Before Purity – Waiting for Rain to Revive Bathing Rite

West Boynton, FL — An Orthodox synagogue is about to revive an ancient ritual. If only it rains a little more.

Chabad of Greater Boynton Beach completed its $500,000 mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath, on Nov. 10 and is ready to open it to Jews who seek purification. But the mikveh needs lots of rainwater, combined with tap water, to be considered kosher. It rained for the first time this month on Thursday, contributing a few drops to the more than 380 gallons needed. The congregation chose the driest year in 75 years to open the bath, which some observant Jews consider even more important in a Jewish community than a synagogue.

Rabbi Sholom Ciment is anxious to open the mikveh after months of construction delays. But he knows the weather is out of his control, just as is the birth of his fifth child. His wife, Dina, is nine months pregnant.

“Whatever G-d decides,” said Ciment, who has led the congregation for 11 years. “It’s his decision.”

The mikveh will be used mostly by observant Jewish women, who immerse themselves in its pool after menstruation and are then free to have relations with their husbands after 12 days of abstinence. The Mishna, or code of Jewish law compiled in the second century, describes its uses and design in elaborate detail. Converts to Judaism, women who have given birth or are about to marry, and men who seek ritual purity before the Jewish High Holy Days also are likely users.

With about 60,000 Jews in Boynton Beach and its suburbs, Ciment said the lack of a mikveh was a major void. A Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County survey last year showed the Boynton Beach-area Jewish community growing by about 2,000 households a year since 1999, faster than any other area in the county.

Most observant Jewish women in the Boynton Beach area use the mikveh at the Orthodox Boca Raton Synagogue. Jaelle Kellman of Boynton Beach said traveling to Boca Raton each month was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip.

“The fact that it’s going to be close to my house is a major convenience,” said Kellman, 39, a technical support specialist for a scientific instruments company and a mother of three. “If it was readily available, I think more women would do it.”

Kellman said she goes to the mikveh as a symbol of her dedication to Judaism.

“It’s like starting all over again every month, a clean slate,” she said. “It feels good not just for you, but for the whole family. They feel the Jewish commitment in the house.”

Ciment said he does not know how many women will use the Boynton Beach mikveh because the process is ultra-private. No one knows a woman is visiting the mikveh except for her husband and the female mikveh attendant, who checks the woman in and makes sure she fully immerses herself in the 4-foot-deep pool.

The woman visits the mikveh a week after her period ends. Before dunking her body, she takes off all clothing, make-up, nail polish, jewelry, Band-Aids and anything else that prevents every part of her body from touching the water. At Chabad’s new mikveh, two spacious bathrooms adjoin the aqua mosaic-tiled pool, surrounded by Roman columns and pastoral paintings.

The immersion is considered a transformation.

“She enters in one state but emerges reborn,” Ciment said. “She comes out as a new, procreative force.”

Some say Jews throughout the world, even those who are not observant, have begun to see the mikveh as a destination for spiritual healing. In Newton, Mass., the Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center has conducted more than 2,000 ceremonies since it opened in 2004, according to its Web site. The center was founded by author Anita Diamant as a place that welcomed converted Jews and Jews who sought to recover from personal loss.

Ciment expects most of his mikveh visitors to be married women. But he needs a few more downpours before he can conduct an opening ceremony.

“This will complete all we’re trying to build in Boynton,” Kellman said. “We’ll take all the rain we can get.”