Beyond the Inner Mehitza1 By Vered Noam2

Translated by Avi Woolf

The exclusion of women from shul activity doesnt just harm women. It also harms the institution itself, which loses its authenticity and exists in a lost reality. A call for honesty and tenderness Much like our shul, our spiritual life is divided by a mehitza. We push elements of critical thinking, compassion and common sense beyond this internal divider. Spiritual events require internal and external openness. For how can one sing God's praises with a clenched fist?
While visiting the States, we found ourselves one Shabbat evening in Rabbi Avi Weiss' shul in Riverdale, New York. After Kabbalat Shabbat, the Rabbi suddenly asked the congregation to rise. He drew everyone's attention to the entry of a female member of the congregation, a mourner in the middle of a Shiva. Rabbi Weiss mentioned her name and the name of her just deceased father and the entire congregation - men and women spoke to her as is customary on such occasions, saying the beautiful words of comfort which halakha gave us: "Hamakom yenahem otah im sh'ar avlei tziyon veyerushalayim". I stood there elated, as if a miracle had taken place before my eyes. It was as though an unattainable and long-desired destination of acceptance, of compassion, of warm embrace, was suddenly materializing before me. One could sense an unbelievable gust of tenderness, of partnership, recognition and communal support in the air. This excitement forced me to see a truth that the mehitza of habit had hidden from me until that point the truth of the great void which screams from most of our shuls. After all, this couldn't happen by us. In Israel, this woman would have been transparent. No one would notice her entering the shul nor recognize her mourning. At least on the "wrong" side of the mehitza, our shul radiates the exact opposite; a legacy which is heavy on tradition
1 2

This article was first published in Makor Rishon, Mussaf Shabbat, 13.1.2013. Professor Noam teaches in the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her books Megillat Taanit: Versions, Interpretation, History (Hebrew) and From Qumran to the Rabbinic Revolution: Conceptions of Impurity (Hebrew) have been published by Yad Ben Zvi.

and light on halakha forces onto the atmosphere an alienation and rigidity which have become a kind of binding religious principle. The feminist discourse has long since proposed to pay attention to the architectural message of the shul directly, without external excuses. The traditional shul, with its ezrat nashim located on the balcony, says simply: women have no part in the religious act. They need to be as far away as possible from the focal points of kedushah. It is very important that their presence be hidden and denied by those who are engaged in Tefilah and Torah. One point that is not sufficiently stressed, in my opinion, is that the male space 'below' is an open communal one. The female space 'above' is narrow and circular, focusing its attendants not towards one another but rather towards the common focus of attention below. In other words, men are a tzibur, a community, among whom interaction takes place. Meantime, those above not only have no part in that which takes places below, they also have no connection among themselves, being merely a collection of individuals. Our shul openly declares that a woman has no community, not even a woman's community. Her avodat Hashem is solely an individual effort, nothing more. Her connection to any tzibur is only through her father or husband, members of the community in which she is a passive observer. This is an exact reflection of an ancient and long-lost social reality, a reality in which women had no foothold in the public arena or a partnership in something other than their private family. Aside from the more frequently discussed subject of the feeling of transparency in the ezrat nashim, (somewhat similar to the weird sensation of weightlessness when in an elevator), women in this situation also feel a great sense of loneliness. Within the religious space for which the shul is but a symbol, women lack not only existence and visibility, but also a community. This is what was so exciting in Rabbi Weiss' small gesture. It succeeded in bypassing the loneliness and the transparency and delivering a message of comfort. Three Responses Here I will only make brief mention of a number of well-known truths, as they are not the main point of this article. It goes without saying that this picture represents a growing dissonance, one almost impossible to contain, between the authentic world in which we live on the 'outside' and our religious space. The complete silencing and concealment of educated, creative, involved and leading women in the shul is so glaring that one need only briefly observe it from the outside to see just how absurd it all is. The norms of modesty

