Body and soul purification

Mikvah increases sense of closeness to family, God

MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer

The mikvah at Chabad of Phoenix, established in 1996, bears the name of the Lubavitcher rebbe's wife, Chaya Mushka. The synagogue's official name, Bais Menachem, is dedicated to the memory of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Photo by Michael Miklofsky

Related story Mikvah also serves other purposes

Many Jewish laws can be learned through the study of Torah, but perhaps none of them are as meaningful as the laws of family purity (taharat hamishpachah) that govern the sexual relations between a man and woman.

According to the Torah, the way to family purity is through the relationship between a man and a woman, and a woman must purify herself regularly to sustain the Jewish household.

"When the Jewish people were standing at Mount Sinai, there were three things we did: We accepted the laws of God, we circumcised, and we went to the mikvah," says Rabbi Zalman Levertov, director of Chabad of Arizona.

"The Torah tells us that God wants us to be a holy nation and because he wants us to be a holy nation, we have a special diet and (also) special laws in relationships, in order to have spirit-ually healthy child-ren," he says.

A mikvah is a body of water that has been made kosher and is used primarily by Jewish women, although men and those converting to Judaism also use it.

According to Jewish tradition, it is a mitzvah (commandment) for a Jewish woman to use the mikvah for the first time on the day before she marries, and then again each month, after seven "clean" days following the completion of her menstrual cycle.

During the menstrual cycle and the "clean" days, women and men are to avoid physical contact, including sexual relations, embraces and passing items to each other.

Levertov explains that "today we don't have the Holy Temple, so the only mitzvah remaining in the sense of the mikvah today is for the Jewish woman to have a spiritually holy home for the sake of her marriage and for the sake of future generations.

"When a woman men-struates, it's the potential loss of a child. The blood is life; the soul rests in the blood," he says. "When blood leaves her body, it's sort of like a loss of life."

Chabad of Phoenix has the only mikvah in the Valley, Mikvah Chaya Mushka.

Between 60 and 75 women use the mikvah each month, most of whom are regulars, says Tziporah Levertov, who oversees the mikvah. That number varies based on several factors, such as women visiting from out of town or the number of pregnancies in the community.

Guests who use the mikvah are provided with all of the toiletries necessary to prepare their bodies for entering the water, which includes cotton balls, nail files, nail polish remover, shampoo, soap, a toothbrush and a towel. A person's body must be clean and unblemished before they can perform the mitzvah of entering the mikvah, Levertov explains. Bathrooms with showers and baths are also provided to cleanse the body.

"The preparations should take you, if you start during the day, half an hour, and if you start when it is already night, you should take an hour... not to rush," she says.

A $25 fee per visit helps pay for the supplies and maintenance of the mikvah.

Women are permitted to use the facility at night only.

"There has to be seven complete days and the seventh day finishes after the night and also for modesty and marital relations should be at night... it has to be after the sundown," Levertov explains.

It is a mitzvah for a couple to have marital relations upon the return of the woman from the mikvah.

Precautions are taken to make sure that women never see each other. Two women may be in the building at the same time, but only one woman may use the mikvah at a time.

"We schedule it like 10 minutes apart when they come ... it's very modest and private," Levertov says.

Mikvah Chaya Mushka is open seven days a week, but women who are supposed to use the mikvah on a Friday evening and can not walk to the mikvah are told to come after Shabbat is over.

Once a woman enters the mikvah, they must completely submerge themselves in the water, while saying the following blessing, "Baruch atah adonai elohenu melech ha'olam asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vitzivanu al hatevilah."

The English translation is, "Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us on immersion."

In January 2002, Beth Joseph Congregation in Phoenix closed its mikvah when it became apparent that the cost of needed repairs outweighed the positives, Rabbi David Rebibo told the Jewish News at that time.

Currently, members of the Phoenix Board of Rabbis are considering building another mikvah in the Valley.

Rabbi William Berk, spiritual leader of Temple Chai in Phoenix, has been discussing the possibility since 1999, with various members of the community, but says that an exploratory committee has not yet been formed.

