A guest blog from Karen Ackerman: Upstairs/Downstairs
Thank you to Rabbi David for letting me take over his blog this week to write about the panel I spoke on last night for US women at St John’s Wood Shul.
The event was part of a series, Women, The Rabbi and The Law and followed on from previous discussions about women in leadership, girls and Batmitvah and women and Megillah readings.
This time the panel consisted of myself, Rabbi Birnbaum from Hadley Wood, Rabbi Roselaar from Alei Tzion and Jazqui Zinkin from Golders Green synagogue chaired by Simon Hockhauser.
Rabbi Roselaar kicked us off and it was wonderful to hear both him and Rabbi Birnbaum talk about how important it is for them that women are treated equally and feel comfortable in shul. They made it clear that the new Chief Rabbi takes this issue very seriously and is looking for creative ideas to help move the issue forward. Both of them lead communities where there is fully flexible seating on one level and the mechitzah runs down the middle of the shul with men and women on each side. Rabbi Birnbaum spoke about how much effort they made in Hadley Wood at the Yomim Noraim when they move to a marquee, to preserve the set up of men and women sitting side by side divided by the mechitah, rather than women behind the men. He felt that this was very important as this is the one time of year when many members come to shul and it was important for the shul to send a clear message about how seriously it takes this issue.
Rabbi Roselaar made a very important point, that for men it is too easy to just accept the status quo as it suits them to not think to hard about women and making things more welcoming for them, he spoke about the fact that men and particularly Rabbis have to think harder about these issues, to be proactive and to put themselves in women’s place.
Jacqui spoke about how in Golders Green they have completely closed their ladies gallery and removed the fixed seating to create seats for women downstairs. They now pass the Torah through the women’s section a move which she says has caused some controversy. She said that they have been sitting like this for a year now and although it caused some concern at the beginning, the community is used to it now and she feels it has enriched their experience.
I spoke from a personal perspective about why I think this is an important issue and what we have been experimenting with in Muswell Hill. Below is an edited version of my speech.
First of all, I’d like to say how heart warming it is to hear Rabbi Roselaar’s words. It’s great to hear how seriously he takes this issue and what an effort he has made with his community, but I would say that it’s maybe not as widespread an opinion in the Orthodox world as he thinks. I had an interesting conversation with a Rabbi just last week where they happened to mention that they struggle in Hebrew to know the feminine version of verbs as they learn their hebrew in Yeshivah. They only learnt with men, they only mixed with men and they only spoke to men. Whilst this Rabbi would not actively look to wrong the women in his community, it is only natural that if the religious leaders in our community do not learn with or talk to women they will not see things through a woman’s perspective or take the issues as seriously as they could.
I’d like to start by telling you about three different experiences in my life that have formed my feelings about women’s seating in shuls.
Firstly – growing up, I was a member of Chigwell and Hainault United synagogue. If you don’t know it, Chigwell was built in the late 70s and is all on one level. The women were seated in the back half of the hall, with a mechitzah made of movable screens with wide wrought iron patterning in it. My mum is one of 5 sisters, so between her and my grandma and various female cousins we took up a large portion of the women’s section of the shul and always sat in the front two rows of the women’s area. The bimah was placed in the centre of the shul rather than the front – so it was only a few rows away from the women’s seating. Whilst we were still behind a mechitzah, I always felt part of the service, the Torah was brought round in front of the women’s area and it was perfectly easy to see and hear the service.
That’s just how I assumed it was always done in orthodox shuls.
Then move forward to my year off in Israel when I was 18. We decided on Yom Kippur that it would be a good experience to visit various shuls in Jerusalem throughout the day and daven for a short while in each one.
One of the shuls we visited was a very orthodox, black hat type community – I don’t remember the name. We went in, a group of a few boys and a few girls, the boys went and joined the men downstairs and although we were obviously not an orthodox group they were welcomed in by the men and helped with books and to find the place. Us girls, found a dark concrete staircase going up to a gallery very high above the men’s area, once we got there we found a few seats, not more than about twenty, with a full height wall in front of them with a small slit in it in order to view the service. You were too high up to really hear anything, and you couldn’t really see through the slit especially if you wanted to sit back in your seat. There were only a handful of women there and it was obvious why. For the first time in my life, I had been faced with the thought that there is a group within orthodox Judaism who don’t feel it is necessary for women to pray in a shul and make it clear by the architecture of the shul that if they do want to come, they will not be made to feel welcome. I was on my year off, in Israel, a year that was about positively enforcing for me, my Judaism and my place within a Jewish community and yet here I was being told that I was completely not welcome to daven in a public space. I was shocked, saddened and felt very upset by the whole experience.
Move forward another ten years or so and as a married couple my husband and I moved to Muswell Hill and joined the United synagogue there. Muswell Hill shul was built in 1963 and like many shuls built then it had a gallery for ladies upstairs. From the very beginning we always liked Muswell Hill, it’s a warm welcoming community and since we have been members has had two different fabulous Rabbis. However, for the first time I found myself sitting in a ladies gallery and this to me felt completely different to what I had grown up with.
I think it’s fair to say, that I am equal to my husband in all areas of life, I have a busy and successful career and do not expect to be treated differently to the men I know at work. Then I come to shul, and I have to go up the stairs and be a spectator to the service rather than taking part on an equal level. In our shul there is a very nice view from the gallery, you can see and hear well from most seats, unlike the shul I visited in Jerusalem the architecture makes it clear to women that they are welcome in a comfortable pleasant area, but for me it’s a much deeper issue – its about the message that is being given to women that they are spectators at the service, they are welcome to watch, like an audience at the theatre, but they can’t get close to the service, to touch the Torah to be on a level with the main participants.
So those three experiences led me to feel very strongly that it’s an important ideological and spiritual message that women should feel equal to men in how a shul welcomes them through its architecture. They can sit separately as Halacha dictates, The Rambam has written that men and women should be separate when they pray – but separate does not mean that women should not be able to see or hear or should be in a gallery- I’ve studied this subject with my Rabbi and there is nothing halachically wrong with men and women being on the same level on either side of a shul with the bimah in the middle separated by screens at the height approved by the Beth Din
We are very lucky in our shul to have a Rabbi who is open minded and inclusive. When I first joined Muswell Hill shul, on Simchat Torah, then men danced in the shul downstairs whilst them women watched them from above – being a gallery there was no where to dance at all. Then another year, some women took a room behind the ladies gallery usually used as a classroom and danced there, The Rabbi brought the Torah up at one point and let the women take it in to the room for a few moments before taking it away again. Whilst those women were doing their best to try and get involved in the spirit of Simchat Torah, it felt like we were the servants, hidden away in the attic whilst the real party was going on downstairs- again not very welcoming. Our current Rabbi has introduced a new system. The men and women sit downstairs for the evening of Simchat Torah with a screen between them for the Hakafot we move the screens in to our hall next door and split the room in two. The men dance on one side with their Torahs and we dance on the other with our Torahs, Separate, but equal. When this new idea was introduced, for the first time I felt involved in the service, The first time I danced with the Torah, holding hands with my daughter I had tears in my eyes. There are many ways women can be more involved in the service that are fully within Halacha. What is needed is an open minded and inclusive rabbi. We are lucky enough to have one. A rabbi that encourages us to participate fully, but how quickly this could be taken away from us if a new Rabbi took over who didn’t agree with it.
Our main competitor for membership in Muswell Hill is New North London, I have been there on a number of occasions for simchas, and the service is exactly the same as ours using the same book and tunes, the only difference is that women and men sit separately but side by side on an equal level and the level of decorum in the service is incomparable to ours as everyone is involved and joining in the service. Many young families are moving away from the US and one reason for this is that women feel alienated in shul. If we want to ensure potential new members come to us we need to embrace ways of making women feel more equal.
Muswell Hill prides itself on being a modern community and about 5 years ago, one of the men on the board, suggested the idea for a women’s seating area downstairs. The board agreed unanimously that this should happen but no one was sure how to make it work and nothing much happened.
A few years later I was asked to look after women’s issues on the shul board and I reopened the discussion. Now the board of our shul were still unanimously in favour of the idea and I naively assumed that they would reflect the rest of the community. The problem we discovered though was that some members felt very strongly that they didn’t want a women’s area downstairs. Some felt it would spoil the look of the shul, some men didn’t want to have to move from the seat they had sat in for 30 years to accommodate the new area, some women didn’t like the idea of splitting the women, some upstairs, some downstairs. So we decided that the best way to move forward was to have a trial of an area downstairs. The trial started in November, in order to keep costs down as it was just a trial, a member made screens from trellising and other items from the garden centre and one block of the downstairs area was made into seating for about 25 women.
The trial finished a few weeks ago and a survey was sent to all members which had a very high response rate.
Summary:
- A significant majority of respondents would like some form of permanent downstairs area for women (69% of respondents; 75% of female respondents);
- However a majority did not like this trial (61%) and some were quite scathing about the look and feel of the temporary mechitzah;
- More younger women with children liked the trial and more women who attended regularly did not like the trial;
- Of those women who sat downstairs a high majority (90%) were very positive about their experience;
- There is a significant group who are very unhappy with the trial;
- And another small group who were very enthusiastic about their experience.
So like any situation where you ask a group of Jews for their opinions, we are now faced with a dichotomy of views and are now in a position of trying to find a compromise. We would like to present a few options to our AGM including trying a flexible arrangement where we have a larger more pleasant and less ‘cagey’ women’s area but only once a month.
It’s a difficult issue and one where people have very entrenched views, some men think it’s about women wanting to be more like men… feminist writer Simone De Beauvoir famously criticised early psychoanalyst Dr Adler for commenting that if a little girl climbs trees, it is because she wants to show that she is equal to boys, it doesn’t occur to Dr Adler, Simone De Beauvoir wrote, that the little girl might just like climbing trees. This is not about wanting to be like men, it’s about women also wanting to daven on an equal level, to explore the many options open to them within halacha to feel part of the service and not just spectators in a gallery above.