If the mikvah is not crowded on a given evening, the mikvah lady will come to the room immediately after the buzzer sounds. If it is crowded, one might have to wait five or ten minutes, but generally no longer than that, except for that one evening every few years when the mikvah looks as though it’s giving away something free.
I have observed that the most crowded time seems to be when Shabbat precedes or follows two days of Shavuot. This is particularly true in a mikvah that serves several adjacent communities and is thus not within walking distance of many of its clients. For example, all the women whose cycle would have ended on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, as well as those whose “regular” night that month happened to be Saturday night, would all come together. Four nights of niddah enders crowded into one—and on a night, no less, when Shabbat ends late and the mikvah hours are foreshortened. The mikvah opens for business as soon as three stars are out. In winter, this means five o’clock; in June, the month of Shavuot, it means nine P.M.
One such night, after waiting fifteen minutes from buzzer time and still no lady of the lake had appeared on the scene, I went out in my damp white sarong to take back a Vogue from the waiting-room coffee table. But everyone else had the same idea. Even Popular Mechanics was gone. So I slipped back to my room and waited another ten minutes. I knew full well it was no one’s fault, but I was very impatient nevertheless. I must have tucked this night away in my brain somewhere. When a similar situation occurred a few years later, I was prepared. The mikvah was very crowded, but my husband and I also wanted to catch the ten o’clock movie. As soon as the attendant who had led me into my room and had drawn my bath closed the door behind her, I buzzed. My room number went right up on the board, and just as I finished my shower came a knock on my door for immersion. My husband was more dazzled that night by my speed than by my purity.
The immersion: Standing near the mikvah basin, a woman will remove her white sheet and the mikvah lady will check to see if she has any loose hairs on her body and if she’s clipped her nails, simultaneously asking, “Brushed your teeth? Rinsed your mouth?” This inspection takes fifteen seconds. The woman then walks down four or five steps into the mikvah pool, which is approximately five feet square and filled with water four feet high. Standing with legs spread slightly apart, her hands loose and not touching the sides, she immerses herself completely underwater. Only the soles of her feet touch the mikvah basin. Immediately she rises. If every bit of her body and every strand of hair was below the waterline, the mikvah lady, who has been looking on all along, will pronounce the immersion (or maybe the woman herself) “kosher.”
Standing shoulder height in the water, the woman recites the blessing on immersion:
Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al hatvilah.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the immersion.
Often a woman will follow this blessing with an additional brief prayer, the Yehi Ratzon (see p. 60). It is a prayer for restoration of the Temple, which really means a prayer for messianic times. Some women place a small headcovering (usually a white terry-cloth square) over their heads as they say the blessing. The mikvah lady hands it down to them after immersion. It has often seemed to me a little incongruous, to put it mildly, to cover the head when reciting the blessing, while all the rest of us is standing stark-naked in the shoulder-high water. But that is how many have been taught and continue to do it. God has seen, so to speak, stranger things than that.
After the blessing she dips completely underwater two more times. The mikvah lady again pronounces it “kosher.” As the woman comes up the steps, the mikvah lady holds out the sheet for her and slips it over her shoulders. The mikvah lady then leaves or, if it’s a semiprivate, she returns the woman to her bathing/dressing room, closes all the doors, and goes on to the next buzzer call.
The woman will dress, fix her hair, sit under the dryer, put on her makeup, and so forth. There are some high-class mikva’ot that have a free-lance hairdresser and manicurist in regular attendance.
There is a fee for using the mikvah. It ranges anywhere from four to fifteen dollars plus a tip, although some communities don’t permit tips. The fee depends on whether private or semi-private facilities were used, and on the location of the mikvah. Newer mikvah, fancier neighborhood—more expensive. But the fee is not a rip-off. Even the fifteen-dollar mikva’ot are heavily subsidized by the community. And no one was ever barred from using a mikvah because of inability to pay.
When a woman leaves the mikvah, her husband might be waiting outside for her, parked discreetly away from the entrance; or she will get into her own car or into a cab whose company regularly services the mikvah. Some mikva’ot are in changing neighborhoods and their communities have hired guards at the front door which is, at any event, kept locked at all times. Somehow, a mikvah full of bathing women seems like a vulnerable place, so precautions are taken.
That procedure, in sum, is what a traditional Jewish woman does every month of her married life, except for when she is pregnant or reaches menopause. Why does she go? How does she feel about it?
TAHARAT HAMISHPACHAH AND ITS HUMAN DIMENSIONS
To the first question, that same old answer applies. It is a mitzvah, a Biblical one at that. God has commanded us to make ourselves a holy people, and this is one of the divine definitions of kedusha, holiness. We accept the commandment to observe Taharat Hamishpachah as we accept the whole yoke of mitzvot, and that, for the most part, is that. We do it, but that doesn’t mean we have to love it every single month. It is all part of the discipline of being an Orthodox Jewish woman.
Or man, for that matter. For a woman could not undertake responsibility for niddah unilaterally. Without mutual consent and responsibility, the whole thing would be reduced to a test of wills each month, a contest in which all who win would eventually lose. A man, therefore, must not only agree, but must be willing to assume personal restraint.
