Mechitza Tests the Limits of Pluralism at Wesleyan Services

Written by Shira Miller

Students Displeased With Gender Divisions
On a recent Friday evening, a small crowd of students bunched awkwardly just inside the door of Wesleyan University’s Jewish program house. They had come for the evening service, but it was already 6:30 and no one was taking their seats. Instead, the group of underclassmen stood together in small clumps, glancing warily into the room where services were to be held. A sense of anxiety permeated the group. Something strange was going on.

Each week, Wesleyan students take turns organizing Wesleyan’s Friday night service. Generally, services are based on Reform or Conservative models. This time, it seemed, things were going to be a bit different. A mechitza, a divider used to separate men from women in Orthodox synagogues, bisected the prayer space, with one end secured to the center of the portable ark and another tacked to the opposite wall. Made of clotheslines and sheets, it looked quite innocuous on its own. And yet, at Wesleyan, where the topic of gender has been politicized to the extent where gender-segregated bathrooms are protested, the mechitza had the potential to spark considerable controversy.

Wesleyan’s student and academic culture is definitively more radical than most on the topic of gender. Most members of the community understand gender as a social construction, and many students prefer the use of gender-neutral pronouns (“ze” and "hir" instead of “he"/"she" and "his"/"her"). One of the most persistent complaints among students is that first-year students are not given the choice to live in ‘gender neutral housing,’ where rooms are assigned without regard for a student’s gender expression. Students pride themselves on their rejection of the gender binary.

A mechitza, a physical manifestation of the gender binary, is as out of place on Wesleyan’s campus as any inanimate object could possibly be.

“In some ways, our service was a test of how far the Jewish community's pluralism and tolerance would extend,” said Erica Belkin, a sophomore at Wesleyan and one of the two organizers of the service.

Belkin said, “There is a norm for a Wesleyan Shabbat which is basically Havurah-conservative.” Belkin and sophomore Alex Salzberg, who co-led the service with Belkin, decided to challenge that norm, basing their service on Jerusalem’s egalitarian Orthodox minyan Shira Hadasha in the hopes, according to Belkin, of showing the community that there is more diversity within Jewish tradition than is apparent on Wesleyan’s mostly unobservant campus.

Rabbi David Leipziger, Wesleyan’ Jewish chaplain, praised the exercise, saying “it was a great idea. We are a laboratory for Jewish identity.”

Some students reported being pleasantly surprised by the change. Sophomore Rachel Bedick said “the female energy on my side of the Mechitza was spiritual, playful, comforting, and empowering. The mechitza seemed to lower barriers between the women so that we were able to be more relaxed and open with each other, which made for a better service.”

While there were no confrontations at the service, many attributed the relatively low turnout to the presence of the mechitza. “At Wesleyan, we make an effort to provide safe spaces for everyone, including those who prefer orthodox traditions like the mechitza,” noted junior Daniella Schmidt. “However, these traditions should not come at the expense of others’ safe space and inclusion.”

Even those who enjoyed the service acknowledged that it could have been problematic. “I can see how the mechitza could have been uncomfortable for someone that identifies outside of the limitations of the gender binary,” said Bedick.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.