Living water - the Mikveh
by Keren Korman



The Mikveh: hebr. Mikvaeh, דוו קמ, plural Mikvaot תואוו קמ, from דו ק , zusammenfließen, gathering water.

This is the name of the ritual bathing of the Jewish community; almost every Jewish community has such a ritual bathing place. In Germany there are more than 400, the large ones are in: Cologne, Speyer and Worms. It was as common as a not Jewish bath house.

The purpose of the mikveh is not hygienic but for ritual purity.

Tahara = ritual purity and Tumah = ritual impurity, are very important concepts in Judaism. The Torah (הרות), the old testament, which is the most important document in Judaism, revered as the inspired word of God, traditionally said to have been revealed to Moses. The word Torah means „teaching,” „instruction”, or „law” in Hebrew. In special situations, The Torah demands the restoration of physical and psychic integrity from impurity.

In the bible, Tahor is used in the context of the purity laws for the priesthood, meaning that one should be pure before going to god's temple or in order to bring a sacrifice to god.

Tameh was every person who came in contact with a deceased person or with someone that had lost a part of his body or had contact with blood, (a woman menstruating is also a tameh).

If there is no mikveh near, the impure can also use the sea, river or a water-spring.

The visit of the mikveh is a must for women but not for men. The woman makes a first visit to the mikveh in the evening before she becomes a bride. She comes again when being married, and after her menstruation. In Judaism blood is unclean, therefore during this period sex is not allowed.

Until the woman visits a mikveh she is seen as impure, therefore a man is not allowed to touch her, or come close to her. After childbirth she is to go to the mikeh as well.

The command “Nidda” and „Tewila” (separation time and submersion in the mikveh) is held, as soon as a Jewish woman has sex with a man.

When using the mikveh one is not allowed to have any objects on the body that might interfere with direct contact with the pure water, no makeup, no bracelet, rings or clothing. In one visit, the person has to immerse three times in the mikveh water. The completed bathing is called Tewila.

There is one mikveh for men and one mikveh for women. Every mikveh has its own special program. Mikvaot have aside the Mikveh bath: a system of rooms which are used before the tevila=bathing. These bathrooms, toilets, protected rooms, etc, must be used before bathing in a mikveh.

Man mikveh: 1st. room- entrance and relaxing room, 2nd room- dressing room, 3rd room-wet zone- showers, 4th room- mikveh, from there back to room 3,2,1. Men use the mikveh usually in day light. Men use it usually before Sabbath starts and during holydays. Soferim - Tora-writers - use it before they attend work. Today, the orthodox fathers and sons visit the mikveh before Sabbath and in Yom Kippur.

Woman mikveh: the key words are: discretion, intimacy and modesty. There has to be another room for the mikveh woman worker that is always there and guides the new visitors. Women use the mikveh at night fall for 3 or 4 hours.

Objects and rooms could also be considered impure, and need to be washed in the mikveh as well. Until this days in traditional households, new kitchenware through Tevila in the mikveh, is to be made kosher. Until this day, in traditional households, new bough kitchenware must be made kosher, by being immersed in the mikveh water. The butcher also has to take his new knife to the mikveh so that the process of slaughter is kosher.

No orthodox Jewish family would dream of living without a mikveh. It would be like not lighting the candle on Saturday. The mikveh belongs to family life and purity. For men, it is not a religious must to visit the mikveh. For liberal and reform Jews, this is the reason they visit the mikveh so seldom.

How can you bulid a kosher mikveh?

"A water spring and hole with water- this mikveh is pure", "and he shall wash his all flesh in this water." Book of Leviticus chapter 11.

This bible psalm holds the three laws that are kept in all very different but still kosher mikveh:

1. Living water, coming from water springs, a river, a sea, underground water, but not water from a pipe which is manually used. The reason being that water coming from pipes do not have the power to make someone or something pure. This is the reason why many of the mikvaot in Europe are so deep, in order to reach the ground water.

2. Mikveh in earth, that is carved out of stone or cast in the ground or attached to it, essential is to build it in the place, no unit use are allowed.

3. The water should cover the entire flesh of the person, in sq= 120 cm.

In Israel, for example, the first rule, to bathe in living-water, is very hard to keep, for it doesn't rain often and winter time is very short. Therefore the halacha says that if one has 1sq of living water (rain water or underground water), one can stream to it pipe water (this was already made in Messada, 66 B.C) the pipe water will kiss the living water through a small canal. Through this process the pipe water gains its purifying power from the living water.

The water system is navigated with the help of rubber or wooden corks. The pipes are allowed to be made of concrete.

The entire bath system including the walls and floor are preferably built monolithic, so that no water drips, since a dripping mikveh is not considered kosher. Every community has its solutions for keeping the water clean. The bath is cleaned with a pumps system, and not with a gutter, because gutters are droping.

In the present, it is recommended to build the mikveh with the newest materials available, like aluminum and nirosta, which are more stable against warmth and moisture.

Many mikvaot were build in a way, so that there is no eye contact with the street, sometimes therefore they would be in the corner of the street with a round wall and their windows places very high.

It came with the Instruction that the Jewish people should spread in different districts of the city, after 14th century. So as a solution, in hidden places in home cellars, narrow pits were dugs till they reached the level of the groundwater, then they were carved in a bathtub size. The second form of a mikveh was a pool with rainwater.

Until the 20th century the mikveh was a very important part of the community life- without a mikveh there is no community. Usually the mikveh was built first and later when the community arranged enough money to built its synagogue, was the synagogue built.

