Michelle Glazer's List: Extended Essay

• Some Jewish therapists and pastoral counselors, seeing the link between sexuality, spirituality, and spiritual purity, are either using the mikvah as a tool with clients or referring them to rabbis who will take them. Situations in which the rabbis can use or suggest mikvah include rape, incest, marital infidelity and reconciliation, infertility, loss of pregnancy, end of mourning, menopause, after invasive surgery, milestone birthdays, crisis points, and life-changing situations.
• Of course the mikvah does not take the place of therapy. It is not voodoo. It will not bring fertility or good luck, and it cannot radically change personalities or situations. It will not cure deep-rooted problems. It is no quick fix; it is but one part of a healing process expressed in tangible ritual.

• Jewish life is not about  rights, or power, or access. It is, above and beyond all else,   The world needs men and women; blurring that line does no one a favor   covenantal. It is  about actualizing the covenant between G-d and each individual and G-d and this  world.
• The Torah teaches that the ultimate purpose of our lives -- male and female  -- is to fill the universe with G-dliness and spirituality. This we do by  infusing our every action with sanctity, by using every opportunity to free the  G-dly spark inherent in each facet of creation. There is a name for this  exercise -- mitzvot. This is the definition of Jewish life.  Unquestionably, women have equal obligations and privilege in bringing G-d's  plan for this universe to fruition. Just as clearly they have their own  strengths, modes of expression, and areas of concentration.
• But  the Torah system of life is not sexist. It offers, nay demands, the same of both  men and women -- the fulfillment of the Divine will.
• Judaism teaches that the source of all taharah, or purity, is life  itself. Conversely, death is the harbinger of tumah, or impurity. All  types of ritual impurity, and the Torah describes many, are rooted in the  absence of life or some measure -- even a whisper -- of death.
• Impurity is neither evil nor dangerous. It is  simply the absence of purity, much as the darkness is the absence of light. Only  immersion in the mikvah has the power to change that.
• Seen in this light, the laws of niddah and mikvah are neither sexist  nor misogynist, they are simply G-d's created cycles of being.

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• As far as we are able to judge  women did historically go to the mikvah, but whether they went for the reasons  as they are prescribed in the male-authored halakhic literature can no longer be  established.
• Conservative  and Reform Jewish women, on the other hand, pose the question whether the mikvah,  if being readapted for feminists, should at all be considered within the  framework of the sexual prohibition or ritual purity or impurity, in as far as  the latter still have any practical value at all. The mikvah can in fact rather  serve as the basis for innovative rituals especially for women, for examples as  part of the process of healing after illness, operations or miscarriages, or as  part of the psychological of experiences such as sexual abuse and rape, divorce  or death.
• Women have also begun to use the  mikvah as a ritual marking for the beginning or the end of a significant period  of life.
• Beyond the traditional function of  the mikvah the dream for this mikvah is a combination of health spa, counseling  and educational center for the Jewish community.
• In the end,  such contemporary adaptations of the mikvah to women's lives and their interests  specifically may not much resemble the traditional halakhic circumscription of  the mikvah. However, the contemporary mikvah movement can be regarded as one of  the important avenues of the transformation of Judaism into a culture in that  women take on defining roles.

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• For several generations, the practice has been dismissed by liberal Jews as primitive and demeaning. But in recent years, the mikvah has been making something of a comeback, as even the most feminist Jews are reinventing the ritual for the 21st century.
• "I always felt like it suggested a woman was unclean, and that's why she had to come and immerse,"
• Sher says it was her daughter who first introduced her to a modern interpretation of the mikvah as an affirmation of her femininity and fertility.
• In ancient times, the mikvah was most commonly used by women — and men — for ritual cleansing after coming in contact with death. Today, traditional immersion is usually explained as a spiritual purification, to mark the passing of potential life that comes with each menstrual cycle. It's also commonly used for conversions to Judaism.
• But as Goldstein points out, the mikvah is also being used today as a kind of spiritual therapy, for everything from getting over a miscarriage, to completing a round of chemotherapy, finishing a doctoral degree or breaking up with a boyfriend.

• Some worry that stretching the mikvah too far from its original intent, or overusing it, might reduce it to a pop culture phenomenon like feng shui.

  Conservative Rabbi William Hamilton of the Congregation Kehilath Israel in Brookline, Mass., supports alternative uses of the mikvah, but he says the trivialization of the ritual is a real concern. He also worries that as the mikvah becomes more popular, it might be misunderstood as some kind of easy — or magic — cure.

