JEWISH RITUAL — 8 (Mikvah)

GOING TO THE RITUAL BATH

by Debra Nussbaum Cohen

So he [Naaman] went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had bidden; and his flesh became like a little boy's, and he was clean.

—2 KINGS 5:14

THE BASICS OF SPIRITUAL BATHING IN JUDAISM

As part of a large set of laws involving "family purity," the sacred commandment of mikvah (or mikveh – Hebrew: מִקְוֶה / מקווה, Modern: mikve, Tiberian: miqweh, pl. mikva'ot, mikvoth, mikvot, or Yiddish: mikves, lit., "a collection")  refers to the act of fully submerging yourself in water. There are two kinds of mikvaot: one constructed to hold a combination of living water (from rain, a stream, or another natural source) and tap water; and a natural one (a moving body of water such as an ocean or river).

Ritual immersion is an obligation for traditionally observant Jewish women and is discussed extensively in the Bible and the Talmud. Some men participate in mikvah before getting married or before holy days, but the ritual is primarily associated with women. According to traditional Jewish law, married women enter a mikvah seven days after the end of their menstrual period. They enter in a state of ritual impurity (tame'ah), and leave in a state of ritual purity (tahara). During the period of ritual impurity, traditional women do not touch their husbands in any way; after immersing they reconnect with their partners physically. Since it is linked to a woman's monthly cycle, mikvah is strongly tied to fertility and sexuality.

The typical ritual bath is a simply tiled square pool with room for one person. Steps lead down into it, and its water generally rises only about chest high. The attendant – who is present to make sure that you have immersed completely (allowing water to cover every part of your body), and to answer any questions – stands in the room, but outside the mikvah pool. While some mikvaot are not associated with a particular synagogue but instead are supported by the entire community, others are part of individual synagogues. In some communities, synagogue-based ritual baths serve the needs of all affiliated Jews regardless of the synagogue to which they belong.

The traditional ritual is simple and involves two immersions, going completely beneath the surface with arms and legs spread, fingers loosely held apart, so that the mikvah water touches every part of you. Following the first immersion, you come up and say this simple blessing:

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheynu Melekh ha-olam asher kidshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu al-tevillah.

Praised are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who has made us holy with commandments and instructed us concerning immersion.

The second immersion is done without a blessing. It is common practice for women today to immerse a third time and some immerse even more while they pray or petition God to guard those whom they love.

HOW MIKVAH IS USED TODAY

The use of mikvah is unique among the commandments. While most people think only of the Ten Commandments, there are actually 613 that are included throughout the Torah. Three of the 613 traditional commandments incumbent on Jews are specifically for women: baking and separating challah, lighting Shabbat candles, and the ritual bath. While men can and do bake challah and light Shabbat candles, particularly when there is no woman present, no man can immerse in a ritual bath to sanctify fertility and the cycle of nature that only women experience.

Some liberal Jews regard the traditional practice of visiting the mikvah negatively because it frames the time of a woman's menstrual period as one of ritual impurity. At the same time, other liberal Jews are reclaiming this observance and reconceptualizing it as something consonant with their contemporary sensibilities. Some immerse in a mikvah to mark the transition into or out of a special or challenging time in their lives, while a smaller number of women observe the obligation to go to a ritual bath in a traditional way. Some women are creating a celebration of wisdom ritual to help them move from midlife to later life, often around the time of their sixtieth birthday. These rituals generally include Bible study, creative readings, some blessings, and testimonials from friends and loved ones. Often there is singing and dancing as well. Some of these women include a visit to the mikvah in their celebration, followed by a festive brunch with their closest women friends.

Women are also immersing as a way of healing after physical and emotional trauma – such as a cancer diagnosis and treatment, rape, or a divorce – or to add a spiritual dimension to the medically and emotionally draining process of infertility treatment. They are immersing to mark purely joyful developments, creating extended prewedding mikvah rituals and celebrating rabbinic ordination.

Some men, inspired by the mystical aspects of mikvah, go to a ritual bath before each Sabbath and prior to the High Holidays in the fall. For them, as for women on a monthly basis, immersion marks a passage and elevation from one spiritual state to another and sanctifies the moment ahead. The ritual bath is also used for men and women as the final step in their conversion to Judaism—a requirement of conversions under Orthodox and Conservative auspices, and used increasingly under Reform.