which are observed in the shul are also completely foreign to our world. Your average religious male watches a movie every so often and will gladly attend a performance by Yehudit Ravitz. Does his sexual inclination really overwhelm him just by hearing a woman make the blessing of 'asher natan lanu Torat emet ve'hayei olam nata betocheinu'? Do a free man and woman who converse with mutual respect on the sidewalk suddenly become the proverbial fox and hen once they cross the shul's threshold? It is well to mention in this context the statement that 'where the Shechina resides, the Sages did not fear lustful thoughts' (Rav Ovadyah Yosef, Yehaveh Da'at 4:15; He derived this from the fact that '[the Sages] allowed a woman to read from the Torah when there are not seven who know how to read'). How does all this affect women? Let me stress once more that this is not the main focus of my argument. I have not come to discuss the troubles and interests of women, but rather our religious life as a whole. But I cannot avoid a brief survey before I continue. The modern religious woman lives in two worlds. In one she has an area for intellectual development, a sense of belonging, recognition and expression. In the second, she is forced into the role of a woman from Roman Eretz Israel, Sassanid Persia or Medieval Ashkenaz. She is mute, receives only a partial Jewish education, deliberately filtered and nave (the one-year programs in some Midrashot are far from correcting this state of affairs, see below) and her presence in the realms of kedushah is denied. In one world she earns all the power, encouragement, belonging and joy which a community provides. In the other she stands in splendid isolation. The response of women can be categorized into three types: For a small minority, the shul and the world of Torah is the very core of being. These women struggle for years for a place in that world in various roundabout ways, motivated by the pain of 'for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve other gods' (1 Sam 26:19) and striving determinedly to realize 'Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father' (Num. 27:4). Other women are comfortable to stand in the same place their mother did, and they are content with the private and personal worship of God for which they were raised. But most women make the simple and obvious choice. 'To the place that I love, there my feet lead meif thou wilt not come to my house, I will not come to thy house' (Sukkah 53a). They place the center of their life in the secular world and remove themselves from the territory that is not interested in them anyway.

The religious establishment also formed its strategy to these three groups differently. It disowns the first group, ignores the second and either knowingly or unknowingly encourages the third, as the association of women with the secular realm leaves all parties satisfied. The Removal of Authenticity But the question is not what happens to the women who deserted the shul, but rather what became of those in the congregation men as well women - who stayed there. The influence is far-reaching, both overtly and covertly. Overtly, when the half of the community which is equal in daily communal life averts its eyes from the world of Torah and Tefilah, the center of gravity of the community in general is also dragged outside of the religious into the secular world. But things go even deeper than that. The initial religious instinct strives towards conservatism as a deliberate defamiliarization of the religious act, in order to protect it from changing circumstances and to separate the life of Mitzvot from normal reality, thus designating them a festive space of their own. This is a vitally important foundation of tradition, as there is no Torah and Mitzvot without continuity, no holiness without separation. But this principle should have two limitations: 1) That which is not grounded in halakha should not be given a false halakhic veneer. 2) The benefit should be measured against the cost. The danger in ignoring these last is the detachment of the religious realm from the authentic world of its members and its subsequent relegation to a kind of a zoo, so to speak, which appears increasingly perplexing not only to the outside observer, but to those on the inside as well. The social absurdity which the shul creates in relation to everything we know of ourselves as men, women and a society empties this space of our personal and social authenticity. Removing women from public religious activity (yes, also at a brit,3 Bar Mitzva, huppah, funeral or Daf Yomi) removes this very activity from life to the museum. Pleas ('Tahanunim') to God can only come from within, from an authentic identity. But the shul represents an uprooting from our true identity into a fossilized space which enforces a lost reality. Put differently, we are witnessing the marginalization of the shul and everything it stands for. I have no doubt that the creeping feeling of desolation and barrenness in shul
3

On women who served in Medieval Ashkenaz as Sandaks, or Godmothers, at a brit and the resistance to this phenomenon, cf. Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, Massachusetts: Brandeis 2004, 185.

