole balcony concept stuck, they decided to just leave it up all year, and there you have it—the origins of the mechitza. I’m going to stay away from a discussion about whether or not the rabbis should have just learned to control themselves, because it’s all in the past and who gives a fuck. My main point is this—if you stick the women in a place that seems to be a step or seven away from the action going on at shul, you have to expect that they’ll feel like they’re not involved, unnecessary, and would just as soon talk to their neighbors about Malka Mushka’s new sheitel, or whether or not the rabbi’s son is still dating that shiksa from Delaware. And even if you don’t think it matters if women pray or not, you should care about how much talking goes on in the women’s section because sound does bleed over to the men’s section, and suddenly you can’t hear the Torah reading because of damn Malka Mushka and her sheitel. I guess what I’m saying is, if you tell people that they need to be far away so as not to distract you, you can’t be surprised when they get distracted standing way off in the distance.