Mini-mikvaot are also being used by some parents in the welcoming ceremony that they hold for their newborn daughters. Water is tied to covenant and faith in the Bible. A famous midrash says that Miriam's faith in God's presence merited the miraculous appearance of a well of water wherever she journeyed with the Israelites in the desert. The association between the mikvah's living waters and the uniquely female cycle of menstruation also makes it a rich symbol to use in a welcoming ceremony for a baby girl, a kind of ritual foreshadowing of her life years down the road.

WRESTLING WITH TRADITION: CONCEPTS OF PURITY AND IMPURITY

For a contemporary Jewish woman, embracing the idea of a ritual bath may be intellectually challenging. Bound up with the idea of immersion are the concepts of ritual impurity and ritual purity, which are rooted in Leviticus. The Bible appears unequivocal: "Do not come near a woman during her period of uncleanness to uncover her nakedness" (Leviticus 18:19). "If a man lies with a woman in her infirmity and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow and she has exposed her blood flow; both of them shall be cut off from among their people" (Leviticus 20:18).

It was customary in ancient times for married Jews to abstain from sexual relations during the days a woman was menstruating. later the Rabbis of the Talmud extended the prohibition for a week after the period ended, and constructed layers of law around it by prohibiting all physical contact between husband and wife for that twelve- to fourteen-day interval.

Mikvah immersion is the apex of the complex set of Jewish laws, called taharat ha-mishpacha (literally, "family purity"), observed primarily today only by Orthodox Jews. These laws address sexual interaction between married Jews. They forbid a husband and wife to sleep in the same bed, sit next to each other, or even pass a glass to one another lest they become overcome by desire and transgress the prohibition against sex during the period of ritual impurity. While I appreciate how distance can sharpen desire during the two weeks of separation, I believe that we are able to keep our urges in check without such statutory control. From my perspective, the practice of complete separation also brings with it the sense that a menstruating woman is tainted, that she is dangerously impure.

Susan Handelman, in the book Total Immersion, writes: "The laws of tumah and taharah are suprarational, 'above' reason. And it is precisely because they are of such a high spiritual level, beyond what intellect can comprehend, that they affect an elevated part of the soul, a part of the soul that transcends reason entirely." She also writes: "If we strip the words 'pure' and 'impure' of their physical connotations, and perceive their true spiritual meaning, we see that what they really signify is the presence or absence of holiness." While I don't feel less capable of holiness when menstruating, I do understand menstruation on a spiritual level as the loss of the potential for life, and that it is a time of shedding and preparation for renewal, like the autumn and winter of the body's monthly cycle.

As Rabbi Rachel Sabath puts it:

If the waters of the mikvah represent the waters of Eden, where all humanity was first created, then immersing in the mikvah is the closest I can get to that place where we first encountered God. It is a monthly reconnection to the physical experience of the body that God created. It is an opportunity to acknowledge and praise the infinite wisdom and rhythm of the female body.

I embrace the mikvah not because I walk into it in any way tinted and emerge somewhat purified, but for the other ways that it transforms me and enables me to move fully from one part of my month and my life into the next, in the enduring cycle of which I am but one part.

CHRISTIAN PARALLELS TO MIKVAH

Perhaps of all the rituals included in this series of posts, the ritual of mikvah has the most obvious Christian parallel: baptism. Just as baptism initiates a person into the church, immersing in a mikvah is the final step in becoming a convert to Judaism. As a woman who has finished her menstrual period immerses to become spiritually pure again, so a Christian is baptized in order to become spiritually pure.

Not surprisingly, the practice of baptism originates in the practice of mikvah. Baptizmo in Greek means simply "to immerse." John the Baptist utilized the practice of immersion for spiritual purity. The Christian Bible records that "John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4). One scholar suggests that John's practice of baptism differs from the Jewish practice of mikvah only in that John was only immersing in the river, and not in pools specifically designed for ritual immersion. And John's immersions were for all people, because all people needed purification from sin, while the Torah and the Rabbis require immersion only for people who have come in contact with impure things, such as a woman in contact with menstrual blood.

[...go to the next Jewish Ritual post =>]

[<= go back to Jewish Ritual 7]