We look forward to welcoming you to the newly refurbished Mikvah at the end of October
Ritual immersion is an ancient part of Jewish tradition, noted in the Torah and in later Rabbinic commentaries.
In Jewish tradition, water is part of our sacred narrative, as when Hebrews travelled through the waters of the Red Sea as they left Egypt, marking their transformation from a tribe of slaves into a free people.
Mikvah is the Jewish ritual that symbolically enacts this kind of profound change for individuals. The mikvah pool recalls the watery state that each of us knew before we were born; the ritual of entering and leaving mayyim hayyim, living waters, creates the time and space to acknowledge and embrace a new stage of life.
A Mikvah, containing waters untouched by human hands because they either fall as rain directly into the Mikvah or were fed into it via an underground spring, is the closest thing we have to a piece of heaven on earth. It gives us an opportunity to reunite with our spiritual source.
Today, the most important use of the Mikvah is by women, who immerse in it as one step in the cycle of reunion and separation between husband and wife known as Taharat Hamishpacha (family purity).
Immersion in the Mikvah is described not only in terms of purification, revitalisation and rejuvenation, but also and perhaps primarily as rebirth.
In this way each women can link herself to an ongoing tradition that has spanned generations. Through mikvah she brings herself in immediate contact with the source of life, purity.
