It doesn’t leave much room for the imagination, and it doesn’t allow for a strategy for looking over without being too obvious. Case in point- I was in Riverdale this past shabbos and on Friday night we davened at RJC (Riverdale Jewish Center) and their mechitza isn’t that short, its height is low because it runs flat along the mens and womens sections while both sides have seats that rise along a gentle slope- which mean s you can see everything above a certain point. Furthermore, the seats are sort of facing each other which makes matters worse.
So of course this whole crew of women walks in and plops down right next to each other on one bench. It kind of looked like the wave every time they got up. In fact every time the shul had to stand it looked like the wave. I always wonder if certain shuls do the wave just for fun.
So I’m trying to look at the girls, but unfortunately I never wear my glasses besides for movies or driving and couldn’t see a darn thing. All I could see was that there was one redhead, they were all skinny and that they shuckeled very slowly. In fact I came to an observation about shuckeling over shabbos. The more modern a shul is the slower the shuckeling is. It just seems to me that in modern shuls there is less moving about. People sit and stand, and walk out- thats it.
So in a nutshell I prefer a taller mechitza so it allows for covert operations that let me sneak in close and chop a little staring action. Oh and it helps my kavanah too- because I can’t multitask, so I have to wait for a lull in davening to try and hone my mechitza peeking skills.