"It would truly be a community mikvah, be open to everybody," he says, adding that the mikvah would be available for conversions. "It would be under the supervision of the Shalom Center for Healing at our synagogue, so we would be adding the component of healing ceremonies."

Rabbi Andrew Straus of Temple Emanuel of Tempe and Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Beth Sholom in Chandler have jointly lead a conversion class for the past six years. They take their students to Saguaro Lake to immerse them in a natural body of water as the Valley's only mikvah is not available for conversions.

"Up until now, the Orthodox and Chabads have chosen not to participate (as members of the Phoenix Board of Rabbis), but they are certainly welcome and invited," Straus says.

"Rabbi Berk has suggested there is land at Temple Chai, but he has ... not thought of it as Temple Chai's mikvah, but rather as the community mikvah at Temple Chai," he adds.

"There's a major philosophical difference there and it would be owned and operated by the Jewish community, not by Temple Chai."

While Saguaro Lake and any other natural body of water is automatically considered kosher, a mikvah is made kosher by a specific procedure. The mikvah at Chabad of Phoenix "was filled with rainwater and the rainwater had to come down in a certain way, so that it's not brought in by utensil, it comes in naturally, and that took work," Rabbi Levertov says. "Once we had the amount of rainwater water we needed, then the city water ... had to be brought in ... in a natural way."

The concept of mikvah is meant to reunite a soul with God.

"In Hebrew, we call t'vilah, that the person dunks himself into ... now if you take the word t'vilah in Hebrew and you switch around the letters, it will come from the word bitul," he says. "Bitul means that you're resigned to godliness, you abdicate yourself to God.

"When you dunk into the water, you don't see the person, the ego isn't there, you're covered. We are basically giving ourselves over to godliness; that's one of the concepts of why people go to the mikvah before they pray."

When Ruth Andrew Ellenson first visited the mikvah five years ago, on the night before her wedding, she says that she caught a glimmer of that serenity. She and the women closest to her visited the mikvah at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

Ellenson's mother-in-law, Lydia Guffey, is a member of Temple Emanuel of Tempe and was part of the ceremony. It was also Guffey's first time going to a mikvah.

"Because weddings are such public occasions, it was meaningful to have ... a moment, which was really private and intimate and allowed me to really reflect on the changes that I was doing," Ellenson reflects.

Ellenson's father and stepmother are both Reform rabbis and had encouraged an interest in feminist rituals in Judaism. She chose to go to the mikvah for an intimate ceremony she could share with the women closest to her.

"It was something I wanted to do, but I did find it perhaps more meaningful than I anticipated," she says.

As with any woman who goes into a mikvah, she had to be completely unblemished. She removed her nail polish, makeup and contact lenses and had her hair combed to remove any tangles so that every part of her would be immersed in the water.

The women gathered around her took turns combing her hair. Each was invited to secretly tell her something.

"It was an interesting way for the women to share the wisdom of this change in life, which so many of them had previously gone through," Ellenson says. "It was wisdom about how to persevere in relationships and good thoughts for me and what I had meant to them."

Looking back, she says that the best piece of advice she received was, "The key to a successful marriage in truth (is) having separate bathrooms," Ellenson says, adding that sharing a bathroom with her husband, Robert Guffey-Ellenson, has failed to put a damper on their marriage.

Ellenson then removed her clothing and entered the mikvah. She immersed three times and said the proper blessing, took a shower, and then joined the rest of her family for a party.

Guffey says that she noted changes in her daughter-in-law following the ceremony.

"I think one of the most beautiful parts was when my daughter-in-law went in, she was very pretty, she was engaged to my son, but when she emerged from the mikvah, she had been transformed," Guffey says.

"The look on her face was so different. It was that of a very mature woman who was about to become a married woman. It was a transformation of a young girl who was engaged versus a woman who was now going to become a wife and being in the mikvah had somehow transformed her that way."

Rabbi Levertov says that women of various degrees of religious observance use the mikvah. "They enjoy the laws of family purity... (and) they like the separation of the two-week period and then it's like a new marriage, a new beginning, every single month."

For information about the Phoenix mikvah, contact Chabad of Phoenix, 602-944-2753.

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