The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh
(Beacon Press)
One clear evening in Jerusalem, Varda Polak-Sahm shows up alone at her neighborhood mikveh – a ritual bath for Jewish women – to purify herself before her second wedding. After her first mikveh experience, during which she kept her out-of-wedlock pregnancy a secret from her family and the Orthodox balaniyot (mikveh guides), she’s understandably nervous. Yet this time, as the balaniyot towel her off and push congratulatory candies into her mouth after her plunge, Polak-Sahm experiences “an elemental emotion so stunning in its intensity, so acute, it was as if every fiber of my being was stirring wondrously to life.” Fascinated by the incongruity between the dull building, the slightly scary women running the place, and the depth of her spiritual experience, she decides to return to the same mikveh and interview all the women connected with it – clients, guides, and anyone passing through.
Among the various commandments that Jews observe, the commandment to immerse is one of the more obscure. The purpose of the mikveh is to bring women out of niddah, the spiritual impurity associated with menstruation, but Polak-Sahm quickly discovers that the practice has taken on a whole host of extra meanings and superstitions. She paints a decidedly unflattering picture of the Orthodox women who subscribe to it, chronicling bizarre and often offensive claims that impure brides give birth to disabled children, that ritual purity is the only way to keep a marriage together, and that Jews are preternaturally brilliant because their mothers immersed before conception. Unsurprisingly, purity laws are used to oppress women, as Polak-Sahm demonstrates when she describes rabbinical control over reproduction.
But she’s not alone in her spiritual – and intensely pleasurable – reaction to immersion. She interviews secular women who abstain from sex during niddah and love the feeling of purification. She even meets a non-Jewish women from the same Kabbalah center as Madonna, desperate to immerse during her trip to Israel. (The balaniyot, recoiling at the cross around her neck, don’t let her in.) Despite its superstitious overtones, the mikveh clearly functions as a center where women can support other women without male interference, and the scenes detailing the tender moments between mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces, and cousins – not to mention the balaniyot’s protocols for gaining the trust of battered women – attest to this. In between the chilling glimpses into Orthodoxy, in which women are banned from studying sacred texts and must present underwear stains to rabbis for inspection, the mikveh reveals itself as an oasis of female control.
The book’s biggest limitation is Polak-Sahm’s unfortunate decision to write about only one mikveh. We only see the Orthodox interpretation of the commandment to immerse, which comes with a maddening list of “barriers” that nullify the immersion (letting a hair touch your back, leaving your earrings in, forgetting to empty your bowels beforehand). Even liberal clients’ experiences are seen through the Orthodox lens – for example, the woman who grudgingly comes in just to fulfill Israel’s draconian requirements for a marriage license. Stories like that are interesting in a depressing sort of way, but aren’t there any progressive, non-traditional, or LGBT-friendly mikvehs out there? Well, yes, but they’re relegated to quick descriptions in the Afterword. The book would have been richer if Polak-Sahm had given them more attention.
Still, the book is an interesting window into Orthodox beliefs and customs. It also functions as a refreshing cross-section of Israeli Jews, who are too often portrayed as 100% Ashkenazi (even though Ashkenazim make up less than half of Israel’s Jewish population). Polak-Sahm herself is Sephardic and a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, and many of the women who run and frequent the mikveh are Mizrahi. Arab delicacies and Ladino folk songs fill the room every time a bridal party bursts in.
What exactly caused Polak-Sahm’s spiritual experience? Unfortunately, after the prologue, the book never addresses that question again. Instead, it spirals off into a survey of different beliefs and attitudes about immersion. Furthermore, the book is laced with ableism and fatphobia, which are especially evident in one treacly scene involving a bride in a wheelchair. But if its purpose is to shed some light on what goes on in a ritual immersion, the book succeeds. Despite its off-putting rules and taboos, the mikveh can clearly be a powerful spiritual tool for women, and Polak-Sahm’s respect for it is evident on every page.
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Actually mikvot are not only for women: some Orthodox men have the practice of immersion before Shabbos and many Jewish men have adopted the practice of pre-wedding mikvahs as well (I myself did). And both men and women must immerse upon conversion to Judaism.
At any given time, the mikvah is for either men or women and women are the primary users of mikvahs, so usually it’s “women’s hours” at any given mikvah.
What is odd is the list of requirements for a mikvah. When my wife went to the mikvah before she married, the “mikvah lady” gave her all sorts of requirements to make sure she was “ready” for the mikvah. When I went, the male attendent just made sure I showered first so I didn’t get the mikvah itself dirty and gave me a brief instruction about what I was supposed to do. I don’t know why the difference, it could be just a matter of which attendent you get, but I suspect they are simply stricter when it comes to women for whatever reason.
Interestingly, conversions are somewhat of a different matter because the Rabbi directs it. Even if the Rabbi is a male Rabbi directing a female’s conversion (and hence is in another room for some of the steps), the final say is not the attendent but the Rabbi so if the Rabbi says whatever was done is ok, it’s ok.
As for LGBT-friendly or progressive mikva’ot, they’re about as common as unicorns. I live in the third-largest Jewish population in the world. Yeah, no liberal mikvah open to the public here. I don’t know of one at all on this side of the Rockies. In Israel there might be more because there is more connection, even among secular Jews, to Judaism (a self-described “secular” Jew in Israel may keep kosher, go to the mikvah, and avoid doing work on Shabbat). But I understand why she wouldn’t write about something so fantastically uncommon.
Laws of taharat hamishpacha (“family purity”) are intense: no touching, ever, of the opposite sex, until you’re married, at which point you can touch only your spouse.
