Mayim Rabim

When we were dating, and when we were engaged, I heard my soon-to-be-husband talk a lot about his rebbeim. As I planned the wedding, his biggest concern seemed to be which one should get which kibud*. Who should be mesader*? he agonized. Who should get which bracha*? To me, wrapped up in the burning question of how to get a kosher meal catered for less than $25 a plate (you can stop laughing now) and how to explain to my in-laws that they could not invite all the people they wanted to invite without giving us more money because I, myself, was paying for this wedding with the seven thousand dollars in my savings account—to me, that question seemed trivial if not insignificant.

In the end, the rebbe that my husband refers to as “my rebbe” the way Chabadniks refer to “the rebbe” had the bracha acharona*. I met him, briefly, at the chassuna*. He seemed nice. Enormous, physically, with many many children. Big black hat. Big black beard. You know. A rabbi.

When, a month or two after our wedding, I had to deal with some impossible personal problems, my husband had one piece of advice. “Call my rebbe,” he said. I didn’t do it. What did his rebbe know about the craziness in my life, the binding relationships that should not exist at all? I had my husband call. His rebbe gave me an unexpected heter*.

All right, I said.

A year later, when I was pregnant with our first child, toward the end of my pregnancy I found myself covered with the unspeakably awful rash that some women get while pregnant—they call it PUPP, which probably stands for something specific, but I came up with a different name every time. Perniciously Unpleasant Pregnancy Pustules. Plague of Utterly Putrid Putrescence. And so on. To say it itched would be failing to even hint at the utter collapse of mental balance, the unrelenting misery, the 5 AM hysteria. It was awful. Lotions and showers and oatmeal baths helped some—and it was almost Pesach, with four days of yom tov plus Shabbos.

I called his rebbe. When I got off the phone, an hour later, and showed my husband the list of notes—I could take a hot bath on yom tov, I could knit chol ha’moed—my husband’s mouth fell open in wonder. “The only thing you can’t do when you’re pregnant,” he said, “is play video games on Shabbos.”

I had that baby, after a long and difficult labor. I didn’t get my period back for a year, and then got pregnant and miscarried twice in quick succession. Already well into my thirties, with only one child to show for three pregnancies, I worried. Would I ever have another?

Another month went by with no pink line. And another. The next month, when it was the day to make a hefsek tahara, I knew I had to get it right—the next week we were going to visit my husband’s parents, in a town with no mikva. I wouldn’t come home until well after I’d ovulated. I had to go to the mikva the night before we left, or I would miss the month.

What happened? My daughter, sixteen months old, had a bad day—a cold, a tummyache, I don’t remember. One thing got on top of another and the next thing I knew, it was five minutes past shkia*. I cried.

“You could call my rebbe,” my husband suggested.

I wanted to hit him. Your rebbe can’t turn back the clock or make the sun go back up in the sky! But I called anyway. I explained. There was a long silence. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I feel terrible.” We talked about fertility, the miscarriages, my worries. Gam tzu l’tova, I kept saying. “A month is gam tzu l’tova*,” he said. “Two years is not.” But I had gotten pregnant three times, carried to term once. It would happen. I got off the phone feeling better, angry at myself but resigned.

A little while later the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID, surprised. “Hello?”

“I thought of something,” he said. “Can you tell me...” and he asked me some questions. I answered them. Pause. “I want to look something up,” he said. “Are you going to be home tonight?”

Throughout the evening, a few times, the phone rang. More questions. More long pauses. Did you look at the toilet paper? How deeply did you wipe? When? What were you thinking? Did you look to see if there was blood? Did you even glance? I answered, he paused, he asked another question. I hung up. An hour later, the phone would ring again.

At almost midnight, the phone rang. I picked it up. “It’s fine,” he said. “You can count day one tomorrow.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d missed my hefsek tahara. I’d totally forgotten. How could it just...be okay?

”Are you sure?” I asked, immediately feeling like a complete jerk. “I’m so sorry. Of course you’re sure. I just...okay.”

I counted one the next day, and a week later I went to the mikva. And do I even need to tell you what happened next?

He’s seven months old. He has blue eyes and brown hair and smells so good. And he is named for someone who had faith in Hashem and walked into the water, because that’s what Hashem told him to do.

~ Anonymous

Anonymous is a thirty-something mother of a daughter and a son, who is unafraid to walk into the water.

===

* kibud: honor
mesader: short for “mesader kiddushin” – the person who officiates at the wedding ceremony
bracha: blessing
bracha acharona: final blessing (at the wedding ceremony)
chassuna: wedding celebration
heter: halachic dispensation
shkia: sunset
gam tzu l’tova: “There is a reason for everything” (lit. “This is also for good”)

The Kallah, a dear friend of ours, was a guest at our Shabbos table the week before her wedding. "May I call you tomorrow?" she asked. "I have some questions... and I would like to ask them of you."

Hmm... I thought, a Kallah, a week before her wedding, has questions, and it sounds like it doesn't really need to be me who answers them... must be about mikvah. And I was honored that she'd chosen to ask me.

On Sunday, she called. Sure enough, her questions were about the mikvah.

The Chabad House Rebbitzen she'd been learning with lived only a short drive away, but the mikvah the Rebbitzen used was the other way from the Chabad, and while also a short drive, it added up. The Kallah was set to immerse on Saturday night for a Sunday wedding... a late summer Motzei Shabbos. Since she would be living near me after the wedding, she needed to learn how to find our local mikvah anyway, so why not now?

I quickly checked the schedule, to learn who would be on call, and gave the Kallah the information on how to make an appointment. I was quite pleased with what I learned. All of our attendants are nice, but this particular shomeret is especially welcoming, and I felt she would help make the Kallah feel at home. Sure enough, she was as excited as I was to welcome this new Kallah to our community. The appointment was made, and we all waited anxiously. I was to pick up the Kallah from the place where she was staying, and escort her to mikvah.

