This is the Forward’s coverage of mikvahs, Jewish ritual baths.
Mikvah
The Latest
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Life Why Is ‘Mikveh Suicide’ a Fiction Motif?
(Haaretz) — Imagine a young Orthodox woman being forced, against her will, to marry an older man who disgusts her. Seeing no way out, she commits suicide – by drowning herself in a mikveh. Now imagine another young Orthodox woman being forced to marry an older man who repulses her. She goes ahead and marries him,…
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Life A Computer Program to Enhance Your Mikveh Experience
Eight years ago, Rivkah Bloom, a computer programmer from south Florida, overheard a conversation which changed her life. Bloom’s friends, Orthodox women who observe the laws of ‘Family Purity,’ were discussing the challenges they face calculating mikveh dates and other the important times in their menstrual cycle. “They wished there was a computer program where…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Barry Freundel Set for Court Date
Rabbi Barry Freundel is expected to appear in a Washington D.C. court today to face charges he used a hidden camera to peep on women in the mikveh of his Orthodox synagogue. The disgraced cleric faces six counts of voyeurism, a misdemeanor, and could face up to six years in prison. Prosecutors might outline any…
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Opinion Why We Chose Rabbi Barry Freundel for the Forward 50
So why is Rabbi Barry Freundel, who made national headlines when he was arrested on charges of secretly taping naked women in his synagogue’s ritual bath, included in this year’s Forward 50? Friends wanted to know. Readers commented on Facebook. Some were simply curious; others posed the question as a challenge. Does he really belong?…
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Forward 50 2014 Barry Freundel
It’s hard to imagine a more disturbing violation of a sacred Jewish space than the one of which Orthodox rabbi Barry Freundel is accused. In late September, someone saw the 62-year-old Washington, D.C., rabbi plug in a clock in his synagogue’s mikveh. The clock was spotted again on October 12, and synagogue officials gave the…
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News For Many Converts, Bumpy Road to Mikveh Only Beginning of Woes
(JTA) — There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a Jew. The road to conversion can be long…
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Culture Channeling Freud To Prevent the Next Barry Freundel
(Haaretz) — I was sitting in a group discussion with fellow psychotherapists recently when a colleague mentioned that one of his female patients had, unannounced, come over and sat down on his lap. Someone else shared the revelation that one of his female patients intimated a desire to see him without any clothes on. The therapists…
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Life When the Mikveh Is an Ordeal of Faith
Mayyim Hayyim Community Mikveh The first time I prepared to immerse in the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath, I was 18 years old and four days away from my wedding. I sat naked in a white bathtub as the mikveh attendant scrubbed my back with a washcloth and a dollop of baking soda. “You’re lucky…
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