Mikvah also serves other purposes
MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer
The dietary laws of kashrut pertain not only to the purity of food but also to the purity of pots, pans, and other kitchenware. Kitchenware can be brought to a mikvah, such as Mikvah Chaya Mushka at Chabad of Phoenix, and immersed in the water for purification, a process known as toiveling.
At Mikvah Chaya Mushka, men are only permitted to use it on Kol Nidre (the evening preceding Yom Kippur), and on the evening preceding Tisha b'Av because there can not be relations between a couple on those days according to Jewish law. On Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av, no one is permitted to use the mikvah as there is not supposed to be contact with water on those days. The founder of the Hasidic movement, the Ba'al Shemtov, said that men should go to the mikvah before they pray every day, so several Hasidic men want to use the mikvah everyday. However, Rabbi Zalman Levertov, spiritual leader of Chabad of Phoenix, suggests that these men use their swimming pools, even though a pool is not a kosher body of water.
"Because a male does not have to go to the mikvah, even going to a natural body of water, or a non-natural, would be OK for the men," he says. "It is a women's mikvah and we keep it strictly for women."
Besides being used by men and women for purification, a mikvah is also used to purify pots, pans and eating utensils. At Chabad of Phoenix, families are encouraged to bring their kitchenware to the mikvah before the filter goes on in the morning, and women are invited to use the mikvah after nightfall.
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