I was on time, but she wasn't quite ready, so I waited, and made small talk with her hosts. I didn't have to wait long. I could tell, and she readily admitted, that she was very nervous. We drove quietly to the mikvah.

The attendant met us at the door, and gushed over the Kallah appropriately, showing her to a room. The Kallah took me aside. "She seems very nice, but I'm a bit nervous, and I know you but not her...would it be possible for you to supervise my immersion?"

I'd been to mikvah many times, but always as a patron, never as the attendant... but by now I know the drill pretty well. I okayed it with the attendant, and assured my Kallah that I could supervise her. "Just let me know when you are ready," I told her.

Around here, they only check what you want checked, but for a Kallah I figured I'd better check at least her hands, feet and back. I sent her back to soak a small scab, to make it soft. I helped her remove her bracelet, the clasp difficult to get with one hand. I asked about her long nails: "I did trim them!" she insisted, and having heard friends complain about being forced to trim their nails unnecessarily, I just made sure they were clean, neat and filed.

Then I helped her off with her robe, and hid behind it until she was in the water. She faced away from me, and immersed once. She may have been nervous, but she dipped like a pro. I tried to remember what I was watching for. Body and all hairs under, check. Not hitting the wall as she immersed, check.

She then craned her neck around to look at me to ask, not having heard my pronouncement, "Kosher!," if she had done it right, and I reassured her. I helped her with the brocha, her nervousness making her forget what she had known only minutes before. (My Kallah teacher would have made her dip again, so as not to talk between the brocha and the tevilot/immersions sandwiching it, but I am not my Kallah teacher, and I only remembered this after.)

She dipped twice more, each time I pronounced it Kosher as she came up, a little too soon for her to hear me, apparently, because each time she craned her neck to see me and ask if it was good. But what can I say? It was my first time as mikvah attendant, and I hadn't had the usual training.

I took refuge in the thought that I had learned that when the shomeret pronounces a tevilah "Kosher!" here on Earth, a heavenly voice repeats "Kosher!" in Heaven, and the tevilah is accepted. I trembled inwardly to think that I had been granted such power, however briefly.

As the Kallah came up the steps out of the mikvah, I helped her back into her robe, and shook her hand, pronouncing her tevilah Kosher once more. Then I gave her some tips for the next time. How the attendant would say "Kosher!", and she should listen for it, so she wouldn't have to ask each time. How she would probably be given a washcloth to cover her head with for the brocha, once she was a married woman. Then I sent her to dry off and get dressed.

Once she was dressed, I showed her where to pay, advised her to buy more bedikah cloths now, to build up a small stash, and after accepting more good wishes and mazel tovs from the Shomeret, we made our way home. The Kallah confided that she felt less nervous now, more settled. Mikvah always does that to me, so I understood completely.

The wedding was beautiful, of course, as was the Kallah. She thanked me many times for escorting her, but it was I who needed to thank her, for including me in this way, for giving me the honor and privilege of helping to start them off on their observance of Taharas HaMishpacha, for giving me the merit of participating in this very special, very private mitzvah.

May they enjoy many many joy-filled years of mazel and brocha together.

A few months ago I had to go to the mikvah when I was visiting my parents. I had only been to the mikvah in my hometown once, before my wedding, when I had a special appointment as a Kallah. This time, when I got to my mikvah of choice, the parking lot was crowded. When I walked in, the attendant apologized to me for the difficulty parking.

“Will I have to wait long?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I had asked whether I would have to ride a unicycle into the mikvah.

“Of course you won’t have to WAIT,” she declared, and ushered me into a prep room.

My hometown takes the mikvah very seriously. Growing up, I learned over and over that the first thing a Jewish community must build, before even building a shul, is a mikvah. My hometown has numerous mikvaot. In addition to a few big, beautiful ones that are open every night, every major shul has a mikvah that is open on Shabbat and holidays, so that women don’t have to walk too far, and certainly no one has to wait a night to go the mikvah.

When I first got married I lived in a city with a large Jewish community but only one mikvah. At that time I was surprised that so few people seemed to be keeping taharat hamishpacha, since I often didn’t see anyone else there when I was at the mikvah. But a couple of years after getting married, my husband and I moved to a town that is considered something of a center of Modern/Centrist Orthodox Judaism in America. The town we currently live in has five or six large shuls that are bursting at the seams in addition to countless minyanim in people’s homes. We have more than ten sit-down kosher restaurants, and plentiful takeout places, kosher markets, Jewish schools and programs, you name it. In some parts of town the frum population is so dense that on Shabbat afternoon you can stroll down the middle of the street with only the slightest possibility of having a car drive by. This community is much more affluent than the one I grew up in: bigger houses, fancier clothing, fancier vacations.

So as you can imagine, there are around fifteen mikvaot in this town. Just kidding! How many do you think there are – maybe ten, or at least six or seven?

Try one.

One mikvah in the whole town.

One ugly mikvah with rust and mold in the prep rooms; one mikvah in which you swelter in the summer (no air conditioning) and freeze in the winter (insufficient heating).

One mikvah where you must arrive by 10 PM, even in the middle of the summer when zman tvilah is close to 9 PM.

Now you may assume that this says something about the state of taharat hamishpacha observance in my town. Perhaps none of those Jews who are overflowing the shuls and kosher restaurants actually keeps hilkhot niddah. But that is not the case. In this town, it seems that everyone keeps taharat hamishpacha. There are hilkhot niddah shiurim, and even talk of bringing a Nishmat Yoetzet Halakha into the community.