Even with mutual consent and responsibility, even with full devotion and fidelity to Jewish law, taharat hamispachah turns out to be a wicked regimen, one that occasionally requires almost Herculean efforts, especially in this era of commercial sex overkill. Contemporary men and women are continually bombarded with sex fantasy material. Add to that the modern philosophy that everything-one-wants-one-may-have, and you have a formidable opponent to the laws of taharat hamishpachah. All of this is compounded by the fact that we are asked to resist suggestion and seduction in what would ordinarily seem to be a most legitimate arena—relations between husband and wife. Observing niddah is much harder than keeping Shabbat or kashrut; it is infinitely more difficult than fasting on Tisha B’Av, or asking forgiveness from enemies on Yom Kippur. There is hardly anything about being an Orthodox Jewish woman that has driven me to tears over the last two decades, but cleaning for Pesach is one and taharat hamishpachah, the other.
When I was fifteen, I overheard some women talking about a “tragedy.” What had happened? A bride, whom they all knew, had badly fractured her leg water skiing while on her honeymoon. She would have to be in a cast for two or three months. A dense and shy fifteen-year-old, I could not figure out what the tragedy was, and I certainly wouldn’t ask. But I was very puzzled. I had envisioned a romantic scene, an ethereal bride, now somewhat helpless. Her husband would kiss her cast every morning, noon, and evening, attend to her every need, his heart overflowing with love and compassion. What could be more tender, more beautiful? Why were these women clucking their tongues in sorrow, almost grief? It was only when I studied the laws of mikvah some two years later that I realized the bride and her new husband could have no sex until the cast came off. No mikvah, no sex. One fifth of their first year of marriage. A tragedy.
And yet, somehow we all manage. Niddah doesn’t paralyze us, nor kill off our normal instincts for joy and pleasure. We take it in our stride, work around it, adjust ourselve
s to its demands, and then some. A tragedy? A hardship maybe, but not a tragedy. Certainly something a loving marriage could withstand, and perhaps be strengthened by.
Having mentioned all the difficulties, let me tell the other half: how these laws elevate us to a certain level of holiness in our most private lives, and how an ancient law addresses the modern condition. There are certain laws of the Torah, divine in origin though they are, that have undergone reinterpretation, toward stringency, toward leniency, toward atrophy. For a ritual as primitive and as difficult as the sex and blood taboo to be maintained, it must somehow hold inner meaning. And I believe it does. On many levels.
Despite my occasional grumblings, and my more frequent take-it-in-my-stride attitude, this mitzvah brings out a whole set of positive emotions in me. One, which I’m sure is not what tradition had in mind, is a sense of personal accomplishment. We’ve made it, we’ve succeeded in meeting the test, I’m quite proud of us. It’s not a superiority I feel over others: it is a symbol to me that the human mind and soul—in fact, my mind and soul, his mind and soul—have some mastery over our human drives. Does that qualify for holiness? I have no idea.
A second impact on self is one of connections. At the mikvah I have an awareness, mostly unarticulated but ever present—of the millennia of Jewish women who observed these laws before me, women in every generation, and in every continent across the face of this earth, women to whom I feel inextricably linked because of our regular, private, determined mikvah-going habits. When the earliest press releases on the Masada discoveries appeared, it didn’t surprise me in the least that the Masada mikvah was featured so prominently. The PR people, as well as the exploration team, knew what would engage the emotions of the Jewish reader. As I soak away in my private tub at the mikvah, I have that free-floating feeling that this is what Jewish women have done throughout the ages, and even the slick magazine I might be reading doesn’t separate me from them. This is the essence of myself as a Jewish woman.
But it goes much beyond a woman’s own experience as a Jew. I believe the laws address a human need; in fact, taharat hamishpachah serves a whole range of functions, each appropriate to the ebb and flow of an interpersonal relationship as it unfolds through time. Which is why I have suggested elsewhere—to the consternation of some in the Orthodox community—that Jewish couples living together as if in marriage, in a serious, sustained relationship, could also learn much from the laws of niddah and mikvah.
I should mention here first that taharat hamishpachah is useful when it comes to choosing a mate. How? It is a most reliable item on the compatibility scale. Of course there are no guarantees these days but, generally, mutual acceptance of these laws implies a like-minded commitment, a set of shared assumptions and a shared community, all of which correlate well with marital success.
What sorts of lessons do we take from this mitzvah? What impact does it have on love and sex?
Taharat hamishpachah implies that sex is a special part of marriage, but only a part. Early on, one learns that sex is not all there is to love, that not every newlywed spat can be settled in bed, that for almost half a month niddah requires of us to develop other, more difficult, more sophisticated modes of communication. A couple in love who observe niddah is forced to discover new techniques to express peaks of emotion; such a couple more readily understands the power of a glance, a word, a thoughtful gesture.
