The Mikvah as a Spiritual Tool

Are there occasions in which we can appropriate the ``spiritual cleansing'' properties of tevila? In the past ten years I have witnessed the powerful emotional response of Jews by choice to the mikvah experience and I have sought to recreate that experience for Jews in other life situations. I myself have experienced this transformative power. The first time I went to mikvah was before my ordination. I wanted to ``come clean'' as I approached what I felt --- and still fell --- was the day I began my spiritual calling. I knew that ordination day itself would be moving, but also hectic and public. I wanted a private way to prepare. Because I was not married at the time, the ``mikvah lady'' was hesitant and unsure, but somehow I managed to convince her that I was like a bride in this case! I again used mikvah personally after sheloshim for my sister. The intensity of the mourning period and my own grief was so strong that I needed an equally strong ritual to mark my reentry into normal life.

As a rabbi, I wanted to offer this kind of compelling experience to congregants, removed from conversion and from its traditional and problematic associations with women and niddah. A woman in my temple had been raped by a handyman she had hired to work in her home. She was a single mother and extremely emotionally fragile. She sought therapy after the rape and months after was still at an impasse with her feelings of being ``dirty.'' Her therapist (a non-Jew), knowing how involved she was in the temple and how much comfort that brought her, inquired about Jewish ritual which could help this woman remove the feeling of being ``tainted.'' I suggested the mikvah could be both a symbol and a real tool for cleansing her body and soul. We tried it, on a quiet spring afternoon, the therapist, this woman, and I went to the mikvah, prayed together for wholeness and purity, and she immersed. While the mikvah was not magic, her therapist reported that having a Jewish framework in which she could rid herself of the shame and ``stain'' was crucial to the successful completion of her treatment and her ability to go back to work, temple, friends, and family with a sense of peace.

Since that incident, my own use of the mikvah as a tool, and that of other rabbis to whom I have proposed it, have elicited an overwhelmingly positive response in almost every case. Some Jewish therapists and pastoral counselors, seeing the link between sexuality, spirituality, and spiritual purity, are either using the mikvah as a tool with clients or referring them to rabbis who will take them. Situations in which the rabbis can use or suggest mikvah include rape, incest, marital infidelity and reconciliation, infertility, loss of pregnancy, end of mourning, menopause, after invasive surgery, milestone birthdays, crisis points, and life-changing situations.

Of course the mikvah does not take the place of therapy. It is not voodoo. It will not bring fertility or good luck, and it cannot radically change personalities or situations. It will not cure deep-rooted problems. It is no quick fix; it is but one part of a healing process expressed in tangible ritual. It is probably more symbolism than anything else, according to therapist Yonah Klem, ``a bath unlike any ordinary bath'':

``What is crucial to the process is a decision to create an event that will be meaningful, and behavior that sets the event out of the ordinary. Planning the behavior, preparing and waiting with intent all seem important. At home, the bathroom is familiar and the water, whatever normally comes out of the tap. Leaving the ease and familiarity of home to bathe in a different bathroom, and then to go further to immerse in the natural waters in a pool that has no counterpart anywhere else, also builds and expectation for something more than just washing up to take place.''

Like any ritual, the use of the mikvah as a spiritual tool requires preparation and creativity. It requires new liturgy to accompany the ceremony and an open, supportive atmosphere. It requires that the rabbi too believe that something more than just washing up is going to take place.