So here is what happens in a town where everyone keeps taharat hamishpacha, and there is one small mikvah: everyone hurries, and everyone waits. The mikvah’s décor consists of paper signs instructing women that they may not bathe for more than 30 minutes, encouraging them to bathe and shower at home, and other equally inspiring messages. Typical wait time at the mikvah is easily between one and two hours, and that’s just until you get into a prep room. I’ve been kept waiting after ringing the bell for an attendant to take me to the actual mikvah for ten to fifteen minutes, as I sit there sweltering or freezing (depending on the season) in my robe and flimsy paper mikvah slippers.

To be fair, money is being raised for renovating and expanding the mikvah. But it is too little – they should be building ten new mikvaot – and too late - if and when it ever happens.

How can a frum community have so little respect for such an important mitzvah? How can wealthy baalei bayit allow the mikvah to exist in such conditions, while they live in their mansions and spend their money on expensive restaurants? How can seriously frum people, who keep taharat hamishpacha, live in the parts of town where the walk to the mikvah is over an hour, so they can never go on Shabbat and holidays?

Is it sexism – no need to put money into a mitzvah that only benefits women? Is it simple avarice? Is there something wrong with Jewish education that causes people to forget about the mikvah? I am completely baffled by the shameful mikvah-neglect in this community. I know my experience is a far cry from our righteous grandmothers in Poland who supposedly brought their ice-picks to the river in the winter so they could tovel in the water, but in our affluent, complacent communities we can - and must - do a lot better than this.

~ Aviva

I knew it was, on paper at least, the right thing to do. Touch with an erva is forbidden. I was a nidda, and therefore an erva to my beloved fiancée. Every hug, every hand-holding- assur at least derabanan, possibly deoraita. But one magic dip and- not even a derabanan.

We’d stopped being shomer negiah three months into our courtship, with firm agreements as to “this far and no further.” I knew we would never transgress an issur karet, and aside from the terminology of issur and heter, we were both totally committed to not having sex before we got married. Going to the mikva seemed out of the question for us.

For one, it would put me in the awkward position of living out an urban legend, the frum single girl at the mikva. I thought casually about buying a twenty-dollar ring to match my engagement ring, throwing on a scarf and heading out to the suburbs. Or going to the heimish mikva, not all the women who go there wear wedding bands anyway.

I grew up in a very intellectually open household. Knowledge of mikva and sex and holiness was as accessible as the English books on Nidda I devoured as a teen and later in college from the original sources. I knew how to do a bedika, could have told you what was and wasn’t a hatzitza according to who and why. I wanted to go. It would have been so easy. Hafifa at home, clip my nails short, untangle my hair, hide it under a hat- inconspicuous enough in wintertime- pumice scrub on my heels and elbows, scabs carefully peeled away, nail polish meticulously removed.

We decided to go through with it. I sat with him and hugged him one last time. We were going to be shomer negiah through my next period and I’d count 7 clean. Then I’d prep and we’d make the trip out together. He’d be waiting for me outside, I wouldn’t be alone. We were both glowing with the excitement of choosing goodness, righteousness, and purity.

I cut up an old white t-shirt. Inspected the cloths. Made a hefsek on day 7. Bedikot, bedikot, and more bedikot. They hurt a bit, (more than I expected really, I’d used tampons before), even though the cloth was soft and thin.

I got back from work early, about to get in the bath and soak. It had been a cold, grey, unfriendly day and I certainly needed a hug and an its-all-going-to-be-ok more than an unknown trip to a place of utter nakedness where my flimsy disguise could be pulled aside at any moment. Something in the way I’d done my nails, some innocent remark I would let slip- anything could tip the mikva lady off that I wasn’t your standard scarf-wearing-but-modern housewife. I hated more than anything this Sabbatean inversion, this lie necessary to become pure. Sometimes, something just feels weird or wrong, even if it is intellectually honest or a better option halakhically.

I called him and let him know that we weren’t going to the mikva that night. I explained to him that even if he came with me, I would still be utterly alone and exposed, and I didn’t think I could bear it. He understood.

~ Bat Planya

Bat Planya is a very ordinary observant girl in her twenties who reads more than
she should. She lives in a major metropolitan area and has had dreams about mikvaot. She is very into sociology and halakha, although she sometimes struggles with both.

Okay, so they told me, but I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe I just didn't have the information I could use to process what they told me. I was too busy getting annoyed about doing bedikot, and going to the mikvah, and covering my hair. When I was given a talk about the dangers of emotional distance during harchakot, or when my kallah teacher said, "I know you think it will be just like being shomer negiah now, but it's different when you have that intimacy and then it's taken away," I sort of acknowledged what they said but didn't really process it. How could I? I didn't have all the information. I didn't have the slightest idea what intimacy was.

Well, everything else went better than expected. My first visit to the mikvah was pleasant. Covering my hair turned out to be, while not something I'm thrilled with, not half as uncomfortable or annoying as my mind had built it up to be. I got married, and hugged my husband (husband!) for the first time in the yichud room. And partly because we had agreed we needed time to ease into things, and partly because of our comic cluelessness over how exactly to go about said things, I didn't become a niddah until we had been married for nearly a week. Despite the sheer exhaustion of sheva brachot, it was one of the best weeks of my life. In fact, when I did become a niddah, there was almost a sense of "it's about time" - like life had to become normal again, and this was the first step. I pulled the beds apart and went to shower without a second thought except, "I should probably review the harchakot again."

And then, the first night of the first niddah period of my marriage, I cried myself to sleep. At first I didn't even know why I was crying, but I couldn't hold back the tears.

