Mikvah Opening Celebrates New Orleans’ Rebirth

Five years after Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, members of the city’s hard-hit Jewish community are pointing to the grand-opening of a ritual bath as evidence of the region’s continuing rebirth.

For those affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch of Louisiana’s RINGGER Women’s Enrichment Center, the accomplishment caps a years-long struggle nearly derailed by the hurricane. More importantly, they say, the opening of the Mikvah Chaya Mushka will encourage local women to strengthen their observance of Judaism’s laws governing family life.

This is “an area of real respite for a woman, something really calming, soothing and meditative,” said Vivian Cahn, an interior designer with 20 years of experience who donated her time to the project. “This is the single, most important thing for a Jewish community to have.”

A fixture of most established Jewish communities, a mikvah is a necessary component of the laws governing Jewish family life. Married women traditionally visit a mikvah on a monthly basis to acquire ritual purity.

Plans for the New Orleans’ facility – which replaces a much-smaller installation built in 1989 – were launched about one year before Katrina hit. Sponsor Lee Rittvo, a clinical social worker and longtime resident, said that she and her husband Steve wanted to give back to a community that had given them so much. They settled on a mikvah with a spa-like atmosphere, and decided to name the women’s center after the matriarchs in their family; RINGGER represents an acrostic of the women’s last names.

The existence of such a place in New Orleans “has a tremendous impact on us personally and on the community,” said Rittvo, who volunteered on the project in addition to providing financial support. “It was an honor for us to do something for the community and a privilege to recognize the amazing women in our lives.”

Article continued at Chabad.org – Details Matter