My Experience at an Orthodox Synagogue

Last weekend, I went home to attend a prayer service at an Orthodox synagogue in Lexington, Massachusetts. As is customary in Orthodox synagogues, this particular synagogue separates men and women with a mechitzah. Separating the men and women was a row of fake trees serving as the mechitzah. You could see through the tree branches, but not very well and the trees were approximately six or seven feet high, so even the tallest men could not see the women by looking above the mechitzah. When I got to the synagogue, one of the men came over to me and handed me a siddur (prayer book) and I sat down on the women’s side of the small, make-shift synagogue. The service had already started and the men continued to pray throughout the morning.

The service itself was pretty typical for a Shabbat morning prayer service. The male rabbi, or leader of the synagogue, led the congregation in prayers and then invited only the men to read from the Torah. What surprised me most about the service was that men came over to talk to the women occasionally during lulls in the service, but the women never went to the men’s side of the synagogue. The women do not to distract the men from their prayers and from being closer to G-d, which is the main reason for the separation of the two genders in the first place. Also, I found it interesting that the women did not pray out loud. It was clear that they prayed, but did not chant the prayers for their voice to be heard. The women did not take the service as seriously as the men did and used part of the time to catch up on each other’s lives such as where certain high school seniors are going to college and other gossip around town. On the contrary, the men took the service seriously and were hardly distracted throughout the entire service.