My misery lasted for about four days before I started feeling normal again, but they were among the most unhappy days of my life – even though I had just gotten married a week ago, even though the week before had been one of the happiest weeks of my life. Then it got better, and I started feeling normal again. I thought maybe it was just the first time, because it was such a shock, because the method of becoming a niddah the first time is so discongruous. (Not a real word, I know, but it’s the best word I can come up with.) About a month later I became a niddah again, and for the first day and a half everything was fine. We were visiting my family, and I was distracted. The misery didn’t start until the car ride home.

I am now a niddah for the third time in my life, and even worse than the pain (crying myself to sleep, check; being ridiculously emotional about other things in my life, check) is the thought of going through this periodically for the next 30 years or so. I can’t do it. I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I think I’m a strong person; but all those problems, no matter how insoluble they seemed, were at least understood. This time, I have no idea what’s happening to me. Why do I feel this way? It’s not like my husband pays less attention to me when I’m a niddah; in fact, he spends a lot of time trying to make me feel better even though he has no understanding of what I’m going through. (And how could he, when even I don’t know what’s going on with me?) I feel like I miss him, but he’s right here.

I need help. I need help in understanding what I feel and how, and – if possible – finding ways to make this less intense, to make me feel better. I know from talking to my friends that there are some women who find niddah nothing more than a mild annoyance, but I know from reading this site that there women who find it as hard as I do (and thank goodness for this site, by the way). So it is here that I turn for help. Does anyone have any wisdom to offer me? Advice? Suggestions? Anything? Please?

- Jamie

Jamie is a recently-married woman in her late 20s. She is Orthodox, and fully committed even if not fully convinced.

So there I was, unhappy with the idea of trying to fit myself into a mikvah schedule I didn't understand in the jam-packed days before my wedding, and equally unhappy with the idea of my first immersion taking place like some kind of nasty secret at night. Something had to give. As it turned out, it was the mikvah.

Some time back, Eli and I had made arrangements to travel to a large Northeastern city for a professional conference of his about six weeks before the wedding. Said city had (and has) a recently opened liberal-run mikvah. A few weeks before our departure, I thought about both of these things simultaneously, and before I could lose my nerve, I called and left a message requesting an appointment. The woman who called me back was friendly, sympathetic, and professional; she answered my questions about how long it would take to reach the mikvah from our hotel, and she made me an appointment for the one morning we would be in that city after I'd taken off my birth-control patch (but before there was any real chance of my period starting). Even better, they emailed me a confirmation -- and their website was gorgeous. So I packed extra Q-tips in my luggage and off we went.

The liberal mikvah was (and is) gorgeous. The preparation rooms are ceramic tile and cherry wood and gleaming modern chrome fixtures, with enough toiletries to constitute a small spa. The instructions on the wall are phrased as a series of "kavvanot," which is kind of goofy, but they're still observably instructions (and nothing there I didn't already know). I had spent half the morning at the hotel scrubbing various parts of me, so that rinsing off in their shower was merely refreshing -- and slipping into the pool felt great. It was warm, only faintly chlorinated, and the mikvah attendant had me open the pipe to the rainwater source myself, so that I felt the two temperatures blend. There was daylight coming in through high dormer windows. Nobody asked me anything except whether I knew the blessings and whether I had any questions; I only asked the mikvah lady to check my back for hairs and to leave me alone in the mikvah for a few minutes after immersion. Their mikv
aot, you see, are these tall stone chambers, and I could tell they'd have great acoustics. I sang as many psalms as I knew by heart before I returned to the prep room.

So that was my first immersion, and afterwards I made my way back to the hotel and dealt with various work-related chores of my own, with shipping books home from the conference, and with going out for the conference's final dinner. Each task made me feel a little bit grimier. By the end of the day, I had independently figured out why nighttime immersions might be preferable: ten hours is too long for that post-mikvah buzz to really last. (At one point, I reflected that the result of wearing metaphysical lingerie all day is probably a metaphysical wedgie.) Somehow, though, we managed.

Of course, my period came three days later, right on schedule, and I knew I had only postponed the problem -- I did actually want to immerse before my wedding, no matter what anyone else said. ("But you already did it," my mother said, baffled.) Only now everything seemed clearer: I knew what I was doing, and it was my choice. I called up the local Mikvah Lady and said I needed an appointment on Thursday such-and-such. I didn't explain that it was ten days before my wedding and the absolute last evening not Shabbat, Yom Tov, or inhabited by mandatory familywide dinners; scheduling, I had decided, was my prerogative. Through no fault of my own, I wound up with a ladies-only wedding shower earlier that evening, so I even had a party, although it ran later than scheduled and pretty well nuked my prep time. Thank G-d I'd done it before, so I knew what I was doing!

The local mikvah isn't as pretty as the one out of town -- standard institutional fixtures in the bathroom, standard toiletries (if you forget your toothbrush like I did), vanity sink not quite working (I washed my hands under the bathtub faucet after a final pee) -- but all the right stuff was there. I read the instructions on the wall and rolled my eyes at what I knew to be a particularly stringent set of rules being labeled "halachah," then panicked and cut my fingernails short Just In Case. In person, however, the Mikvah Lady was friendly and slightly maternal; she didn't check anything I didn't ask her to, and although the immersion wasn't quite as ecstatic as my first time, it felt good. Thanks to the resultant high, I acceded to the posted "halachah" of not showering after the mikvah (note: eau de chlorine = NOT sexy), cheerfully swapped birth-control patches, and wrote a check (note: the local mikvah is a lot cheaper than the Big-City Liberal Mikvah) with
good cheer.

