{"id":41707,"date":"2012-03-14T13:14:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T21:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41707"},"modified":"2012-03-14T16:26:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T00:26:10","slug":"when-mechitzas-werent-kosher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41707","title":{"rendered":"When Mechitzas Weren&#8217;t Kosher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the second lecture on the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Samuel_Benjamin_Sofer\">Rabbi Abraham Samuel Sofer (Ketav Sofer)<\/a> for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/torahinmotion.org\">Torah in Motion<\/a>by Orthodox rabbi and history professor <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marc_B._Shapiro\">Marc B. Shapiro<\/a>: &#8220;In those days (19th Century), you didn&#8217;t have <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mechitza\">mechitzas<\/a> in Hungary. You had women up in the balcony or in a completely separate room [LF: like you do at the Israeli moshiachist Chabad on Robertson Blvd near Pickford, 90035]. A <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mechitza\">mechitza<\/a> was not regarded as kosher because you could see the women unless the mechitza went up to the ceiling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They regarded it as immodest to be able to see the women during davening (prayer).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joel_Teitelbaum\">Satmar rebbe<\/a> had his famous argument with <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moshe_Feinstein\">Reb Moshe Feinstein<\/a>&#8230; The rebbe argued that the mechitza needs to be so that you can&#8217;t see the women. Reb Moshe says no, just 60 inches. It&#8217;s not about seeing. It&#8217;s about mingling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The liberal shuls had an organ in the balcony played by a non-Jew on Shabbos.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Hungary, all the rabbis, even the liberal rabbis, opposed mechitzas [for being immodest]. That doesn&#8217;t violate the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shulchan_Aruch\">Shulchan Aruch<\/a>. The [Jewish] population in Hungary was conservative and they did not want to go in the direction of Reform [Judaism].&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the second lecture on the Rabbi Abraham Samuel Sofer (Ketav Sofer) for Torah in Motionby Orthodox rabbi and history professor Marc B. Shapiro: &#8220;In those days (19th Century), you didn&#8217;t have mechitzas in Hungary. You had women up in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=41707\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marc-b-shapiro","category-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41743,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707\/revisions\/41743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}