This year, I decided to visit three synagogues built around the year 1000 on the Rhine, which later became the center of Jewish learning and culture in Europe in the Middle Ages. For the record, these shuls are in Köln, Worms and Speyer. Yes, Speyer.
Here are the top 8 most interesting results of my study (commemorative t-shirt available):
1. When built, the women never came to shul. Judaism was just for the men, I guess.
2. Sometime in the 13th century, women’s sections were built into these shuls, but no one seems to know why. Probably the women wanted to keep tabs on the men.
3. Those women’s sections had a wall separating them from the men and high windows so that women could only hear the men and not see them because, I am sure, at some point it was understood that women stare longingly at the men during the Gottesdienst. This sexed-up environment was not good for davening (praying).
4. Later, these walls separating men and women were fortified. It is thought this is because the men were too distracted by even the faint sound of women through the portholes in the wall. Even today, the women’s sections in shul are noisy from women chatting and generally not paying attention.
5. The Italian Jews who came to the Rhineland only did time measurement from the destruction of the second temple in the year 70. This went on for hundreds of years on their gravestones and is totally, totally cool and unique compared to the Zeitrechnung every other Jewish community did.
6. The mikves I saw all still worked, more than one thousand years later! (Every shul has a mikve, for those of you who have never heard of one – in fact, most Jews will build a mikve before a shul if there’s only enough money for one or the other. The reason why will be explained below). The stairs going down to the mikves were too small to house a dreaded mikve lady. If you have ever been to a mikve for any reason, you know what I am talking about. (I don’t know anyone who really likes going to the mikve, but it’s such a great idea in principle. I am told by the orthodox that the mikve has positive associations because on mikve night after the ladies go get dunked, it’s sexy time. So now you understand why they are a high priority?)
7. The mikves had little (unmodest, because wiiiiiiide open) dressing areas for people who are incredibly small in stature. Was this because of poor nutrition or just to keep the Germans out? Men and women had alternate days/times for its use.
8. Two of the three shuls had expensive “dance halls” erected as soon as they could scrape up the money in the 11th and 12th centuries and the third shul probably had one too but it’s still being excavated – which is the most exciting thing in the world right now, in my view. What the hell? Dance halls? Crusade programs be damned, what else is there to do but dance the night away?