When the Mikvah Lady asked where I lived as I handed the check over, I wondered if she was fishing for demographic information, but it turned out she needed a ride home -- the only other woman dipping that night wanted to swing by the grocery store so she could tell her kids that's where she'd been. Anyway, the Mikvah Lady didn't live much out of my way, and it was pleasant to chat with someone on the way home, even if we didn't quite speak the same language. ("Who's your rov?" she asked. "My what?" I said, distracted by driving. "Your RAB-BI," she enunciated carefully. "Ohhhhh," I said.) She reminded me that any prayers I held in my heart on my wedding day were sure to be fulfilled, and I believed her.

I suppose that's the end of my mikvah story, really, except that I have been nudging my RAB-BI to take up the issue of bridal mikvah scheduling with the Powers That Be who run the kivah, and to maybe put a little educational material into the wedding packets he hands out during premarital counseling. I also seem to keep reading about T"H -- I suppose it's become a habit. I haven't been to the mikvah since my wedding, but I've thought about it each time I end my period, and very nearly went once except for the inconvenience of needing an extra patch. Maybe at my next gyn appointment I'll ask about mikvah-friendly alternatives to the patch. Or maybe I'll just wait till we start trying for a family -- it won't be all that long. Meanwhile, I keep reading -- it's gotten to be a habit. And next time I go to the mikvah, at least I'll know how to schedule the appointment.

~ Dulcie

Dulcie is a thirtyish Jewish woman who averages out Conservative; she is writing about her experiences with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This essay is the final one of a three-part series; the first essay is available here, and the second essay is available here.

Why in the world anyone would choose to follow all the intricacies of TH when it seems that they engender so many difficulties and inconveniences? What follows is, of course, my personal viewpoint, and I realize that others' views may differ. I do not intend to address here the extreme emotional anguish experienced by someone going through infertility or other special conditions. I believe some of the following may apply even then, but I leave it up to those
actually there to judge for themselves.

Many times on this site I have seen comments alluding to the difficulties involved in keeping Taharat Mishpacha and the suffering engendered by it. This may sound a bit strange to some of you, but I must admit I never really saw things this way. Sure, there are difficulties approximately equivalent to those of a shomer shabbos person who wishes he could go to the football game on Saturday. Or the average somewhat observant Jew who gets a terrible headache while fasting on Yom Kippur. So why do you continue to fast, if it causes you such suffering?

There are several possible answers to this question. One answer is that on the whole the benefits of living "the Torah way" out-weigh the difficulties. It's sort of like choosing schools – one has a nicer building, better teachers, and higher academic standard. But it's far away, has very high tuition, and has a crummy yard. If only you could choose the location of school A, the yard and tuition of School B, and the other features of School C, you'd be all set. But you can't. You're stuck. So you settle for School C despite its obvious drawbacks. But how could you send your kids there – isn't it really expensive? Sure, there's a price to pay, but Judaism is a package deal, and if we choose to accept it, we must accept it all.

The above "cost-benefit" approach, is one way of looking at things. However, it's not really the way I believe we were meant to view our mitzvah observance. Rather, we must realize that whatever challenges Hashem puts in our path, they are there for a reason, and try to accept them B'simcha (with happiness) even when on the surface they seem difficult. We can't possibly know what's best for everyone, yet we're smart enough to realize that if we did know the whole plan from beginning to end we might see things differently. Since we acknowledge that only Hashem is privy to all the details, we realize that only He can know what's truly in our best interests.

Back in the days when shomer Shabbos Jews in America were fired from their jobs every week for refusing to work on Saturdays, many of course reluctantly stopped observing Shabbos. Yet even among those families who demonstrated tremendous mesirus nefesh to continue observing Shabbos, only some succeeded in passing these observances on to the next generation. What distinguished these families from the others? Their attitude! There were those families who would come home every Friday with their notice from work, and moan and groan over how difficult it is to be a Jew and what tremendous sacrifices it requires. Others in equivalent situations would remark on what a tremendous zchus (privilege) it is to be doing Hashem's will despite the apparent hardships, acknowledge that Hashem really knows what's best for us, and proceed to observe Shabbos B'Simcha. It was the latter families who merited children and grandchildren who continued to observe mitzvos despite their inherent challenges.

So, where does this leave us? Obviously, none of us are perfect or have perfected our emunah and bitachon (faith and trust) to their utmost. And I see nothing wrong with discussing with others the hardships entailed in keeping TH if this helps us better to handle the challenges. However, in conjunction with the "gripes" we might be doing ourselves a favor if we continually remind ourselves of the unknown benefits as well, and leave the rest in Hashem's very competent hands...

~SYBA

SYBA is a thirtyish mother of several (kein yirbu). She is still getting over the culture shock of moving to the most uniformly Yeshivish city in the world just days after graduating from an Ivy League University...but she is very happy to be there...

After my unsettling telephone encounter with the Mikvah Lady, I wasn't sure what to do next. I wanted to discuss the whole pre-wedding mikvah business with someone who would understand. Someone familiar. Someone I had actually met in person. The problem is that I have a great family, an awesome network of friends, and wonderful in-laws, but very few of them fit the criteria for discussing this particular problem: I needed an adult Jewish woman who could discuss sex frankly, who had gone through a traditional Jewish wedding, who was observant enough to both know and care about taharat hamishpacha, and who was liberal enough to have a sense of flexibility about it. Most of my local friends were disqualified for one reason or another, and when I called an aunt whom I'm close to and who had had an Orthodox wedding, it turned out she hadn't actually bothered to immerse -- although she thought it was a nice idea for me. (Were people just really not into T"H around 1980?) Then I called my mother-in-law to chat about the whole business and discovered that she hadn't immersed either, but after several minutes of hilarity at the whole Mikvah Lady episode she averred that she'd be happy to accompany me to the mikvah. (I also found out that she has a previously undisclosed tattoo.) Finally, I called my own mother, who I knew had never immersed -- and floated (ahem) the idea of doing Girls' Night At The Mikvah. She announced that if I really wanted to do it, I shouldn't attend the mikvah with anyone except her. Oy.

