The congregation where I “make minyan” is having a מחיצה crisis.
For awhile, the ladies had a half wall and a muslin curtain from the ceiling in front of them to protect them from the looks of the male congregants.
There were several problems with this arrangement.
First, the synagogue's one door was about 3/4s of the way to the back of the women’s section. The ladies could see, and be seen, by everyone entering the building.
Second, the men and boys had to pass by the ladies on the way to the their bathroom.
Third, some of the younger children ran back and forth between mom and dad, disrupting the service for the ladies who came to pray.
Solution: Enclose all but a small entrance=way in thick cloth. The nicer ladies called it a tent; the less gentle ladies called it something else. Worse, the ladies, except one “hutzpanette” in front, could not see the Torah while it was out of the ark. Forget about touching the Torah. (No, a woman cannot make the Torah טמא even if she is. Most Sefardi and Mizrahi women would stay home at that time anyway.)
The rabbi, correctly fearing an insurrection that would first cause the ladies to abandon ship only to eventually bring their husbands and children with them, tried a compromise.
He thought to buy one-way glass and install it from ceiling to the half-height wall that originally separated the men from the women. Turned out, one-way mirrored glass was too expensive, and anyway, lights would have to be rigged so that the glass on the men’s side would be a mirror. (There might be a problem with a mirror in any event.)
He did what he thought was the next best thing.
He bought doors with 2 by 2 inch windows from top to bottom. Each pane had a semi-opaque design. Nobody likes it.
My table mate grumbled that “you still can see them.”
My wife grumbled that she had to bend this way and that way to see past the frames around the glass. Another woman complained that because the solid doors are floor-to-ceiling, she couldn’t hear the Torah or the rabbi’s 5-minute talk.
My answer to my tablemate and all other men who can still see the women is simple:
Don’t look
Put your eyes on the sedur or humash in front of you
Pay attention to the Torah reader – he may need your help if he mistakes “va” for “ve.”
Basically, there rarely is need for a man – who ought to be busy with “manly things” - to look at the women or even in their direction.
I have to wander about the מחיצה.
The original מחיצה was in place at the Temple to protect women as well as weaker men (young boys and geezers) from the excesses of the Water Festival. It was not to separate men from women per se. Rather like an old man in 2013 going to sit in the corner during Simhat Torah to avoid being stabbed in the eye by a child carrying a paper flag.
I think a man should be able to control his desires, to overcome his evil inclination when he sees a woman other than his wife or hears a woman’s voice in song. If he can’t, then he should live in a shower that only has cold water.
At least the ladies where I go dress appropriately. I know places where, between the low cut of a woman’s blouse and the shortness of the woman’s skirt, she’s seems barely to be wearing a belt. In that case I reach for my large tallit – to cover my head since she can’t cover … well, what she ought to cover in synagogue. The bottom line for me that that I must keep my urges in control, no matter how provocative my surroundings.
Let there be a מחיצה, but let it be so the ladies can at least see and hear the Torah. Lest someone forget, the women are responsible for saving us on the way from Egypt and they are the ones who today educate our children to be observant Jews and to follow in their parent’s path.
הריני מקבל עלי מצוה עשה של ואהבת לרעך כמוך, והריני אוהב כל אחד מבני ישראל כנפשי ומאודי
