I wonder what my younger self would think - if suddenly transported to the world in which we live today.
My parents were religious Jews who grew up in pre-Holocaust Europe. The religious values they absorbed stayed with them for life. I was raised according to those standards in post-Holocaust America. Although the world of European Jewry and American Jewry could not have been further apart culturally, the primary tenets of observant Judaism did not diminish in the slightest. Shabbos, kashrus, family purity laws (mikvah) were strictly observed, and Torah study was considered paramount.
But for my parents, living in the New World meant adapting to those parts of the culture that did not contradict halacha in particular and Torah values in general. So we owned a TV and occasionally went to a movie as a family. In short, we led a pretty normal American Jewish life without abandoning observance or Jewish values in any way.
It wasn’t only my family that lived that way. The acknowledged head of the Orthodox community in the city where we lived – Toledo - was Rabbi Nechemia Katz, who was also Rav Moshe Feinstein’s brother-in-law. Rabbi Katz was my father’s posek, deciding difficult questions of Jewish law. Our families were good friends, and we would often go to the beach together. (Yes, you read that correctly.) What may be little known is that Rav Moshe used to visit his brother-in-law in Toledo on occasion. That is how I met Rav Moshe. One year when I came home for Shabbos Chanukah (from Telshe) my father and I walked over to meet him on Friday night.
This, in a nutshell, is what life was like for Orthodox Jews in America back then (early 1960s).
The idea of mixed-gender seating in any arena (other than a shul) was not an issue. It was as normal as apple pie. Men and women were often seated together in various forums, such as concerts or banquets. No one gave it a second thought.
Fast forward to today. The following was published in Arutz Sheva:
