Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of mikvahs, Jewish ritual baths.
Mikvah
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Fast Forward Rabbi Barry Freundel Appeals 6-Year Prison Sentence in Mikveh Peeping
— An attorney for Rabbi Barry Freundel argued in a Washington, D.C., appeals court that the rabbi’s prison term for secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s mikvah was too long. The attorney argued Tuesday that the 6 1/2-year sentence handed down last year was illegal, The Associated Press reported. Freundel, a once-prominent modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington,…
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Life Why Israel’s Mikveh Bill Is About More Than How Orthodox Women Immerse
This has been a tough week for women in Israel. While the Knesset was debating how much power the rabbinate should have over women immersing in the ritual bath, or mikveh, Women of the Wall Executive Director Leslie Sachs was being arrested at the Western Wall for carrying a Torah. All this reminds us that…
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Life WATCH: This Simple Animation Offers a Profound Message About Mikvehs in Israel
An Israeli art student’s short animation shows how a ritual meant to allow for physical intimacy between Jewish couples can actually drive them apart. The animation, created by Tiferet Sigala, a third year student at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, shows two women’s radically different experiences at the mikveh, as one scowling ritual…
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Fast Forward Chabad Building First West Africa Mikvah in Nigeria
An Israeli firm and a Chabad rabbi working in Nigeria are preparing to open the first known Jewish ritual bath, or mikvah, in West Africa. Yisroel Ozen, a prominent Chabad emissary based in Nigeria, is supervising the construction of a mikvah for women in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on land purchased for him by…
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Fast Forward Israel’s Attorney General Claims Restrictive Mikveh Bill Violates Basic Rights
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A bill that would bar Conservative and Reform conversions from public ritual baths violates Israeli constitutional law, the country’s attorney general said. On Sunday, Avichai Mandelblit submitted a legal opinion to the government in which he said the bill violates several basic rights, including to freedom of religion, human dignity and equality,…
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Fast Forward Barry Freundel’s Synagogue Still Haunted by Mikveh Peeping Scandal
(JTA) – Though it’s been more than a year since Rabbi Barry Freundel was hauled away in handcuffs for installing secret cameras at his synagogue’s mikvah, his crime still casts a shadow over his longtime Orthodox congregation, Kesher Israel. Three civil lawsuits are pending against Kesher by women who presumably used the ritual bath adjacent…
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Fast Forward Woman Who Tried to Immerse Alone in Mikveh Removed by Police
A woman who visited two mikvehs in Jerusalem looking to be allowed to immerse without a female attendant present was removed from one of the ritual baths by police. The woman identified by a pseudonym in a report Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post was removed from one of the mikvehs by police on Dec. 17,…
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Fast Forward 400-Year-Old Mikveh Unearthed on German Town’s ‘Jews Lane’
Archaeologists discovered a centuries-old mikvah underneath a vaulted cellar in the former East Germany. The ritual bath in the town of Schmalkalden is located near “Judengasse,” or “Jews’ Lane,” where a 17th-century synagogue stood until it was destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom exactly 77 years ago on Monday, the day the discovery was announced. The…
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