Kesher Talk

Living waters. Last year I wrote about the new interest in mikveh by us liberal Jews, and now a new nondenominational mikveh in the greater Boston area has been added to the regrettably short list of such institutions.

The brainchild of "The Red Tent" author Anita Diamant and Reconstructionist Rabbi Barbara Penzner, and the result of three years of outreach and fundraising, Mayyim Hayyim, which opens early this month, expects to attend to women and men who are either converting to Judaism or observing conventional mikvah traditions. Mayyim Hayyim also expects that the people coming through its doors will immerse in the warm water to mark other life transitions — from miscarriage to divorce, from being declared cancer-free to beginning a new job, from leaving home for college to ending an abusive relationship.

Mayyim Hayyim began when Diamant, as the outreach chair of her Reform congregation, discovered that it was often difficult for a woman trained by a non-Orthodox rabbi to find a mikvah for her conversion immersion. "We in the 21st century should be offering a different kind of welcome to people who were making this extraordinary decision to become Jewish," said Diamant.

In Austin, the only mikveh was run by the local Chabad, and was not available for non-Orthodox conversions, needless to say. I don't know what the Conservative converts did; I know the Reform converts used Barton Springs, in their bathing suits. Well, Barton Springs is always very cold, since it's a natural spring, and if the conversion is in the winter it's going to be even more uncomfortable, and most important: immersing in your bathing suit really misses the point.

I don't know what non-Orthodox converts do here in New York either, come to think of it.

posted by Judith @ 6/02/2004 08:23:51 PM