on Shabbat mornings, described some time ago by Elhanan Nir on the pages of this newspaper, derives largely from what I just described. The responses to this article will no doubt include the 'slippery slope' argument. It is worth remembering that the dangers are no less great (in my opinion far greater) in preferring the ostensibly safe option of stagnation. A family example of this phenomenon is the zimun for Birkat Hamazon. As Hazal enacted, our task is to create a connection between all the diners for Heaven's sake, a congress which is beyond mere eating and higher than the secular. The barayta states that women do zimun amongst themselves and from a plain reading of the sugya in the Gemara it arises that women are permitted and even obligated to be counted with the men for a zimun of three. But many of the Rishonim feared of pritzut [promiscuity] in a mixed zimun (as a result of the Gemara's fear of such pritzut between women and slaves) because they considered the very establishment of a common meal between men and women as improper, even though there were also Rishonim who included their wives and daughters in a zimun (For the entire subject see the recent discussions in Akdamut 26, 2011 [Hebrew]). The result is a complete absurdity: we eat together, laugh together, converse together, gossip together but only when we are called to bench together does the fear of pritzut arise. For our purposes, suffice it is to note that at the time of the zimun half of those present are detached from the process. This fact turns the zimun at once from a living and natural connection of diners for the purpose of mitzvah, a connection which is a direct continuation of the meal itself with all its characteristics, to a frozen 'ceremony', a detached activity which has lost all meaning. It is not the women who have been dislodged, but the zimun itself. Driven by the sharp feeling of the loss of spiritual vitality in the shul, many young people have gone to establish minyanim of a Hassidic flavor. The distancing of women from "establishment" religious events has led them to create alternative ceremonies such as Amen Se'udas, birth circles, a collective separation of the hallah with great fanfare and more. All this is well and good, but what of our neighborhood shul? 'An old sukkah it needs something new' (see Shulchan Aruch OH 636:1). Even if the pioneering path of 'Shira Hadasha' and similar minyanim is not presently acceptable to the majority of communities, it is absolutely necessary to find ways to get around the affront to women and primarily to revive our tired shuls, at the very least with

simple gestures of partnership which bear no halakhic cost. Making sure all new shuls have a single level; placing the mehitza to the center of the Aron Kodesh (this detail has tremendous symbolic importance); communal arrangements for occupying children during Tefilah (these children have fathers, not just mothers); kadish of a female orphan; women's Divrei Torah; partnership and active leading of women in running the shul; explicit mention of a Bat Mitzvah; passing the Sefer Torah to the women's section before laining; singing of An'im Zemirot by girls and so on. These things are already happening in many places, but there are too many places where they are not.

The Halakhic Test

A study of the halakhic status of women in shul in particular and religious life in general is a complex matter, one which touches on fundamental questions such as the dynamic elements of halakha and its attitude to current circumstances, the degree to which it is possible to be objective in psak as opposed to overt or covert goals of the posek, the relation between minhag and halakha and so on. The debate between the halakhic innovator and his conservative counterpart usually involve searches for justifications for a position which they already hold. The innovator's slight advantage lies in his obligation to conduct a thorough study of the halakhic subject matter, as he is perceived as bearing the burden of proof, while his conservative disputant is perceived as representing halakha in its pure form. Often this is an illusion. Most of us are unaware and are comfortable not knowing the extent to which convention can represent arbitrary circumstances, shaky compromises, laziness or forgetfulness. This is obviously not the place for an halakhic study, to say nothing of the fact that many such studies have already been conducted, resulting predictably in contrary conclusions. The random selection of data which I will use below is in no way a substitute for serious study. It is also not a prelude to any effective conclusion. Its purpose is solely to refute a common misconception. The popular consciousness sees any change in the direction of increased inclusion of women in religious life as a presumptuous and dangerous 'outside' breach, one which uproots fundamentals of Torah, and halakhic decision-makers are in no hurry to dispel this impression. However, a study of the sources shows that many of the limitations on women which have become routine in our day are actually the consequence of historic circumstances which have since passed, or the result of custom. Furthermore, such a study shows that various alternatives were proposed by important poskim and even observed