Moreover, because of the overall regulatory function of this law, a larger message about control quietly slips through—that sex is not something by which we reward or punish, control or manipulate the sexual partner. If sex is regulated by a force greater than the human parties involved, then it is less likely to be wielded, by men or women, as a human lever of power. Instead, it becomes a gift to enjoy and to give pleasure with, not to use.
Similarly, niddah generates a different sense of self for a woman in relation to her husband, a feeling of self-autonomy, of being her own person, of having a kind of control that is free of the need to manipulate and to control others. Some women can generate these feelings out of their own ego strength, and thanks to feminism, that is probably the case more now than ever before; but for those to whom autonomy is not innate or instinctive, niddah is a valuable aid.
Linked to this, but from a different angle, there is less likelihood of a woman being treated as a sex object—and that can happen in marriage, too. While this protection for a woman seems to be less necessary as society moves toward greater cognitive equality of men and women, nevertheless taharat hamishpachah generates a different male perception of women’s sexuality, just as it does a woman about her own self.
But the laws have a positive sexual function as well, not only preventing abuse but promoting pleasure. How? By retaining a certain freshness to the sexual relationship and by synchronizing the needs and desires of the two partners, to the extent it is possible to do so.
In the Talmudic tractate on niddah, Rabbi Meir (second century) offers a romantic explanation: “so that a woman be as beloved to her husband throughout the marriage as she is to him as a new bride.” Conversely, he states, without observance of niddah, “a man may become overly familiar with his wife and be repelled by her” (NIDDAH 31B). If we apply these comments to women as well as to men, they bespeak a real truth about sexual relationships: the well-documented, statistically verified, thoroughly analyzed, and loudly decried fact that interest in sex tends to fall sharply during the middle years of marriage. There are great periods of intense sex and periods of almost none.
While no one has documented this, I suspect there is more sustained and loving sex over the course of marriage among couples who observe these laws—and know they have to act before the boom is lowered again—than among couples who do not.
And on a different level, there has surely got to be a better meshing of male and female desire, within any given month, among couples who observe niddah, if only because of the shorter period of availability. Logically, there would seem to be less likelihood of rejection by one partner of another during a contracted period of sexual availability than in an open-ended one. In other words, by regulating the off times, it helps to synchronize the on times. In fact, the period of niddah, used properly, can heighten sexual anticipation—somewhat akin to an extended period of chaste foreplay. Not only is delayed gratification a healthy training for marriage in general, but also it heightens and sustains the sexual pleasure. Wanting is sometimes as pleasurable as having.
Finally, the laws of taharat hamishpachah have their referent on a much larger canvas of life, of marriage, of death and rebirth.
There are all kinds of rhythms in Jewish life—of nature, time, celebration, and history. Taharat hamishpachah also suggests a rhythm to life and to human sexuality. Not only is there a time for caution and a time for restraint, but there is also a time to bear children, and a time those options will be foreclosed. For a people whose very first commandment was to be fruitful and multiply, the fact that the end of niddah brings a woman into the peak of her fertility cycle is no mere coincidence. While I don’t think it was intended that each month’s egg be fertilized, certainly tradition intended that some of them be fertilized. More than for the purpose of swelling population ranks, which has always been a concern for the Jewish people, it was understood that the proper way for a family to constitute itself, to be healthy, to be maintained, and to have integrity is through the birth and nurture and love of children. Industrial societies have moved men away from primary family orientations. Feminism, to some extent, has moved women in the same direction as well. While I am appreciative of industrial society and am abundantly and irreversibly indebted to feminism, I cannot help but feel that the emphasis away from childbearing has gone too far. Taharat hamishpachah, then, tempers some of the new urgencies with its implied theme of the rhythm of life and the eternal values placed on childraising. The laws say, in effect: Have some perspective on life, on the totality of your life. Perhaps this is the right month to create new life
. Perhaps next month...
Possibly the most important message of all that emerges from the laws of taharat hamishpachah is the way this very private mitzvah relates to contemporary assumptions about love and marriage. There is a profound idea embedded in the concept and structure of these laws, a kind of nuts-and-bolts attitude about human relationships that needs to be more widely expressed. It may sound unromantic, but it is surely more reality-oriented and more relevant than ever before.
It is clear to everyone that we live in a divorce culture today, a culture because it reinforces itself. Divorce is commonplace; serial marriages are no longer the exception; and oftentimes the honeymoon and the marriage finish at one and the same moment. One can walk away. It is much easier than working at the marriage; and, besides, there are really no sanctions against divorce in contemporary society.
What taharat hamishpachah is all about is exactly the opposite. It is about commitment, commitment to something beyond oneself and one’s immediate needs, commitment to another person and to not taking that person for granted. And these laws are also about the realities of interpersonal relationships and the vagaries of love. Love, even the best of loves and the best of marriages, has its highs and lows. Marriage, the institution, allows for a certain maneuverability; one can feel emotionally distant for a time and then return to the center of feeling again without permanent damage. But marriage also requires that we continually work at it, and make a commitment to its longevity so that it doesn’t collapse at the first sign of pain or anger or hurt. Sometimes it is only the commitment—call it will—that carries us through those rough times.
How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household Page 13