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• The breadth of interest would have seemed unimaginable even 10 years ago, when modern Jews seemed to associate immersion in the ritual bath known as mikveh with Christian baptisms or with something oppressive to women.
• But now, with use of mikveh among the non-Orthodox seemingly here to stay, the debate, particularly within the Conservative movement, is taking on a sharper edge as people consider such questions as: Are traditional concepts of purity and impurity relevant for non-Orthodox Jews today?
• Is a new, more contemporary vernacular — one which hews more closely to modern and feminist sensibilities — needed to discuss the issues surrounding mikveh?
• How far from the tradition can people veer before a ritual is no longer anchored in authentic Jewish practice? For instance, should mikveh — traditionally used by men and women before marriage and by women as a way of cleansing themselves before resuming sexual relations with their husbands after their menstrual cycles — be used, as is the trend in some circles, to signify everything from a recovery from illness, the end of a period of mourning for a loved one, the completion of a divorce, the start of a new job or the celebration of a bar or bat mitzvah? And should liberal Jews be bound by the approximately 12-day interval a woman traditionally waits after her monthly period arrives before she immerses and can have intercourse with her husband?
• While Orthodox experts say the Family Purity laws, as they are known, enhance a marriage — one oft-repeated phrase claims that the monthly post-mikveh reunion between husband and wife amounts to a honeymoon every month — at the end of the day, Orthodox Jews go to the mikveh because it is a commandment.
• “In the early 1900s the mikvehs weren’t so clean or fancy. When I teach and ask people the first word that comes to mind when they hear mikveh, they used to say ‘dirty,’” said Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz, a Conservative scholar and educator at work on a book on mikveh, who spoke at the mikveh conference. “Now people say ‘Orthodox.’ The challenge is to show its relevance for liberal people.”
• The idea that a woman is somehow niddah (spiritually or ritually impure) simply because her body is functioning normally during menstruation is rejected by many.
• In the Bible the term niddah is associated with death and leprosy, a disease that makes those afflicted look like they are decomposing, as well as with genital emissions from both genders and with a status prohibiting one who is tumah (ritually impure) from being in the Temple.
• “Tumah and tahara (pure) present us with a dilemma,” said Rachel Adler, professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the Hebrew Union College rabbinical school in Los Angeles.
   But “do we want to completely sanitize the meaning of tumah? Tumah is the yuck, the ick, the death. That from which we recoil,” she said. “Overcoming tumah is overcoming death.”
• “Literally the word ‘niddah’ means ‘flow,’” she said. “Unfortunately over the years from (the prophet) Ezekiel on, the word has had a negative connotation meaning ‘debased,’ meaning ‘evil,’ ‘something that is dangerous to the body of Israel.’ That’s why I suggest we use more neutral language.”
• Rabbi Grossman recommends changing the terminology from “Taharat HaMishpachah,” or family purity, to “Kedushat haMishapacha (Holiness of the family),” or “Kedushat Yetzirah (Sanctity of Creation).”
• “How do we embrace the beauty of this tradition and redeem it from the extra strictures, the meshagas (craziness), that developed over the centuries over categorizing women as ‘other’ and really physically pushing them away from the community?” she said.
   “We need this because it is the original intent of Torah. Looking at the rabbinical record we do have precedent for making these changes, which is what makes it kosher.”
• Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, director of Chabad of the Upper East Side, which recently opened a new mikveh, made clear that he is uncomfortable with the idea of new rituals.
   “Truth doesn’t need any embellishment. Ritual is saying ‘what can God do for me, for my spiritual growth?’ But the essence of a mitzvah is because it is what Hashem asked me to do. It’s an end in itself,” he said. On the other hand, “if someone comes to the mikveh, we don’t interrogate her” about why she’s there.
• Even outgoing JTS Chancellor Rabbi Ismar Schorsch – no fan of pop spirituality – said in an interview that the interest in and wrangling with mikveh “is growing and does represent something deeper.
   “I welcome it, certainly,” he said. “The embrace of the mikveh by Conservative synagogues is simply one facet of a much larger trend to re-embrace tradition,” he said. Even when it comes to using mikveh for new rituals, Rabbi Schorsch said that it was an acceptable development. “There’s nothing to preclude that use,” he said.

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• After six months of delays and three years of construction, a luxuriously modern new mikveh opened last Sunday on the Upper West Side, a far cry from the funky but soulful ritual bath that served the neighborhood for years.

• Particularly one that, like Mayyim Hayyim, has its own art gallery, features spa-like baths and preparation rooms, and welcomes new, nontraditional uses, such as ceremonies marking the end of chemotherapy or the dissolution of a marriage.

• In a session called “Tumah/Taharah: Clean/dirty? Pure/impure? Ready/not ready? What are we really talking about?” Rabbi Susan Grossman, who is a congregational rabbi in Columbia, Md., and also serves on the Conservative movement’s law committee, said, “Perhaps it’s time to put to bed the term ‘taharat mishpacha.’ Maybe we should move to kedushat [sanctification] mishpacha.”

   

  At that same session, Rabbi Dov Linzer, dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a liberal orthodox seminary in Riverdale, noted that growing numbers of people are talking of counting the “white” days necessary before going to the mikveh, rather than the traditional language of “clean” days, in order to reduce feelings of stigma, and that many have begun referring to a woman as “in niddah” rather than “a niddah.”

• As happy as we tried to make it, many of our new Jewish believers really struggled with water baptism.
• The temple priests were unable to engage in spiritual worship of God without first being ceremonially cleansed by washing both head and feet, symbolizing the totality of their sanctified devotion. The bronze basin was to be used for ritual purity prior to pure worship on pain of death, a fact Moses mentioned twice (Exodus 30: 17-21).

• The priestly sons of Aaron were to be ritually cleansed in water in preparation for ordination to their worship ministries (Exodus 40:12). The high priest was to wash his body in water before he was entitled to offer a sacrifice to God. The one releasing the scapegoat on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) also needed to bathe in water before being permitted re-entry into the camp of God’s people (Leviticus 16: 23-26). One having been contaminated by touching anything unclean, such as a dead person, was forbidden to partake of holy things unless he had bathed with water (Leviticus 22:6).

   

  In the case of the healed leper (Leviticus 14:1-9), the high priest functioned as medical examiner, but only outside the camp of God’s people. After establishing that no hidden marks of leprosy remained, the high priest offered appropriate sacrifices, but still outside the camp. Only after the leper had been ritually cleansed by the blood of the sacrifice and had bathed in water was he permitted to enter the faith camp and ultimately take up his sanctified role in clean society.

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