throughout the generations. Therefore, the re-introduction of these options would represent an internal halakhic choice, rather than an external innovation. Prayer: The most prominent distinction between the daily religious life of men and women is the commitment to Tefilah. Anyone who observes our daily routine will immediately conclude that women 'don't need' to daven, and therefore shul is the affair of men. This is a complete distortion of halakhic primary sources, which teach that men and women are equally obligated. The Mishna (Berachot 3:3) states simply that women are obligated in Tefilah just as they are obligated in birkat hamazon, and the relevant sugya (Berachot 20b) follows its lead. Thus it was ruled both by the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch (Hilchot Tefila 6:10; OH 106, respectively) that 'women and slaves *+ are obligated in Tefilah'. It's true that the Rishonim differed whether Tefilah in general is d'orayta or d'rabanan, and whether the regular formula and times for Tefilah are an integral part of it. An interesting diversity of versions in the Gemara text apparently derives from these questions. However, according to all these attitudes, women are equally obliged and no one has ever disputed this basic axiom, up until the days of the Magen Avraham (17th century), who strove to find a formal excuse for the fact that 'most women customarily do not pray regularly morning and night'. He suggested that according to the minority opinion of the Rambam that the d'orayta initial obligation of Tefilah is 'that a person should plead and pray every dayto the extent of his ability and at any time he desires' (Hilchot Tefilah 1:2-3), women's obligation is limited to this degree (Magen Avraham OH 106:2), though the Rambam himself never expressed this view with regard to women's obligation but rather the opposite, as many have noted. Moreover, the Ramban and many other Rishonim 'obligated them to [pray] Shaharit and Minha like menand this is what counts as this is the opinion of the majority of poskim' (Mishnah Berurah 106.4).4 The strained compromise which we practice apparently derives from the unavoidable practical necessities of life. It's nevertheless worthwhile to occasionally remember that when it comes to Tefilah, women are considered 'mehuyav badavar' (= fully obligated). Aliyah to the Torah: The barayta states that: 'All are qualified to be among the seven [who read from the Torah], even a child, even a woman. But Hachamim said: a woman will not read from the Torah,
4

Concerning these last observations I am indebted to Rabbi Ethan Tucker for his useful comments on the former Hebrew version of this paper

because of kvod tzibur [public honor]' (Megilah 23a).5 In other words, according to the principal law women get aliyot and read from the Torah during laining, however Hachamim enacted that they not do so because in their society a woman reading from the Torah was a testament to the ignorance of the men of that tzibur. '[The prohibition of] Kvod Tzibur is so that no-one should say that there is no-one among the men who can read the Torah but it is not because of [the fear] of pritzut (Rav Uziel, Piskei Uziel Bishe'elot Hazman, 44). Prima facie, this seems a circumstantial and culture-based halakhic fear.6 The attitude of the poskim to the degree of flexibility of the term kvod tzibur has already been extensively surveyed elsewhere. I will therefore suffice with but one prominent and oft-quoted example of this. The Maharam of Rothenburg, the pre-eminent posek of Ashkenaz in the 12th-13th centuries, instructed that women have aliyahs in a town that was entirely made of kohanim. This was in order to prevent a situation in which a kohen has a third aliyah after the first two kohanim and the former will be suspected as one of improper birth or a halal. In Maharam's opinion, this fear set aside the consideration of kvod tzibur regarding women's aliyahs ('kvod tzibur is set aside [to prevent the suspicion of] pegam kohanim [improper kohanic lineage]'). One can of course say that this ruling is an isolated outlier which was also not accepted as law by later authorities. But one cannot ignore the negligible weight which the Maharam attached to kvod tzibur in this context. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the difference in proportion between the local fear of pegam kohanim and the acute and decisive problems we face today. Whatever the decision may be on this matter, it would appear that in strict halakhic terms, carrying on Shabbat with an eiruv or heter mechira during shemita would appear to be far more presumptuous breaches of halakha than women's aliyahs.7

Furthermore, according to the parallel Tosefta, Megilah 3:11, there isn't even a restriction of kvod tzibur but merely a condition that there be at least one man (or three men according to some 2 opinions) among the seven. Cf. Saul Liberman, Tosefta Kipeshuta (Hebrew), 5, Jerusalem, 1993 , p. 1176-1177. 6 For similar fears among Hazal, cf. Mishna Sukkah 3:10; bavli Berachot 20b. 7 For extensive and detailed discussions of womens aliyahs and Torah reading, which reached contrary conclusions, cf. Mendel Shapiro, 'Keri'at ha-Torah by Women; a Halakhic Analysis', Edah Journal 1:2 (2001), 1-52; D. Sperber, 'Congregational Dignity and Human Dignity: Women and Public Torah Reading', Edah Journal 3:2 (2003); Eliav Shohetman, Aliyat Nashim LaTorah, Sinai 135-136 (2004-2005), 271-349.