Well, as G.I. Joe said, knowing is half the battle. (G.I. Joe, of course, never had to schedule a mikvah appointment. Give me ninja counterintelligence ops in the Arctic any day.) I had more than a few books on Judaism floating around the house, I had access to several libraries, and I had a DSL connection, so I embarked on a merry little course of self-directed research into taharat hamishpacha. Eli and I both enjoy learning all the things they never taught us in Hebrew school, but I'm pretty sure I was more into this than he was. All the same, he dealt admirably with sudden T"H-related intrusions into our daily conversation. ("Pass me the pepper, sweetie. If we were Orthodox and married and so forth, you wouldn't be allowed to do that right now. But since we're not worrying about it, I'd like the parmesan too.") He even joined in from time to time, scanning websites, paging through my books, and listening patiently as I tried to explain what I thought our ancestors might have been thinking over all the centuries of piling prohibition atop prohibition. The end result of all this was that we both knew a lot more about the history and symbolic/cultural significance of taharat hamishpacha than when we'd started, and we agreed that it was a fascinating example of halakhic development, not to mention a real pain in the tuchus. Unfortunately, none of this did much to answer the Scheduling Question.

As a matter of fact, it helped to complicate things a little further. I had already known that I'd have to remove things like contact lenses and nail polish before I immersed, but it took contemporary readings to make me realize that my birth control patch was basically the textbook definition of chatzitah. This was an important point, because I'd already realized that I'd need an extra patch to get through my wedding without starting my period -- but I usually switched patches on Monday night, which was way too early to get away with attending the mikvah unless I actively lied about when my wedding would take place (and I dislike lying). But even if I resigned myself to getting two extra patches -- and I had -- the rest of the week was already crowded: Tuesday there'd be a Yom Tov ending (I didn't even want to think about those complications), my in-laws were showing up Wednesday, my parents on Thursday, and most of the other wedding guests on Friday, when we were all getting together for dinner. Shabbat on Saturday wouldn't end till super-late, although I thought I still might prefer ducking out after Havdalah and trying to squeeze my dip in as inconspicuously as possible on the one night when nobody would expect us to show up for Yet Another Event. Only, in that case, when would I find time to paint my toenails (nevermind maybe getting a manicure and pedicure) before we started taking pictures at 11 am on Sunday?

The whole business was making me crazy (not too far to go at that point). I had florists, photographers, caterers, a job and a number of important relationships to juggle, but the mikvah thing kept hanging in there. One of the things I had discovered about planning a wedding is that it's a matter of identifying your half-conscious dreams and deciding which ones you want to go to the trouble of making real (dancing, yes; Renaissance costume, not so much). I hadn't thought about mikvah immersion much, but I knew I wanted to do it -- my research had, oddly enough, only strengthened that conviction. I'd always envisioned sunlight streaming through into the living waters, softly but intensely spoken prayers, and a sense of sisterhood complete with slightly wicked smiles on everyone's faces as we anticipated what we were preparing for. It would be -- it had to be -- a celebration of new life. But the likely scenario that emerged from my reading was nothing like that: women covering every inch of themselves, creeping into the mikvah under the cover of darkness, being carefully segregated from each other at every turn, undergoing clinical inspection from a stranger. It sounded almost shameful. Now, I consider myself a reasonably private and modest person by secular American standards. Both my menstrual cycle and my sex life are nobody's business except mine and Eli's, and I don't generally run around announcing them, but there's nothing shameful about either, and G-d knows our tradition has been happy to discuss these issues at the drop of a bedikah cloth. My first time wasn't going to be in the dark, I decided. My first time was going to be special.

I dislike lying, but I love figuring out ways to bend the rules.

(to be continued...)

Dulcie is a thirtyish Jewish woman who averages out Conservative; she is writing about her experiences with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This essay is the second of a three-part series; the first essay is available here, and the final essay is available here.

It seemed like a good idea at the time: as the week before our upcoming wedding became more and more crowded with services and meals and miscellaneous gatherings, we decided that it was time to figure out when we'd fit in our mikvah dips. Not that my intended -- we'll call him Eliezer -- and I were necessarily planning on monthly visits, and we certainly weren't holding off on the horizontal hora till our nuptials, but a mikvah trip was what you did before a Jewish wedding, wasn't it? I definitely wanted to, Eli was less sure but thought it might be an interesting experience, and we both knew that mikvaot existed in our community somewhere or other. Clearly, I realized, we needed to learn more about our options -- and since Eli was doing invitations, I figured I could do mikvah research.

After checking for local mikvah information online with no luck, I decided to call the number provided by one webpage, which turned out to involve leaving a voicemail message on a particular extension at the local Jewish organization which coordinates my town's mikvah resources. I tried to explain the situation, the timing of my Sunday afternoon wedding, and my question about when a mikvah would actually be available for both me and Eli. The next day, I received voicemail from a pleasant but strongly accented female voice with a name I couldn't quite catch, wishing me mazel tov and urging me to call her at a home number on Friday morning; I did so twice, getting an answering machine each time, and finally a man (her husband, I guess) called me back and asked whom I was trying to reach at his number. "The mikvah lady," I said, slightly flummoxed but drawing on some ancestral memory. "Hold on," he said - in the same accent - and went to get her.

My actual conversation with the Mikvah Lady was equally puzzling. When I could come to the mikvah, she said, was quite simple: either Thursday night or Saturday night after Shabbos. Wouldn't the latter be awfully late after Daylight Savings kicked in, I asked? Yes, she admitted. And could I immerse first thing Sunday morning instead? No, but Eli could do so at the men's mikvah if he wished.

