There we were, a strange-looking group — I and four of my closest women friends naked and singing, splashing around with glee. I would dunk into the water, come up and hear a beautiful wish, or a poem, or a prayer. The water was sweet and warm, and my tears flowed and mixed with it. For this was my night as a kallah, a Jewish bride, and I was in the mikveh, the ritual bath.
As a feminist I have struggled with the Jewish menstrual taboos for many years. Leviticus 25 prohibits a menstruating woman from touching her husband or even his belongings for seven days, while at the same time it forbids her husband from occupying a chair upon which she has sat. That period of seven days legislated by the Torah was later extended by the rabbis, who added yet another seven.
Today’s apologists often quote the test from the Talmud (Niddah 66a), which insists that “the women themselves added more stringency” to the already existing law. In wondering why women would act so, a cynic might suggest that the women of Talmudic times disliked their husbands sexually and wanted an extra seven days of privacy. More likely, the rabbis insisted on the added days but created the sexual-dislike story to convince women that they themselves should want it that way.
A third possibility is the most interesting and least likely: that the rabbis actually acquiesced to the power of collective women legislating for themselves. If that is true, it establishes a precedent for women to legislate halachah for themselves today.
Why the additional days? Why the mikveh at all? Is it simply a male revulsion toward the power of the female body? Or is it, as some would suggest, the “whisper of death” within woman from which she must be cleansed in order to return to the fold? For in truth, every time a woman menstruates she loses the lining of her uterus, which would have chambered a child; and Judaism has always seen the dead as a source of defilement. (For instance, according to Jewish law a Kohen may not go near a corpse.)
Ritual cleansing from the “whisper of death” is not a sexist reaction to menstruation, some would argue. Rather, it is a spiritual and deep understanding of the female biological process.
However we look at it, there can be no doubt that the mikveh has been tied to menstruation since the destruction of the Temple. Therefore, while men may occasionally go to the mikveh to prepare for Shabbat or festivals or even, among the ultrareligious, after an involuntary nocturnal emission, they are never predictably and cyclically in need of cleansing.
Add to this the dirty and dark atmosphere of mikvot in poor immigrant neighborhoods when our mothers grew up, fostering in them a contagious fear and loathing of the whole process.
Now add the English biblical translation of a menstruating woman as “unclean” or “impure.” Add our grandmothers’ warnings about not touching a Torah during that time of the month — which has absolutely no halachic basis. R. Yehudah ben Batera in Tractate Brachot and also the Tosefta of Brachot (22a) state that a menstruating woman may even go up to the Torah. A Torah scroll is supraholy; it is too holy to be defiled by any person or any object at all.
Then add one more piece of fuel to the fire — that mikveh has been the domain of married women only. Divorced and single women, even though menstruating, are not to go to mikveh, according to tradition, because no matter how we try to skirt the issue, no matter how we rewrite history or remake images, the bottom line is this: Mikveh is seen as the last necessary step before resuming sexual relations within a heterosexual marriage, a step commanded by God.
Any other reason for visiting the mikveh — to spiritually renew oneself after one’s cycle, to cleanse from the “whisper of death,” to link oneself to Jewish women’s history, to reground after feeling crampy and bloated — is ultimately secondary, even superfluous.
Why then was I, a Reform rabbi and committed feminist, splashing around in the mikveh? Was I going to make myself kosher for my new husband? Hardly. For me it was an experience of reappropriation. The mikveh has been taken from me as a Jewish woman by a history of superstitions and fear of menstruation. I was going to take back the waters.
To take back the waters means to see mikveh as a wholly female experience.
Just as Miriam’s well gave water to the Israelites, so too will the mikveh give strength back to Jewish women. Water is the symbol of birth — and now it can be a symbol of rebirth. Taking back the waters means opening the mikveh up to women who are not attached to men. In order to do that, we may have to build alternative mikvot, run by women for women, following women’s rules.
To take back the waters means to dip on Rosh Chodesh, when the moon and the sea and women’s cycles become one. To take back the waters means to turn the mikveh into a Jewish women’s center, with Torah learning and books available, not just sheytl (wig) advertisements and pamphlets on keeping a kosher home.
But why bother at all to take back the waters? Why not simply abandon an institution long used to debase us? Because we have so little that is ours. We may put on tallitot, but in so doing we share a man’s ritual garb. On the other hand water is ours; it is the fluid of our own bodies and a deep connection to Mother Earth. We climb to the top of Masada in Israel and there we see a mikveh. It is our Jewish history.
So there we were — washing away past relationships, past hurts. As we prepared, we sang. One friend washed my hair, another rubbed my feet. When I entered the water, they all entered with me. I began with a chant:
“May [immersion] cleanse me of past wrongs. May it cleanse me of grudges toward past loves. May it cleanse me of the times I have hurt past loves. May it move me in the future. May it connect me to other women. May it strengthen my commitment to women’s causes. May it bring out the goodness of woman in me.”
I dipped and sang out the traditional blessing in a clear, loud voice. I dipped again and again, saying, “Amen. May it be Your will,” as each friend offered her prayer, her wish for my future life. It was a moment I shall never forget. It was a moment of taking back what was mine a long time ago, offering a new wisdom of the water that can be uplifting for all women.