A Woman with a Tallit

Mitzvot Aseh Shehazman Graman (time-bound positive commandments): There is almost no-one who disputes that one who is exempt from a mitzvah can voluntarily observe it (Kiddushin 31a),8 and indeed women recite shema, hear the shofar and take a lulav without a blessing. It's important to stress that these examples are entirely coincidental; this possibility is open regarding any Mitzvah from which women are exempt. Indeed, throughout the generations there were 'a few righteous women' as one of the Rishonim defined them, who put on tefilin, for instance. It's worth mentioning that the only one who forbad doing so, the Maharam of Rothenburg, did not forbid it because it was wrong in principle but because he had considered women of his day to be negligent about maintaining a clean body, which is necessary before putting on tefilin. We must also note that the exemption of time-bound Mitzvot is learned from the exemption of women from putting on tefilin, which itself was derived from the exemption from learning Torah (Kiddushin 34a), while this last is void throughout all of the Jewish people, Haredi communities included. In any event, the Rishonim only differed on the question of whether one is exempt from a Mitzva may make a blessing on it. Ashkenazic poskim followed Rabenu Tam in allowing it (see e.g. Tos. Kiddushin 31a, 'dela mipakidna') while Sefardic poskim followed Rambam (and Rashi before him) who forbad it: Women and slaves who wish to wrap themselves in tzitzit
may do so without reciting a blessing. Similarly, regarding the other positive commandments which women are not required to fulfill, if they desire to fulfill them without reciting a blessing, they should not be prevented from doing so (Hilchot Tzitzit 3:9). This means that a woman

who puts on a tallit without a blessing passes muster with all the poskim, and is even being more conservative than a women who takes a lulav with a blessing, while a woman who makes a blessing when putting on a tallit is following the Ashkenazic psak. Dear reader, let us pause at this point, and conduct an exercise in guided imagination. Imagine for a second a woman in a tallit. What did you feel? A slight recoiling? A deep feeling of disgust? A sharp revulsion? Ridicule? Rage? Now let's think why that is. After all, it turns out that halakhically speaking this woman is no different from a woman reciting shema. The argument of deviating from the norm is insufficient, since an unusual sight may trigger surprise, curiosity or amusement, but not uncontrollable rage.

Except for the individual opinion of the Ra'avad.

You may respond 'Because it's not fitting, it's not proper, it's not appropriate'. As always, it sounds better in yiddish: s'passt nicht. But s'passt nicht is not an halakhically acceptable argument. There will always be someone who will find some sort of halakhic cover for it, but the truth is that the s'passt nicht is naked. It is not my goal here and now to recommend to women to take it upon them to wear tzitzit. I only wished to show that the anger and ridicule which automatically erupted by many readers just now, much like many such eruptions, has neither an halakhic source nor a rational basis. A community, much like an individual, who sits on a powder keg of unjustifiable rage, is a community in danger. It is therefore important to clarify the source of this rage. It seems to me that there are two main sources. The first is relatively simple, the second more complex.

The Reform Scarecrow

Let's start with the first the terror of Reform. There is no worse term of abuse in Orthodox society than the accusation of Reformist sympathies. This is the Doomsday Device used against any change. The Reform movement did indeed present traditional Judaism with a dangerous threat in Europe a hundred and fifty years ago. But the influence of this movement in Israel is infinitesimal. Many youngsters have abandoned Torah and Mitzvot, but I have yet to meet a religious youth who became a Reform Jew. By the way, even in their natural stomping grounds, the United States, the Reform Movement is no threat to Orthodox Judaism. Its attention is directed to entirely different groups of Jews, and as Rav Sherlo recently said, they have often saved these last from complete assimilation. In sum, it is ludicrous to hold onto the fears from 19th century Frankfurt in 21st century Israel. It's time to ditch the Reform scarecrow and start to look at our sources instead of looking at our fears.

The Shul as a Map of the Soul

Now let us go over to the more complex and significant source of rage. Contemporary Cultural Studies often closely observe space and ceremony through semiotics. That is, they read them as a metaphor for the internal life of the community that conducts them. Our shul is separated by the mehitza into two spaces. A cloud of repression and denial hangs over it as a result. When public activity takes place while deliberately and