I was perplexed - I'd taken a class on women and Jewish law back in college, and I remembered that the original preference for women to dip at night was relaxed in cases of danger or even inconvenience. I was also fairly sure that Friday evening was a valid mikvah time, judging from the tradition of Shabbat shenanigans. And I knew from the website that our town had one full-time and one part-time women's mikvah: were all the women really supposed to fit themselves in in the evening? How long did it take to go to the mikvah, anyway? Besides, I rather liked the idea of dipping as soon as possible before the wedding to add a special dimension to the first time we had sex after the wedding, and the odds of my holding out from Thursday to Sunday were slim. But I was worried about sounding ignorant, and I was equally unenthusiastic about discussing my sex life with a strange woman I'd never met face-to-face. So I switched to the other question I had planned to ask.

"Actually, I was wondering if I could drop by the mikvah some time before my wedding and immerse, so that I'll know where everything is and how the procedure works." I figured that would let me meet the Mikvah Lady in person for further consultation and let me, well, see how it worked, how long it took, what I needed, and so forth. It wouldn't be nearly as weird to speak to her face to face. Plus, seeing the mikvah in advance would be kind of nice.

"Oh no," she said, very firmly. "You don't need to visit the mikvah until you're ready to get married." Uh-oh. I hadn't thought about it - after all, I knew people in our town who liked to use the mikvah for "spiritual cleansing," whatever that was - but apparently the Mikvah Lady wanted to discourage me from premarital Goings On, and pointing out that nothing she was likely to do would discourage us for a second was clearly not the way to go. So I tried to sound curious yet chaste.

"I know I don't need to, but what if I want to? To see what it's like?"

"You're welcome to make an appointment and visit with me - I have some pamphlets I can give you - and that way it won't be so terrifying." Terrifying? I opened and closed my mouth, realizing that any questions about what I was supposed to be terrified of would lead us to a Bad Place. Instead, I tried again, expressing my complete lack of terror and my genuine desire to experience the mikvah before wedding plans drove me insane, but no dice: since the Mikvah Lady knew I was single, she wasn't going to make me an appointment to actually immerse. So I politely affirmed my intent to call her nearer our wedding date, wished her a good Shabbos (not Shabbat, I knew that much), and hung up.

"Well," I announced to the apartment around me. "That was weird."

(to be continued...)

Dulcie is a thirtyish Jewish woman who averages out Conservative; she is writing about her experiences with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This essay is the first of a three-part series; the second essay is available here, and the final essay is available here.

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

11:30 Saturday night. My husband gets home, sees the envelope on the kitchen counter with my name on it, grabs it, slams the door behind him. Doesn’t wake the kids. I sit in bed, reading, not reading, waiting for him to return. 10 minutes later, he saunters into the bedroom. “I dropped it off. In the rabbi’s mailbox. It’s late. He didn’t open the door.”

Midnight. Phone rings. It’s the rabbi. My husband answers. “No, it’s not too late. Thanks for calling. She’s right here.” I take the phone. The soft, soothing voice of my niddah rabbi on the other end. “Mrs. X? I’m not sure what the shaelah is.”

So I tell him that the last three periods have been weird, but he knows this already because I’ve called him so many times, dropped off stained underwear and not-quite-clean bedikahs, waited for the verdict, which was always that they were fine, I could keep counting, hold my mikvah date, wouldn’t have to delay our separation any longer.

Until tonight.

I tell him about the four days of dark spotting at the beginning. He remembers from my phone call asking whether I was officially a niddah. I tell him about my four days of bright red heavy flow, how I’ve never had that many before. I started craving meat and bought chopped liver for Shabbat lunch because my iron was so low. I tell him how I tried on day five, laughing all the while, to get a clean hefsek, but there was no way that was happening, and I tell him how on day six, erev Shabbat, I didn’t even bother because the bleeding was so heavy. Then I tell him about how I tried again on Shabbat, and I surprised even myself by getting a clean hefsek, and I tell him how later that night, the blood was back again and bright red, and that’s my question, that’s what he’s looking at on the pad that I stuffed in an envelope for his scrutiny.

The rabbi is quiet. He is thinking, maybe he is trying to find a way to make it not niddah. “It IS red,” he says. It’s the first time in nearly five years of marriage that he’s told me I had to start all over again, that I couldn’t keep counting down to the day when I could embrace my husband after the peace of the mikvah waters. He is quiet when he says, “Maybe you should go to your doctor, Mrs. X. I don’t want it to be fibroids or something.”

I’d heard urban legends of niddah-expert rabbis catching cysts, cancer, and other conditions from simply looking at a stain and talking with a woman, but this was my first time experiencing it. He repeated what my midwife had said when I called her, panicked, earlier in the week. I felt cold though the furnace churned in the basement.

I hung up the phone and went to my computer, clicked on a search engine, typed in “fibroids.” I had two precious babies upstairs, 19 months apart, whom I had no trouble conceiving, no trouble carrying, no trouble birthing. Would I now face fertility troubles like my sister, my friends, so many people I knew? My husband walked in. “Please,” he pleaded. “Please turn off the computer and go to bed. This won’t help. You’ll just scare yourself.”

I looked at him. Oh how I missed him, and it hadn’t even been that long. We were brazen with our together days, fighting and insisting it’s ok if we don’t hug tonight, we always have tomorrow. I remembered what my kallah teacher had said, niddah sensitizes you to the details of life. I never thought I’d care whether I could pass the salt to him or not, but I do.

I shut down the computer, went upstairs. Moonlight streamed through the cracks in my bamboo shades. I listened for my children’s sweet breathing, saw my husband’s darkened form, banished in his bed against the wall. His body lifted and released. He slept.

