Reform, conservative Jews build ritual bath facilities
DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
and ANNE BRADY
Managing Editor
The conversion controversy is not just an issue in Israel. It is playing out a lot closer to home in conflicts across the United States over access to mikvah (ritual bath) facilities, a special problem for non-Orthodox, Jewish adoptive parents.
Immersion in a ritual bath is a critical step in the process of converting to Judaism. It is required among Orthodox and Conservative Jews, and is increasingly encouraged by the Reform and Reconstructionist movements.
But non-Orthodox rabbis who once had access to ritual baths are increasingly being shut out. One consequence is that many adoptive parents seeking to bring their child into the Jewish community find themselves, as one mother put it, "caught in the 'Who Is a Jew' wars," using the expression often used to depict the conflict over conversion and the rabbis who perform them.
In response, an unprecedented number of Conservative and Reform synagogues are building their own ritual baths.
In the Phoenix area, Mikvah Chaya Mushka, which opened at the Chabad-Lubavitch Center in Phoenix in 1996, is not used for conversion rituals, said Rabbi Zalman Levertov.
Largely for the that reason, Beth Joseph Congregation in Phoenix has kept its aged mikvah open, said Lola Rosengard, Beth Joseph's mikvah coordinator. It is used by rabbis of all denominations for conversions. But only seven members of the Orthodox congregation in Phoenix use the Beth Joseph mikvah regularly, she said, and it is in a state of disrepair.
Temple Chai, a Reform congregation, is considering building a mikvah on its north Phoenix campus. "It's one of our dreams," said Temple Chai Executive Director Marlyne Freedman. "Right now we have the social hall under construction."
She noted that the Shalom Center for Education, Healing and Growth, located at Temple Chai, could use a mikvah for rituals involving new beginnings, such as after a divorce.
Frank Blake, director of financial development for Temple Chai, said a mikvah is being discussed as part of a future family learning center. Plans for the center will probably be completed by year's end, with construction likely to begin in three years, he said.
Rosengard said that if Temple Chai or another congregation builds a mikvah that is open for conversions, the one at Beth Joseph would likely close.
There was a time, in decades past, when most of the country's mikvah facilities were supported by - and available to - the entire Jewish community. That is no longer true.
Though the newer facilities built by the Orthodox remain open to non-Orthodox women who observe the mitzvah (commandment) of family purity at the conclusion of their menstrual cycle, many of them are closed to non-Orthodox rabbis seeking access for the purpose of conversions.
Rabbi Steven Dworken, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which is Orthodox, says that many communities want a mikvah "solely for the use of the Orthodox community and don't want to perpetuate what they see as non-halachic (not in compliance with Jewish law) conversions."
In the past, he says, "many people were Orthodox-affiliated but not practitioners. Today, thank God, people live by Torah law and are more conscious of observance and all of its ramifications, even as the liberal community has gone further to the left. The lines of demarcation are much stronger."
In response to the denial of access, some non-Orthodox synagogues are taking the unusual step of building their own ritual baths. About 10 have recently been built or are in the process of being created in Conservative synagogues all over North America, according to Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of that movement's Rabbinical Assembly.
"If they do it right, the more the merrier," commented Levertov. "I'm happy more and more mikvahs are being built. I just hope they're 100 percent kosher and not just a pool of water."
The Philadelphia area, home to more than 200,000 Jews, has one of the most vibrant liberal Jewish communities in the nation. It also hosts the headquarters of the Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal movements. Even so, babies adopted by Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform or Renewal-affiliated Jewish parents do not have access to any of the several Orthodox-sponsored mikvah facilities in the region.
Until a few years ago they went to nearby Cherry Hill, N.J., but the mikvah there began restricting use to two days a year, when the children attending the adjoining Orthodox school wouldn't see the non-Orthodox Jews, according to one area rabbi who asked that his name not be used. The result was that 15 or 20 people would be lined up to use it on each of those days, said the rabbi, which meant that no one had privacy.
Since then, Philadelphia rabbis and the converts under their tutelage, as well as parents converting their newly adopted children, have had to drive 90 minutes each way to Allentown, Pa., to use a mikvah.
Rabbi Elliot Strom of Congregation Shir Ami, a temple in the Philadelphia suburb of Newtown, Pa., returned one day from the Allentown mikvah thinking there had to be a better way. He then spent a year convincing his 950-member Reform congregation to embark on building their own.
Since the $30,000 mikvah opened in mid-February, "I've been getting calls from everywhere," Strom says. "I've heard from 20 or 30 rabbis who want to use it. There's a huge pent-up demand in Philadelphia."
In the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood, Congregation Beth Hillel-Beth El has been raising the $250,000 it anticipates needing to complete its own mikvah, says Rabbi Neil Cooper of the Conservative synagogue. Cooper, who describes the plans as "luxurious and spa-like," says they hope to break ground in about a year.
In Cleveland, liberal rabbis used a community mikvah until a couple of years ago, when it became so decrepit that its roof caved in. They don't have access to the several other ritual baths in the area, which is home to a thriving Orthodox community. Instead, they drive to Youngstown, two hours away, to use a mikvah in a building shared jointly by a Conservative and Orthodox congregation.
One Cleveland couple who adopted a child about a year ago are Conservative Jews but want to convert their son in an Orthodox ceremony, so, his mother says, "he is covered and no one can say, 10 years from now, that he needs an Orthodox conversion."
The couple asked that their names not be used because they didn't want to embarrass their Orthodox relatives in the Cleveland area. They have been trying for more than nine months to find a way to have his conversion supervised by an Orthodox rabbi at a local mikvah, but haven't succeeded, delaying an experience that they fear will now be traumatic for their toddler son.
"It's bad enough that you go through the court hearings and thousands of papers with adoption," she says. "If the Jewish community can't help us embrace a new member of the Jewish people, then we have a real problem."
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