openly ignoring scores of silent people present either behind or above the main arena, it cannot be otherwise. This is but a metaphor for our internal lives which are also affected by compartmentalization and denial. The system of values and beliefs which is the core of our being as Jews is subject to constant tension, along different axes, with the modern (and post-modern) culture of which we are a part. There is nothing new or scary about this, as sources of tension and fissure are a necessary characteristic of any culture ancient or modern and they characterize the religious world no less than any secular ideology. Moreover, these focal points of tension are exactly the site in which thought, innovation and emotional power emerge and enrich the space in which they grew. But the healthy and enriching processes of integration, as well as those of separation and self-definition, which potentially arise from this encounter, are destined to fail when the relevant group chooses a path of compartmentalization instead of confrontation. The easy and natural tendency is to divide the world into separated and shielded compartments. This is what happens to our spiritual life. It is separated by a mehitza much like our shul. In our daily life we use conceptions and behavioral norms which come naturally to us as modern people. In the spaces of time and place which are conceived as sanctified, or 'religious', we automatically withdraw into the traditional terms of our heritage. As we stand in the latter, we make a tremendous effort to repress our 'modern' spiritual energies which might threaten that heritage. We place beyond our internal mehitza certain elements of critical thought, compassion and common sense, in order to survive questions such as our attitude to non-Jews, homosexuality, the halakhic and conceptual vacuum in our religious life as it pertains to the shaping of Jewish sovereignty, to a culture of leisure, technological progress, the conditions of the global village and so on and so forth. This act of repression taken in Heaven's name, of knowingly forfeiting many elements of our authentic personality to protect our Jewish spiritual treasures, is an act of heart-rending selfsacrifice. But in the end it places Man before his maker as one who is deformed, one whose human sensitivity and sense of judgment are cut off. The absurdity is that this spiritual action of barring and self-repression, whose whole purpose is to protect the nature reserve of holiness, is precisely what will eventually eliminate it. Spiritual occurrences require internal and external attentiveness. And how can we sing God's praise with a clenched fist?

Zelda wrote in one of her poems: 'How jealous I would be of seafarersfor I said in my haste, the measure of their actions is the measure of the sea and its glory'. How can it be that people who are 'more religious', whose measure for activity is ostensibly their standing before the Infinite God, are the ones who are perceived as narrower, more rigid, more irate? It seems that this process of fortifying the religious world from our own spiritual energies is the driving factor. The internal mehitza and the strenuous denial require much energy and create a tightened rigidity. This is also the answer to the famous question regarding the lack of literary creation in the religious community. The late blooming of such creations testifies to the beginning of a welcome process of breaking down the internal wall. The educated and liberated woman of our generation presents, by her very existence, a threat to the sanctified and protected world of the shul and its affiliates. After all, she bears no resemblance to the 'woman' we know from the system of concepts which we zealously force onto the shul, the one who traverses the well-trodden path of the Mishnah and the Gemara within the happy trinity of 'slave, woman and minor'. Put differently, the contemporary woman threatens to break down the wall of separation between the two worlds. She introduces to the shul elements of modern culture which we are ostensibly obligated to remove in order to protect our islands of holiness. Therefore, in a dichotomous world of holiness and secular realms, the woman is instinctively placed in the latter. Therefore, any imagery which connects her to representations of holiness, such as a tallit, creates an intolerable oxymoron which threatens our strategy of survival as religious people in the 21st century.

'You know its a Lie, Lie, Lie' (Alterman, The Poem of Lie, Joy of the Poor)
This strategy of separation and repression which we described above creates a by-product far more serious than just rigidity. The refusal to acknowledge the contradictions necessarily breeds lies. Anyone who is not at home in our inner culture, not as proficient as we are with the separation of powers therein, and who poses hard questions about the contrast between the sacred and secular worlds, will be answered with lies. The modern trinity which has replaced 'women, slaves and minors' of the Mishnah is children, women and secular Jews. However, today the focus is not the partial exemption from Mitzvot but the partial ignorance. We persistently hold this trinity in a state of deliberate ignorance and only selective Jewish knowledge, so that we may lie to them for Heaven's sake. Since they lack both the skills and access to the sources to learn for

