Reply To: What defines an Orthodox shul?

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#684965
charliehall
Participant

artchill is basically correct. There is no shul I’ve ever seen that follows every halachah much less every opinion. (Is there a shul anywhere that really has no talking, ever?) I’ve received a psak from my rav that I can daven even in an openly non-Orthodox shul as long as the service itself is run according to halachah. (In fact, in a community with no true O shul, it might be a mitzvah to help out a halachic minyan in the basement of a C shul. Eventually they might get enough supporters to break away.)

There ARE some things that some shuls do that should not be done and appearances can be deceiving; my rabbi once warned me about a particular shul with a very high mechitzah that hires non-Jews to heat up the kiddish food on Shabat morning! OTOH I davened this morning in a shul whose mechitzah didn’t even reach my waist; I guarantee that it has been orthodox longer than the home shul of anyone else posting here from anywhere in America (in fact, it was around before the term orthodox had even been applied to Jews).

And don’t even judge by the presence of an open parking lot. I belonged to a shul that had a parking lot that had people coming and going all Shabat: The shul had a lot of doctors and hatzalah volunteers who often got called for emergencies. To have to unlock the gate each time might have cost precious minutes.