Mayim Rabim

Well, it wasn’t quite. But it was a closed, cloistered, ultra-frum neighborhood in Jerusalem, and I was only visiting. We were pretty much newly weds, and this whole mikvah thing still felt awkward.

Our had trip started with a bang as well – the first morning, jetlagged and exhausted, we were awakened (in bed, together) by the maid who was used to cleaning rooms by 8:00 am. I was horrified; so was she. My husband wasn’t quite conscious enough to notice.

Then, later in the trip, I had a sheilah on a bedikah cloth, and we didn’t know who to ask for a name, so my husband dialed our Rabbi in the States from memory – and got the wrong number, but someone else in our community, who recognized his voice – so he took advantage of the situation (there I was, cringing), and just asked for the number directly. (OK, he didn’t *say* it was for a niddah sheilah, but they knew we were in Israel, and to my mind, why else would he call from overseas?!)

Which eventually got us a Rav (an American, at least), whom my husband visited, . . . and came back long after, having schmoozed halacha while he was there. I was wound tighter than a spring. In any case, I needed to use the mikvah after Shabbos.

We were visiting a friend of mine that Shabbos, sleeping in her neighbor’s empty apartment and eating meals with them, so it seemed to make more sense to use a mikvah in her neighborhood than to go searching near our hotel. I felt awkward asking her directly, so before Shabbos, I had my husband call the Rav who had answered the sheilah for an address and directions.

The entrance was a non-descript, unmarked door at the rear of a building. The directions weren’t TOO bad, but it was behind a narrow alley between the mikvah building itself (maybe the front was a shul?) and some other building, and I wandered around for probably 10 minutes in the dark before deciding that must be it. At least I had been warned by my kallah teacher to ALWAYS bring my own preparation stuff on trips, as “you never know”. I could barely understand the attendant’s Hebrew, there was a wait, and I was very conscious that my dear husband was sitting by a bus stop with his gemara and our overnight bag; I couldn’t not say goodbye to my friend, so we had packed up and “left” first.

I finally got a room, prepared, rang for the attendant, and got to feel like I was a misbehaving child; the attendant (a different one) came into the prep room, looked at my hands, and without a word – except tsk, tsk - immediately took a pair of nail scissors to my hands – I was horrified, embarrassed, furious, and scared that she’d cut me! When she was finished (at least (?) she filed them after), I had NO nails to speak of. And no real interest in mikvah anymore. At least not there.

I went, though. And we went back to our hotel, and I cried in my husband’s arms until I had gotten it all out of my system.

Several weeks later, I discovered I was expecting.

~ Michal

Michal is an Orthodox woman, "over 30," living in a fairly large city with a reasonably cozy Orthodox Jewish population