themselves, educators can give children, women and interested secular Jews selective and saccharine 'source sheets'. When it comes to women's status in halakha, these sheets will contain sources detached from their context such as the inevitable bina yeteira ('excess wisdom'), mechabda yoter migufo ('the husband honors her more than his own body'), and so on in this vein. Another known method is the stuffing of female students with apologetic cotton-wool. This includes stressing a woman's spiritual virtues, due to which 'she has no need for certain positive Mitzvot', defending her being unable to testify in a Jewish court - ostensibly to protect her 'especially gentle nature' - or stating that her unique method of thinking is 'just not right' for dialectical thought and therefore a 'Women's Torah' should be developed specially for her, one which fits her gentle personality (and what about 'Women's mathematics', 'Women's medicine' and Women's law'?). Enough of this. There is not a minority in the world today who accepts the dubious trading away of rights for patronizing compliments. This discussion of women's halakhic status is just an example, of course. It is just as applicable to other points of conflict which we mentioned such as autonomous morality, the shaping of Jewish sovereignty and all such problematic issues. On all these questions, teachers, Rabbis and public leaders export spoiled candy of the kind we mentioned above, as the forgery is considered a legitimate, even necessary means for protecting our Jewish treasures, while the questions which contrast our world with that of modernity are seen as a sign of ignorance. After all, we, the members of the religious household, who speak the internal language, do not ask these questions, and one may lie to the 'others'. Then the God-fearers spoke with each other, breathing a sigh of relief as the threat is removed. But they forget to ask themselves: 'You rejected them with a reed, what will you tell us?' (Pesikta de Rav Kahana 4:7). They forget that the innocent questions of people from the outside represent their own distant and repressed voice, one which was silenced ages ago. They forget that when we lie to the outside, that means there is also no answer for the inside. What Shall We Say to Our Daughters? So, what is the answer in the end? What shall we say to our daughters about 'women's status in Judaism'?

We can tell them that at the level of aggada one can find very nice statements by Hazal about women's special qualities, as well as statements that are less nice. Therefore, in order to properly ascertain the true situation, one must study the halakha. Those who do so will quickly discern that a woman's proprietary and legal status, as well as her position with regard to the Mitzvot, is very close to that of a slave, and most of the halakhic rules related to her are derived from this conception. The parsha of Mishpatim teaches that the legal proximity between a wife and a slave has very ancient roots. We will tell them that there is nothing outrageous in this, because the Sages with their halakha reflected perfectly the reality of their times (something we do not know how to do). Against this background, they saw to the material and spiritual welfare of women more than any other society of their time, but it is also clearly obvious that they could not have the independent and publicly active women of today in mind ("Choose men for you...and I will place them over you". [The Torah says] "Men" did it even cross our mind that women [should be included]? {Sifri Devarim 13}). We will also tell them that the halakhic system has very impressive mechanism which allow for updating and change, and that it is precisely in this field that such change is relatively easy on a theoretical level, as the road is already paved by the many halakhic and historical precedents set in the time of Hazal and the Rishonim. As to the issues for which we lack an answer and which leave us perplexed (for instance, homosexuality, mamzerim, the prohibition on a kohen to marry a divorcee), we should tell our children just that that we do not have an answer and that we are perplexed and God's seal is Truth.

The Shul as Allegory

This article is not a feminist manifesto, and those who think that this is just about shul arrangements are also mistaken. Both the shul and the women are allegories. They allude to a society in which the tensions (sometimes ostensible tensions) between its stated set of values and the reality surrounding it as well as the natural psychological world of its members have led it to a difficult path of denial and deep repression of both the internal and external realities. This repression has led to duality, compartmentalization, falsehoods, double standards and the construction of walls upon walls and barriers upon barriers all genuinely in Heaven's name. The first to be crushed under these walls are the women, who by their very existence represent the fault line between these two worlds.

But this is not what is important, and I have not come to protest the affront to women, but the affront to our society. The above-mentioned processes are creating two unbearable byproducts in it falsehood and rigidity. The cure, which we need like air to breathe, is the opposite of these honesty and tenderness. Honesty to look at our Jewish home with love, discover its secrets locate the openings and the fascinating range of possibilities within it. Freedom to observe the modern secular world as it is and to honestly mark the cracks in it, as well as the fissures between it and our Jewish heritage. Tenderness to listen to our own pain and the voices of longing which rise beyond the barriers and the walls beyond the mehitza in the shul as well as beyond its outer walls. A large community is waiting there in our arrogant seclusion we do not recognize how large and how beautiful which longs for loving, honest and critical contact with sources which belong to it no less than they belong to us. But where can honesty be found? And where does tenderness dwell? If we have the courage to look behind the mehitza, perhaps we will find them waiting behind it.