1. A partition erected in the seating section of an Orthodox synagogue to prevent the mixing of men and women.
2. The structure defining the boundary of an eruv.
In the late 1950s, a rabbi at Yeshiva issued a report about a Bronx synagogue, stating, "The seating is separate, without a mechitza, but peculiarly enough, during the High Holidays the balcony is mixed.
Also, since Orthodox women are obliged to sit separately (and often behind a mechitza, or divider), if you're female you often can't even see what's going on very well.
These buses adhere to rules and customs not generally found on curbside carriers, from a mechitza down the middle separating men and women, to prohibiting chametz on Passover.
Womenfolk above, the menschs below--the women can't complain: it's all ritual, no one's fault, merely a gesture to what, who remembers; the women disappearing behind the mechitza, then peeking out, disappearing again.
Though the word hijab derives from the Arabic word for "barrier" or "veil" (Bouselmati 2002; Debray 2004; Vianes 2004) and its primary reference is to the curtain that separates men and women in prayer; like the mechitza in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, a hijab is a type of kerchief and not a veil, though revealingly the debate in France focused on the le voule (veil) when referring explicitly to the hijab (Zouari 2002; 2004).
So I operate largely with a mechitza, to use the Hebrew term, a barrier.
We held the service at the mechitza, the divider between men and women.
As the most sacred space in Judaism, the Wall is under the zealous supervision of Orthodox Jews, which means that, like everything else in Orthodox Judaism, it is divided into a male part and a female part, with a mechitza, a physical divider separating men from women, running down the middle.
A variety of seating arrangements in an Orthodox sanctuary with a central bimah are possible, although they invariably involve a segregation of the sexes, with women separated from men either behind a mechitza (divider) or above the main floor in a balcony.
The precise reading of Rabbi Soloveitchik's position regarding mechitza is the subject of a debate.