'Kosher seating': The faith, history, and philosophy
behind partition in prayer
by Hillel Goldberg, IJM Senior Editor
Intermountain Jewish News (Page 14, Sec. B) - March
31, 1989
Mechitzah: Partition. Separation of sexes during prayer
by partition.
What is the reasoning behind this (pardon the pun)
sometimes divisive aspect of kashrus -- "kosher seating"?
On one level there is no reasoning. A faith commitment
is a faith commitment. A tautology: without reasoning, without need of
reasoning.
A faith commitment to the divinity of the Torah.
Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have perceived
two categories of commandments in the Torah: rational commandments, whose
reasoning is readily grasped -- not to murder, not to steal -- and a-rational
commandments whose reasoning is not readily grasped -- not to eat pork, not
to mix meat and milk.
Not to sit, male and female together during
prayer.
On one level, kosher seating is faith in G-d's
will.
But there are other levels: historically and
philosophical.
History says that in the Holy Temples which stood in
Jerusalem roughly the first 1,000 years of Jewish national existence, men
and women observed the sacrificial order from separate precincts. With the
destruction of the second Holy Temple and consequent shift from national
center to local community -- from Temple to synagogue -- the Temple pattern
was retained as extensively as possible.
It was retained, for example, in the prayers.
To this day, the timing and wording of Jewish prayers
parallel the timing and themes of the sacrifices. There is immense difference
between prayer and animal sacrifice -- obviously. Prayer: words and
self-generated emotion. Sacrifice: blood and externally generated emotion.
A difference! But the post-Temple Jewish sages wished the difference never
to sever the link to the Jewish past. Babylonians and Romans could sever
the physical link -- the Temple -- but the sages made certain they could
never sever the historical link.
And so, the morning and afternoon prayers (shacharis
and minchah) are timed to correspond to the hours when the morning and afternoon
sacrifices were offered in the Temple. The prayers added to Sabbath and holiday
services correspond not only to the timing of the sacrifices, but to their
themes -- reflected in the prayers' wording.
In sum: services. The word automatically used to connote
prayer in a direct translation of the word used to connote the sacrificial
order, avodah. Prayer corresponds to avodah, "services"; and since men and
women observed the services in the Temple from different precincts so too
they pray in different precincts in the synagogue.
That's history.
Now there's philosophy. Even though faith is
self-validating -- beyond reason --Jewish faith has always sought philosophical
profundity in reason, not as a justification of faith, nor as a substitute
for it, but as a complement. Accordingly, there is a philosophy of kosher
seating.
Separation of sexes during prayer, some say, connotes
a philosophy of sexism. It can seem that way in a social climate intolerant
of subtleties, especially when prayer's purpose is seen as human-centered
-- as community building, or communal communing, or socialization.
But prayer, at least Jewish prayer, is in essence not
human-directed. Prayer's purpose is not to get closer to people, but closer
to G-d.
Not to keep the family together, but to keep the soul
together.
Not to live horizontally, but vertically.
There is of course, a communal ("horizontal") component
to Jewish prayer -- a very important communal component: minyan.
Prayer, arguably, is the most difficult act of human
existence. People are not born with the skill. It must be learned. It takes
years to perfect -- and It's never really perfected.
It takes practice.
Separation of sexes is good for that.
Kosher seating, then is being alone with G-d and together
with the Jewish people in microcosm. In minyan: the holiness of the Jewish
people before the holiness of G-d.
With (as the Greek philosopher Plotinus put it) "the
fight of the alone to the Alone."
In other religions, especially Christianity, the real
action is up front and in these religions the sexes are not separated during
prayer. To locate meaning in other religious settings and then to impose
it onto the synagogue is, besides aping others, mistaking Jewish prayer:
essentially a G-d-centered enterprise, not a human-centered one, not even
a clergy-centered one. Rather: The flight of the alone to the Alone.
Real meaning is to have the sense of humanity created
under the one sovereign almighty G-d, connected to him in prayer.
To facilitate that awesome feeling, the sexes are
separated; the pray-er is tempted to look not at a woman seated net to him
nor at a man seated net to her.
But upward.
Essentially, the male and female are separated not
from each other, but for G-d: for the purpose of prayer.
That's kosher seating.
Minyan represents a microcosm of the Jewish people
as a whole, of Knesset Yisrael. Prayer is linked not just to other Jews,
but to all other Jews -- the entire Jewish people -- in minyan: prayer in
the presence of the entire Jewish community. But as Jews pray with the community,
the pray to G-d. They pray not to build Jewish community, but to build from
it. To aim beyond it. To stretch above it. To reach the one Reality Who created
it.
To reach G-d.
Jewish community does not give a human direction to
prayer; It gives a launching pad to prayer.
And to be launched to G-d, sexuality is distracting.
The relation of sanctity and sex per se is a separate discussion, but sexes
-- male and female -- attract each other and distract each other when the
activity at hand is prayer.
And the point of prayer is prayer.
This isn't a tautology.
To pray is more than pray -- more than to recite words,
to assume an attitude of devotion, to think about really important things
of life.
These alone are not prayer. Prayer is to do all these
in the felt presence of the Life-Giver and Life-Taker -- the Source of Sanctity.
Prayer is to reach beyond oneself to the Master of the World.
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