Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert

A Mikvah for Feminists

[German]

In recent years the mikvah - the bath for ritual immersion - has moved to the foreground of Jewish feminist discussions, especially since conservative and reform synagogues have begun to build their own mikvaot. (See "Mikveh Mania," Jerusalem Report, 10.9.2001, or "Coming of Age: The Growth of the Conservative Mikveh Movement," United Synagogue Review 54:1, Fall 2001) To a certain degree it makes sense that the mikvah has been ignored in the earlier feminist debates, since it is neither a public nor collective institution in the same sense as the synagogue and the yeshivah. Nonetheless, the mikvah does function as a communal institution and has historically been at least as central to the life of traditional communities, if not more so. In fact, according to Jewish law the construction of a mikvah takes precedence over building a synagogue.

The mikvah's primary function lies within the context of traditional Jewish marital life, at least since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the abolishment of is requirement of ritual purity. According to Jewish law, in this case derived from biblical law (Lev 15 and 18:19; 20:19), a Jewish married couple is prohibited from having sexual or even erotic relations during the wife's menstrual period. In rabbinic and halakhic literature the menstruating woman is called a niddah. Etymologically, the term can be derived from either the root n-d-d = "to depart, flee," or n-d-h = "to chase away." Conceptually, the term most likely describes the physiological process of the flow of blood, rather than the social ostracization of the woman from her household or the larger social context. Such an ostracization cannot be shown for the case of biblical or rabbinic culture. After the cessation of her bleeding and an additional period of seven days she goes to the mikvah to immerse herself in accordance with detailed rules. Only after her immersion is the couple permitted to have sex again. Without mikvah no children.

Further, men and women who convert to Judaism have to immerse in the mikvah. And finally, in certain communities, Jewish men use the mikvah as well on special occasions, such as chassidic men before the holidays and in some cases regularly on Friday before Shabbat. However, such uses by men are only customary and not always  halakhically prescribed.

Meanwhile, more recently there has been a proliferation of popularized halakhic literature manuals on how to observe the laws of "family purity" (taharat ha-mishpakhah). Introduced into halakhic discourse only in the nineteenth century, this term is actually a misnomer, since primarily the menstrual laws are concerned with sexual discipline and not with ritual impurity that is relevant for the temple only. Additionally, only the married couple's sexual life and not the entire family, is affected by the wife's menstrual period. Perhaps the term took hold at a time of orthodox concern about assimilation and loss of identity in modern society, especially after the Shoah. Thus, Jewish women are attributed with the responsibility for preserving Jewish identity and observance.

In front of this background we have to ask whether the mikvah is or can be a woman's institution and in what sense it could be such? 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. There are almost no historical texts authored by women about their own religious beliefs. In the contemporary literature authored by Jewish women, traditionalists argue that the mikvah is not only an institution that guarantees a healthy marriage, regulating periods of sexual abstinence and affirmation. Rather, it also provides an important framework for a Jewish woman's spiritual life: "Through the mikvah she brings herself in immediate contact with the source of life, purity and holiness - with the God who surrounds her and is within her always." (Rivkah Slonim, ed. "Total Immersion: A Mikvah Anthology," 1995, p. 36) Further, the mikvah here is described as the means to connect to Jewish women of previous generations.

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. (See Laura Levitt and Sue Ann Wassermann, "Mikvah Ceremony for Laura," in "Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook," ed. Ellen Umansky and Dianne Ashton, 1992) Women have also begun to use the mikvah as a ritual marking for the beginning or the end of a significant period of life. Thus a few of the rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York decided to go to the Mikvah preceding their ordination in May of 2001. Further, Anita Diamant, author of the popular novel "The Red Tent" (1997) and a few other women has started a campaign for the first "progressive" mikvah in the United States. 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.

Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert is the author of "Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of biblical Gender" (2000).