The next day, as twilight neared, my hefsek was clear. Clean white. I began counting. Although it was only two days longer that we were apart this time, the week ached as it crept along. I missed my husband. My bed was huge, an empty sea, a lonely raft. Still, I was amazed at how my rabbi, with no medical training, could predict a condition by the strength of his Torah knowledge. I’d been questioning, cynical, stopped covering my hair four months before. I was fed up with people around me meticulously checking lettuce for bugs but trusting their children to unlicensed, dangerous day cares because they were run by Jews. I judged everyone harshly, seeing people walk the legal line of Halachah but ignore its ethical mandates. I wished I could take my niddah questions to a woman, hated having to ask men for permission to keep counting. I kept hitting my head on this glass ceiling. It was everywhere. I didn’t want to be kept in a corner.

But my compassionate rabbi, he knew. It’s eerie how Torah has everything, is all-knowing, far-reaching. Where was God in all this? I hadn’t thought of Him in ages.

The week passed. On Sunday, my husband left on a four-day business trip. That night, with the children tucked into sleep and the babysitter sitting on my couch, it was the first time I went to the mikvah knowing I’d come home to no waiting arms.

There was a line at the reception desk, so many women needing to purify themselves. I paid my money, walked to room 13, took off my clothes and filled the tub. Forty-five minutes later, I descended into the warm water of the mikvah, got to the platform and turned toward the wall. I could hear my breath against the tiles.

Taking a deep breath, I submerged. “Do it again,” she said. No one had ever told me that before.

I focused on the shiny blue of the pristine tiles; the water gulped as I went under. “Go deeper,” she said.

Third time, my hands massaged the warm water, I bent my knees, buried myself in the water’s promise. When I emerged, the mikvah lady announced, “Kosher.”

A second time. “Kosher.” A third time. “Kosher.” Then she stepped out of the room as I had asked her to and left me alone for that minute that I treasure each time, my one chance to contemplate and connect with the Source. “Please,” I whispered to the tiles. “Set me straight. Remind me that You’re here. Help me connect with what is true. Please.” Then I turned, ascended each careful step until the cold air hit my warm, wet body. I burrowed into my robe and returned to the world someone new.

~ Leah

Leah is a 33-year-old ba'alat teshuvah living in the Midwest region of the United States. A follow-up visit with her doctor revealed no medical problems.

On my way to the mikvah one month, I met the attendant heading over to open the building, and she said to me, "Wow, that’s amazing. I was just going to call you." Are you recruiting too? I asked, because the other two attendants had already approached me about whether I was willing to replace one of them (who is – you guessed it – about to give birth.) “No,” she said, “but there’s a woman in her ninth month who has to immerse in the mikvah tonight, and it’s a big segulah to immerse right after her.”

I'd never heard of this before. Just to clarify, I asked - You mean, you were going to call and see if I wanted to come and immerse, even if it wasn’t my time of the month to go? “Right,” she said, her eyes shining at this example of what she saw as Divine providence. “Isn't it amazing how things work out? You were coming here tonight anyway.”

Others might disagree with my definition, but to me, a “segulah” seems pretty much like a good luck omen. I don’t believe in segulahs. As a general rule. But it’s pretty clear from the context what the good luck omen must be FOR, yes? For getting pregnant. The attendant clearly thought of me because she’s seen me coming to the mikvah every month without pause for the past five years. And so, although we don’t know each other socially at all, it's obvious to her that I have not been pregnant once in that whole time.

I was so surprised by my reaction. My husband thought I would be upset that she approached me like that, upset that she broached a topic I’ve never brought up with her, upset that people are thinking about or talking about or pitying us. And I wasn’t, not at all. It’s the first time I’ve had any evidence that she noticed. I’ve wondered, for a long time, and although in the past the idea of the mikvah attendants feeling bad for me has made me cringe, lately I’ve been more amazed that no one seems to recognize it might be difficult for me to keep going back every month.

I’m not proud of it, but I have to admit that was part of my reaction when the other attendants asked if I was interested in working there: I thought, don’t you realize this is a painful place for me? For all I know they approached me for the same reason: just trying to think of a way to help me. Maybe they thought that if I give my time for the community in that way, if I make it possible for other women to conceive, perhaps Gd will finally reward me with a child too. I don't personally think it works in that neat measure-for-measure way, but who knows?

So on the whole I was touched by the gesture. And I think it helped that I’ve known her all this time, and she’s always been so discreet. I don’t have even a shred of concern that she’s gossiping about me. Just wishes she could help.

So I said thank you. And I didn’t make light of her belief in signs, or Divine arrangement of events, or immediate reward & punishment, or whatever it was. I tried to take it as a prayer on my behalf by all these other women -- just a prayer they had made more concrete. And I do believe that prayer counts with Gd, especially prayer coming from people more devout than I am. I tried to think about the woman who had immersed before me as I went under the water, although I didn’t quite know how to do that. Were there pregnant vibes emanating through the water, or what? I’ve been too cynical, for too long, to have any practice at this.

And there’s the rub. The mikvah attendant, when she approached me, had no idea why I’ve not been getting pregnant. It was a risk she took, in fact, because for all she knows I might have no uterus. And no amount of prayer or segulah would change that. In fact she was on target, and there is no reason anyone can come up with for why I’m infertile.

But in this case I’m pretty sure I ovulated before I went to mikvah, as I so often do. And it comes to the same thing: I don’t really believe in miracles, not blatant going-against-nature ones, not in this day and age. In my heart I didn’t believe any amount of prayer was going to get that egg back, and I certainly don’t believe that if my prayers and efforts to be a good person – to somehow deserve this pregnancy, if that's possible – have made no difference, what will finally do the trick will be a bit of symbolic theater.

I tried to believe, a little. But I think I failed.

As we found out two weeks later.

~ Anonymous