As an Orthodox person who attended an all-girls high school, single-sex spaces basically defined my life for four years. Keeping with the general attitude of the right-wing Orthodox community toward gender relations, students at my school were actively discouraged from associating with boys, who were considered temptations that could only lead us down the wrong path. Regardless of my personal opinions on these exhortations, my access to boys was limited: my academic environment only contained girls, and my neighborhood is low on both young people and Orthodox people, my main two friend pools. Consequently, with a handful of exceptions, I only had female friends in high school.
And then I went to college. It just so happens that the Orthodox community on my campus is male-heavy, so I’ve found myself hanging out with guys a lot of the time. Like, all the time.
Don’t get me wrong – I have wonderful female friends as well. There are obviously still many Orthodox and non-Orthodox girls at Hillel who I hang out with, I live with a group of wonderful (non-Jewish) girls, and I’ve successfully kept in touch with many of my friends from high school. However, the majority of my really close friends at school are guys.
On one hand, I wonder why I’m writing an article about this. So what? I don’t go to my Charedi school anymore. Why does it matter that I’m friends with dudes?
Well, it matters because gender relations in the Orthodox community are weird. I say this as someone who abides by them: things like shomer negiah, yichud, kol isha, mechitzah, they all make navigating opposite sex friendships confusing and sometimes awkward. It can be difficult to always remember to prop the door open when it’s just me and a couple guys, to leave space on the couch to avoid accidental touching, to keep myself from singing along when we play music. I (semi-jokingly) refer to the group of my guy friends as the Frum Male Club, and (semi-jokingly) bemoan my inherent exclusion from this club.
There is no way to argue that my exclusion is anything but inherent. Orthodoxy codifies same-sex spaces into halacha, giving men a sense of community on their side of the metaphorical mechitzah that I will never be part of.
This mechitzah is not only metaphorical. My first two days of freshman year were my last two days of saying Kaddish for my dad, and I made sure to show up early both days. At that point, I didn’t know anybody in the community, so I didn’t dwell on the fact that the guys on the other side of the mechitzah were chatting before davening began and I was sitting alone in silence. However, if I were still saying Kaddish, I would still feel that sense of isolation, since the guys who have since become my friends would still be chatting amongst themselves on the other side of the mechitzah. I wouldn’t even be able to blame them; there is just no practical way to include someone in a conversation when they’re sitting on the other side of a five-foot tall opaque curtain, and I sure don’t feel comfortable entering their all-male space to socialize.
Although I set up this piece to conclude with a resolution for my troubles, I really don’t have one to propose. The halachot I’m complaining about are just doing their job, since they were established to deter the exact friendships that I’m attempting to cultivate. Still, it’s frustrating to be at this crossroads between modernity and halacha, to be modern enough to have guy friends but too halachically conservative to take full advantage of their friendship. I realized long ago that this is a recurring theme in my life, and I’ve since accepted the fact that I am equally committed to my religious beliefs and social ideals and am not willing to sacrifice one for the other. I understand that this dooms me to a life that is a perpetual balancing act, but that’s a better fate than having to make an either/or choice. It may mean that I have to hold myself back from belting out the Frozen soundtrack from time to time, but I think the struggle is worth it.
Talia Weisberg is a student at Harvard University.
