As a rule, my husband and I don’t pray in non-egalitarian settings (or, at the very least, in ones that don’t count women in a minyan). So while I have been following the progress of partnership ...

There was a time when we first started dating when being apart from Jeremy left me feeling off-kilter. Being in shul was especially weird. Even though we could usually see each other across the ...

I was behind the mechitza. I did not like it. How could it possibly happen, that I, a regular shulgoer in the Orthodox world, would find myself behind the mechitza at a Shabbat service? I was invited ...

Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its ...

I have a confession: I like davening on the women’s side of the mechitza. I like the feeling of womanly comradery: the whispered Shabbat Shaloms, the altos and sopranos melding together for Lecha Dodi ...

“I like to sit next to my husband during synagogue services, that’s why I don’t go to Chabad,” a very nice woman told me. So I asked her, “Do you follow the TV show Dancing with the Stars?” “Of course ...

At Lechu Neranena partnership minyan in Lower Merion, the mechitza, the partition used to divide the men and women in a prayer space, remains a fixture in the Orthodox community. However, instead of ...

Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its ...

‘Mechitza’ (separation) at the Western Wall – and the unity of Israel The rabbis and leaders of the Jewish Theological Seminary prayed separately until the 1980s, as also did most Reform Jews in ...