I now give the example of a mikveh Germany because other examples in Europe are hard to find.

The Rotenburger Mikveh

Close to the Fulda river in Germany, is the closest example to Kuldiga, which I could find. Its similarities are reflected on the similarity of the size of the towns.

In places rich in water like Germany, the first type of mikveh has adequate for the ritual bathing.

Within the Jewish community the name of the mikveh is tewilla, but in the writings it had different terms, like:

Jew's-water-spring, Jewish bath, cellar bath and ritual bath. From the 19th century on, only names such as “woman bath,” were used, but never the word mikveh.

In the year 2000, Ruth Lapide began an archeological research, and found that in 17th century Rotenberg, existed a mikveh, and that the synagogue was built later.

She found that:

1.The house was probably also a mikveh before 1835, this being the reason that the place was built again where the basics are.

2.The house was newly built at 1831/32.

3. The Jewish community grew in the first half of the 19th century from 196 to 313 members.

She also found, in the place, as you can see in the diagram:

1. a walled bathtub: 1,53 m Long and 65 cm width (A ), to which directed from northwest 3 red brown stairs around. 60 cm width und 20 cm high. The inside of the bath is with white and blue tilling, probably from 1920.

Its a smaller mikveh, contains 750 liter and is 85 cm deep, so the woman were able to cover their body with water only in sitting or lying.

2. a sand stone wall 3,90 m deep in the base of the bath in south east a walled pit and on its base 3.9 m under the ground wood boarding around 2,20 m² (C ). Composed of 4 cm thick and 1,82 width oak wood. That were probably used to keep the water clean. The stairs are high so the people can use the mikveh at any season because the water level in the mikveh depended totally on the water level of the river.

3. A pit of 60 x 57 cm used for the ritual cleaning of ditches and other new household articles. As well for the slaughter tools and other kitchenware, without them no flesh or other foods would be kosher.(D)

This pit could have had a double function, as a feed pipe of warm water in to the mikveh, in which the "pure" cold water with the warm water in a mixed portion comes together.

(E ) 1900 to attach the house to the heating system ( around 60 x 60 cm, 80 cm deep).

( F ) stone oven, to warm the water.

Further explanation:

A bathroom B antechamber/ bath C mikveh D kitchen wash

a inflow of hot water b hole with corks, through which filling water in the bath.

c absorption, from wich the drainingpump absorb d closed watter container or a well e bathtubs

f boiler unit g barrel with cold water h a well or pump to fill the boiler

She found a document explaining the role of the bath woman:

Ballanit is the name of the role of the woman that serves at the mikveh.

According to a document from the year 1829, the Ballanit had to dry the bath every day from 10-12, clean the location and know how to behave with the bathing women.

If the Ballanit wants to bath she takes a woman and pays her, its a law that there are always 2 woman while bathing.

Women are not allowed to bathe outdoors for it's against good morals and shameful.

Every woman who wants to bathe, has to inform the Ballanit at 12 o'clock.

A woman coming to the mikveh for the first time has to inform the Ballanit a day before 12 o'clock.

(In case that there are many woman at the same evening that likes to bathe, the first to take the bath will be the longer married one, after her the second long married etc.)

In case there are many women who would like to bathe during the same time, the first to take the bath will be the one who has been married longest, and the second, the second to first, etc.

Poor people bath for free, but they should not expect the bath to be warm, or they must pay for the wood used to heat it.

Mikveh from an anthropological point of view:

Currently in Europe, only a few people use the functioning mikvaot, and most are orthodox.
A minority of mikvaot users are usually seen with prejudice. They are viewed as living backwards and not respecting women. This is for example the case in Israel.
In America, this was the case with the second wave of feminism. The return to the mikveh was a trend of reform and conservative Jewish women. The mikveh in those cycles is understood as a woman's room, where the complexity of women's life is to be experienced. Within a spiritual room, there is the possibility of retreating to a place belonging to them.

In a study by Israeli anthropologist, Inbal Cicurel, on mikveh visitors in Beer Sheve, one can read about the approach of secular Israeli women to purity and impurity. The girls' origin is North African. Although there are other purity rules in the halachah, these women ignore them and follow just the mikveh purity law wich is actually there. They choose the mikveh because of many different reasons:
Because friends go there, because the mikveh is a place of communication, a place that binds the belief in god and the protection of the family purity, and also a place to celebrate with the young bride. In their visits to a feminine room within Jewish life, the women could decide on their own motivations.

In Israel today there are further polar attitudes towards the mikveh. Seen not only as a room for the married, for the fertile Jewish woman, or as a ritual place, some see the mikveh today as a place to find the woman's spirituality and self consciousness. Others view the mikveh as a law belonging to antiquity that could have been good and useful in its time, within its function for hygiene and the prevention of diseases. But viewed in the context of today when everyone has a bath at home, being forced to go to a mikveh, where you cannot keep your privacy, is viewed as a humiliation, because in the mikveh, one is never alone but in close company of the ballanit. Also the fact that everyone knows the time of a woman's period, and that that day or next one is allowed to have sex again with one's husband.

In Judaism, the woman is responsible for the purity of the family, the taharat hamishpacha.
Oppositely in Judaism the women is always considered impure, before she attends the mikveh. Before this she is not even allowed to be touched by the closest male family members like her father or brother, and further after visiting the mikveh, not being able to be touched when she has her menstruation.