RE: A nice surprise?

[HNetsky <HNetsky...>]

I've played weddings set up like this congregation - with folks who want 
mixed dancing seated and dancing directly in front of the band; then a 
mekhitze and the folks who want seperate dancing seated and dancing there 
(thus another mekhitze in the middle of that dance floor); and then the even 
frumer men on the other side of a third mekhitze. 
-Hankus

>From: Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl (at) flash(dot)net>
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: RE: A nice surprise?
>Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 15:30:26 -0400
>
>My survivor parents also belonged to a traditional synagogue - officially
>Conservative, but with an Orthodox service.  It was a congregation of
>Holocaust survivors with mostly Yiddish dialogue and where they strove to
>do everything "like it was at home".   Everything but the seating, that is.
>   There were 3 sections in the synagogue.  At the very front, there were
>perpendicular rows with shomer-shabes women sitting on one side and
>shomer-shabes men sitting facing them on the other side.   Each of these 2
>groupings felt totally connected to the goings on, because between them was
>the shtender (=the table upon which the Torah is places and the cantor
>prays).  In the middle of the synagogue, there was a section of horizontal
>rows of men sitting on one side and women sitting on the other, with a
>small mekhitsa between them.   Toward the back, there was mixed sitting and
>where my mother liked to sit.  My father, a shul regular, sat with his male
>buddies, but sometimes moved to the mixed section to sit with my husband
>and I when we came to his shul.  With all these choices, everybody was
>happy.  We ourselves belong for many, many years to an egalitarian
>Conservative synagogue that is traditional in every sense.  Families sit
>together which is what I like.  Until 2 years ago, we had a woman rabbi for
>7 years.
>
> >The first woman to be called up was our oldest woman, Mrs. Dick, who had
>been a >member for over 30 years, since she came here from Argentina.  We
>were so proud, >but you should have seen her face beaming.
>
>How wonderful!  I can see her very well.  Someone should write this up and
>send it everywhere so that everyone knows how wonderful and proud women
>feel about participating.
>People should know that such synagogues exist.
>
>I myself really had no questions about your shul.  Once I read how the
>husbands beamed when the wives were on the beam, nothing else had to be
>said.  That is how it should be.
>
> >>

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