As an Orthodox feminist (who, for the record, loves her religion), let me tell you: if you aren’t, as a liberal feminist, utterly horrified by the sexism, racism, homophobia, and oppression that goes on in Orthodox Judaism, you just don’t know the whole story.
The mikveh is definitely also for men, as in some communities it’s a place with a bad reputation for child abuse. I’ve been hearing about it more and more.
I live in the third-largest Jewish population in the world. Yeah, no liberal mikvah open to the public here. I don’t know of one at all on this side of the Rockies.
Do you mean Los Angeles? I don’t really know any details, but I’ve heard that the one at American Jewish University is supposed to be fairly progressive.
in which women are banned from studying sacred texts and must present underwear stains to rabbis for inspection
WTF?!!!
Women are supposed to go to the mikveh no sooner than 7 days after the last day of their periods. What counts as the last day of the period is the last day that there’s a red or brown stain. If a day or two after bleeding stops, the woman gets some spotting where she’s not quite sure whether to count it as brown, which means it counts as a period day, or yellow, which means it doesn’t, she’s supposed to show it to a rabbi and get his opinion. I have no idea how often people actually do this.
Ruchama, I do think it depends on the community or the rabbi – I do imagine it probably happens more the more fundamentalist you get, but my old Conservative rabbi said it was kind of like abortion in that you may have been technically supposed to talk to your rabbi but most communities he was familiar with didn’t actually do that and it was a private matter.
And I have to agree with Simcha: the more I’ve learned about what goes on in many Orthodox communities the more I have been horrified, and it’s not getting any better.
I’m a fairly observant Conservative Jew in Seattle. I immerse 7 days after menstruation at the mikvah in an Orthodox Lubavitch synagogue. They’re pretty nice there. I’ve shown up in pants before and wasn’t hassled about it. My female rabbi goes there, wearing her kippah, and isn’t harassed. But I know that there are problems in other mikvahs in our city.
As far as liberal mikvahs, here’s a good list: http://community.livejournal.com/mikveh/2685.html?thread=25981
Actually, despite being easily the most socially conservative city in Canada, Calgary’s Orthodox synagogue is open to all Jews using the mikvah – I know for a fact our Reform temple uses it in conversions all the time without a fuss, which is not the case in Edmonton.
When I was a teenager I went to a Pentecostal footwashing ceremony. I was very moved by the act of giving and receiving care. It opened my mind to how the spiritual and the physical are braided together. There’s a book called, ‘Nurses Work–The Sacred and the Profane’. That pretty much says it.
Now as a Unitarian Pagan Witch I am a believer in ritual, and the power of acting out your beliefs and intentions.
I’m wondering why the response to the period-checking is automatically “WTF” and “horrified.” Given, I find the idea pretty gross. But that’s a gut reaction to the idea that menstruation is dirty – “ew period blood.”
I can definitely see how the practice could be implemented in a sexist, patriarchal way. But I don’t think I get to assume that someone necessarily experiences their religion as intrusive and patriarchal.
Naomi Ragen writes fiction that is often set in Orthodox Jewish communities (both in the US and Israel) that incorporate a lot of these questions. I have not lived in these communities, but the impression I take away from her fiction and other writings is that Orthodox Judaism can be used as a tool of oppression and patriarchy – but that it does not need to be this way, and those communities that do so are abusing the word of G-d to justify their pride/greed/desire for power/etc. She’s explicitly said that she does not think that this should mean that she must leave her religion – they should be the ones to go.
I don’t consider my menses dirty, but I wouldn’t want to produce them to anyone.
I think many women consider menstruation to be extremely private. It’s associated with sexuality and reproduction. Those ideas seem valid in this context as well. And so this directive to show them to a male authority figure sounds like a pretty deep invasion of privacy.
I understand that it is not for an outsider to determine another woman’s boundaries, or to tell her what religious observance should mean to her. And I agree that menstruation is no big deal. I don’t know if it makes sense to read this interaction that way, though, or to assume that commenters here are bothered by menstruation rather than a reading of it.
My very limited understanding of showing a rabbi your bloodstained underwear (I Googled it, I know, hardly accurate) is that the time that a woman is menstruating she is “impure” and is kept apart from her husband (I think.) The rabbi checks her underwear to make sure she is indeed done menstruating. And to make sure she’s ready to use the ritual bath.
Menstruation isn’t impure. It’s a bodily function like any other, it just happens to be unique to women. If I needed to whip out some blood-stained underwear, or a used pad, and take it to a doctor, that definitely wouldn’t be my funnest day, but I would do it because…hey, it’s a doctor, if they need it, they need it. But to have a rabbi inspect my underwear because, essentially, they don’t trust my word that I am done menstruating? Again, I’m making these judgments as a non-Jewish (and non-religious) woman, but I don’t understand how that can be anything but oppressive, humiliating and patriarchal.
I thought the whole point of having to wait 7 days, not being allowed to touch anyone while you’re menstruating – let alone have sex – and having to immerse in order to purify yourself again was that menstruation is viewed as dirty and icky and something that has to be purged.
There are different interpretations for why a woman is supposed to go to the mikveh after her period ends and before she can have sex with her husband. It certainly can be read as “menstruation is dirty,” and there are definitely people who interpret it that way, but there are other possible interpretations, too. One I’ve seen pretty often is that menstruation represents, in a way, the “death” of a potential life, which is ritually impure. (“Ritually impure” is not the same thing as just “impure.”) The mikveh marks the separation between the ritually impure state and the ritually pure state, so that the act of sex, a holy act, won’t be tainted by the impurity of death.
The mikveh itself is not meant as a physical bath — you’re supposed to get totally clean before going in the mikveh, so that the water only touches the person and isn’t blocked by any dirt.