A Love Letter to Our Community Mikveh

Jewish tradition states that before a Jewish community can build a synagogue or purchase a Torah, the most precious commodity we are obligated to create is a Mikveh, the ritual bath. Some rabbis like the Chofetz Chaim even state that it is forbidden to consider residing in a city without one! Judaism articulates this requirement in various ways and, at points, even suggests that a Jewish community is obligated to maintain and keep a Mikveh at all costs, even if it requires selling a Torah. We see this truth present through archaeological evidence, generation after generation. Mikvehs are an integral part of Jewish communal living and of Jewish life.

Yet at this moment, in my beloved home of Los Angeles, with the abundance of wealth and as many Torahs as a community needs, we find ourselves in a moment of potential loss and, perhaps, reckoning. The American Jewish University, which has housed the Community Mikveh since 1981, has attempted to sell its campus and thus potentially closing the doors of this beloved space. This Mikveh is the only one of its kind in Southern California. It is a ritual space for transitions and ceremonies that welcomes everyone and is accessible to Jews of all denominations, cultures, age, gender, sexual orientation, or abilities. As a female conservative rabbi, it is the only Mikveh in Los Angeles I can use and the only Mikveh the majority of Jews can use to facilitate conversions and celebrate important milestones.

If we were to imagine that a Beit Midrash is the mind of the Jewish community and a synagogue is the heart of the Jewish community, there is an argument to be made that a Mikveh is the soul of the Jewish community.

If we were to imagine that a Beit Midrash is the mind of the Jewish community and a synagogue is the heart of the Jewish community, there is an argument to be made that a Mikveh is the soul of the Jewish community. It is the space that houses the most essential and intimate transitional moments in a Jewish person’s life. These are the sacred moments of the in-between, ones of pain and ones of joy; the Mikveh is the ancient ritual tool of holding them all. Unlike most aspects of Jewish life, little knowledge or Jewish literacy is required for an individual to enter a Mikveh. This makes it a space that is inherently non-hierarchical and one of equity. An individual only needs to walk in with an open heart and be ready for a potential shift in their worldview. 

The Mikveh also has a beautiful mystical and deeply spiritual rooted aspect. The divine feminine can be associated with the space due to the ritual purity laws traditionally observed by women over the years. While there are always complexities and patriarchal systems attached to these purity laws and some Mikvehs, when a Mikveh is done right, the space can harbor an energy created by women and for women over our history. There is nothing more powerful nor soulful than this notion. In a world that bends towards masculine energy, there is a craving for us to be in a space reminding us of the feminine energy which a Mikveh encompasses.

The Community Mikveh in Los Angeles is a space I feel blessed to have been connected to for many years. Unlike others in the more traditional Jewish world, it is an open Mikveh and is therefore available to everyone. This also applies to the marginalized and those of us who need an egalitarian and queer-friendly space and, most importantly, a ritual bath that sees the person without them needing to contort into another version of themselves. On any given day, these waters can house a person choosing to become Jewish, someone celebrating their gender affirmation, a bride, a groom, a cancer survivor, a b’nai/bat/bar mitzvah student, a postpartum mother, a woman grieving a pregnancy loss, someone holding grief that cannot be consoled, or someone celebrating a year of recovery, the list goes on and on. I personally have witnessed miracles in the Mikveh; individuals who have felt blocked or stuck and with one immersion, are suddenly liberated and able to be exactly who they need to be. 

This particular Mikveh is also home to all of us liberal rabbis for our conversion students from all denominations and beyond. It is miraculous that so many theologies, philosophies, politics, and theories of how to be Jewish, can all function similarly in the Community Mikveh. In other words, this Mikveh is the nexus for almost all of Southern California’s Jewish communities and may be one of the few things we can agree is necessary for our community.

We can take this sign of the AJU sale falling through as Divine intervention, or rather, a Divine invitation to ask the larger questions beneath the surface that are encouraged by this particular episode. 

As Angelenos, we are living through a moment of reckoning, reconciliation and potential repair. We have an opportunity to do the powerful work of t’shuvah; making right what was wrong while touching our community’s soul. We can take this sign of the AJU sale falling through as Divine intervention, or rather, a Divine invitation to ask the larger questions beneath the surface that are encouraged by this particular episode. These questions are not the ones that are on the surface such as how to turn programs into revenue streams. A Mikveh is not a money maker but rather, a mitzvah maker and ritualist meaning maker. 

A Mikveh sustains our community precisely because it doesn’t deal with superficial questions. After all, the priority of the Mikveh is for the individual. The ripples from a Mikveh affect our community through the individual’s experience, a contrary way of thinking about living and a necessary one. Its pure integrity is countercultural. The Mikveh is the lifeforce water, the energetic cleanser that sees the person for who they are and holds a space for them to move through. There is little to show about this because its essence is just to be. Each of us must ask ourselves a larger and more existential question: Do we care about this particular way of being Jewish — one that values one soul at a time which is countercultural to how society wants us to live? We must ask this because it is the question prevalent in this moment of awakening and reckoning in our city and in our world — and the soul of our Jewish community depends on it.

Rabbi Tova Leibovic-Douglas is a spiritual counselor, ritualist and teacher based in Los Angeles. You can find more @rabbi_tova or rabbitova.com.