This is the Forward’s coverage of mikvahs, Jewish ritual baths.
Mikvah
The Latest
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The Schmooze Poetry in the Mikveh: Three Works by Aaron Roller
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Jake Marmer introduces three poems by Aaron Roller. Notorious for having their heads in the clouds and their hearts set on unearthly matters, poets have, nevertheless, often designated physical spaces as makeshift shrines for their inspirations. Just think…
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Life Thoroughly Modern Mikveh?
Given that rabbinic laws of family purity alternately repel and fascinate me, I recently decided to confront my prejudice and attended a panel discussion on “Exploring Contemporary Understandings of Niddah” at last week’s Mayyim Hayyim conference on all things mikveh. While I’m offended by the idea of clean and dirty or pure and impure when…
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Life Training Mikveh Ladies — and Other Lessons in Immersion
The staff at Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh loves to think up catchy program titles having to do with — what else — water. Their latest wordplay, “Gathering the Waters: Ancient Ritual, Open Access and New Meaning,” was a spectacular, bustling conference, held earlier this week and dedicated to all things mikveh. Mayyim Hayyim…
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Life Impostor at the Mikveh
In the preparation room at an Israeli mikveh, I read the list of instructions for getting ready. I’m an impostor. This is espionage. I’m not married; I’m not even engaged. I’m not even particularly religious, but I came in a skirt with my hair covered, so no one would be suspicious. This is the strangest…
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Life Sexual Dysfunction Is a By-Product of Treating the Body as Treyf
There is more to say about sexual health in the religious Jewish community than I could in this earlier post, about a new book designed to help Orthodox parents talk with their children about the topic. I am certain that there are plenty of sexually happy couples, and I know for sure that there are…
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Life ‘Mikveh Wars’ Pits Haredim Against Religious Zionists
Ouch. That was my visceral reaction while reading the detailed description of the “Mikveh Wars” taking place in the community of Ramat Beit Shemesh. According to The Jerusalem Post, a battle is raging at the local ritual bath — a war that is a microcosm of the tension that exists in the neighborhood between the…
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Life Digest: WSJ on Sara Hurwitz; Bat Mitzvah Girl in a Catsuit
The Sisterhood Digest: • In advance of next week’s RCA convention, at which women’s leadership is slated to be discussed,The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the maharat-rabba-back-to-maharat debate. • Rachel Lester, a 15-year-old who attends a Modern Orthodox high school, has been elected Los Angeles’ youngest-ever public representative. • The New York Post…
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Life Don’t Divorce the Mitzvah from Mikveh
At last Sunday’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance there was an interesting session titled “Rediscovering Mikvah: Creating a New Construct in Thinking about Mikvah.” Given my increasingly ambivalent relationship to my own mikveh practice, I slipped away from all the sessions on Orthodox women and leadership that I needed to attend to for…
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