“Why would you, a woman rabbi, leave a job you love, having worked in the same community for 18 years, to open a mikveh, when Progressive Jews don’t even use the mikveh? Surely it’s tainted by an antiquated misogyny, and certainly not relevant to modern Jews?”
This is not only a question I’ve been regularly asked since I left my post at Finchley Reform Synagogue, but its reasoning is understandable. This is certainly not a direction in which I saw my rabbinate heading until experiences in my own life, and supporting those in my community through some of the most tragic and life changing experiences of their own, led me to understand how the modern rabbinate has neglected a key part of our role. Wellspring is our way of fulfilling that task.
There are two evolutions I need to explain in order to demonstrate Wellspring’s pivotal future role for British Jewry.
Jewish practice did not get served up in its entirety in either the Torah at Sinai or the Talmud in the Sixth Century of the common era. Judaism has evolved as rabbinic responses to the world as we experience it in every age. Consider how we mark the coming of age for our Bnei Mitzvah and mark the miracle of the oil in what became our Chanukah celebrations. Judaism has responded not just to our relationship with the non-Jewish world in preserving our distinctness as a community but also in its recognition of how to garner the support of each other within the community at momentous times – including in mitzvot to visit the sick, assist the bride or make up a minyan to support the mourner.
The modern world has created so many more momentous milestones and the rabbis have not kept up in creating ritual observance to mark, support, process or witness them. The Jewish community is lucky to have so many charities supporting us practically and emotionally at the toughest of times, but as a religion, not just a culture, ritualising these moments can help in their own way.
We do not mourn the loss of a loved one until their funeral, but many have by that time felt the loss of a beloved spouse, parent or sibling over many years due to cognitive or physical deterioration. How do we mark this very different loss so we can continue to love and care for them whilst also recognising the relationship is not and never will be the same?
The rabbis of old protected us by not treating miscarriage or stillbirth as a viable life which needed mourning again and again. Yet at a time when we can see cells replicating in days, a heart beating in weeks, we may have a very different attachment to that longed-for child. Each chapter in life is dominated by the moments which may not be as we thought, hoped or strived for. These small setbacks, semi bereavements or tragic losses build up over time as in this modern, fast-paced life we are just told to keep going. Some never rebuild after them, others try and build on the shakiest of foundations.
Judaism teaches us to mark moments by being witnessed and supported. How different would life be if there was a community response to the moments that make us feel most vulnerable, most broken, most uncertain for the future?
So why mikveh? Isn’t it just about periods and purity?
Mikveh was never just about women, but what do seminal emissions and menstrual blood have in common? Both suggest something that had the potential to bring new life but didn’t have the opportunity to realise its full potential. Mikveh acknowledges what could have been, helping us find acceptance in how life is and enables us to emerge into a new day with hope.
As a society we are living in a generation where people are often struggling. Judaism needs to step up by providing support, creating communities of people who understand each other’s plight and the ritual to underpin resilience and give hope. There is a reason why we are told one of the first facilities a community should create is the mikveh. It’s not just for ensuring we procreate but rather to ensure resilience and support for life’s most challenging moments as a backbone of our lives.
