When we last spoke, I told you about launching a feminist revolt at my Orthodox Jewish girls’ school. I hope to get back to that, eventually. But let’s fast forward about 30 years. Now I’m working at a place that’s doing its own radical feminist work, right in the heart of the Jewish community.
I work in a mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath. You may have heard the disturbing story of Barry Freundel, a DC rabbi who was arrested last week on charges of using a hidden camera to spy on nude women in the mikveh of Kesher Israel, the synagogue which he ran. This has been an epic scandal in the Orthodox Jewish world, as Freundel was a revered scholar and leader in the rabbinic establishment. Political heavyweights like Senator Joe Lieberman and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew attend Kesher Israel. Freundel has been suspended without pay from Kesher Israel, barred from entering both the synagogue and the mikveh.
So what even is a mikveh and what exactly was Freundel doing, and why should we feminists care? Allow me to explain.
Mikvehs were originally used for purification from contact with the dead or impure according to halacha (Jewish law), before one could enter the Temple in Jerusalem. Today, mikvehs are primarily used by three populations:
- People converting to Judaism, for whom immersion is often the final step in the process, the official Jew-ification, if you will.
- Hasidic men in certain sects, who immerse en before the Sabbath and holidays, establishing the mikveh as kind of an old-world mens’ club over time, not unlike a bathhouse or shvitz.
- Religious married women immersing to end their niddah, menstrual (plus seven “clean” days) time and reunite sexually with their partners. A woman, single or married, who has menstruated without subsequently immersing in a mikveh carries the default status of being “in niddah” and is sexually prohibited from men.
Stay with me here. I promise we’ll end up in a good place.
Along with refraining from work on the Sabbath and keeping kosher, adhering to the niddah rules of sexual separation and mikveh are the primary guideposts of Orthodox Jewish family life. In most Orthodox communities, mikvehs, while staffed by women during nightly women-only hours, are tightly-controlled by the largely male-led establishment. After all, whoever controls the mikveh controls who gets to be Jewish as well as women’s bodies and sexuality. It’s a very charged thing, to say the least.
Most Orthodox mikvehs completely prohibit any unmarried women from immersing (except a bride immediately before her wedding day), as it’s feared that this will lead to sexual promiscuity (cuz if she’s not in niddah, she’s sexually available and all bets are off! Yes, because a woman who would be religiously fastidious enough to immerse before sex is obviously on her way to a Satanic orgy. But I digress). If you’re outside of the heteronormative paradigm or gender binary, forget it.
You can imagine that the niddah practice is fairly fraught for Orthodox Jewish feminists (Yes, we exist. We are legion). While temporarily refraining from sex, in my experience, creates a nice absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder balance in mine and my husband’s sex life, the misogyny at the core of the ritual is hard to ignore. On an experiential level, though, going to the mikveh itself, creating that spiritual space before reuniting with one’s partner sexually, can be a very beautiful thing.
Everyone who adheres to the practice of mikveh connects with it in her own way, but at its core it’s a deeply intimate experience. You have to be completely clean and completely naked – no jewelry, contacts, etc. In most cases, a mikveh attendant is there to make sure you’ve immersed fully – i.e. gotten your whole head and body below the surface of the water. Ideally, they hold up a towel, robe, or sheet above their eyes, and only bring it down after they’ve heard you dunk, so they can tell you if your immersion was “kosher.” Unfortunately, many women, including myself, have had bad experiences with mikveh attendants. One lady yelled at my naked, vulnerable self for not cleaning well enough under my nails. Another brought in a whole cart of makeup removal implements and preceded to – unasked – grab a wipe and scrub my face clean enough for her standards. This kind of thing makes one feel disempowered and resentful, to say the least.
I’m happy to say that none of this sort of thing occurs at the mikveh where I work, and that’s by design. Mayyim Hayyim Community Mikveh and Educational Center, located in Newton, MA, was founded 11 years ago by Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent. Mayyim Hayyim is a radical feminist place because it takes the ritual of mikveh back from the male rabbinic establishment and gives it to anyone who wants to use it, for conversion and niddah or for any reason at all, with or without a trained volunteer mikveh guide. We are open to all Jewish people, regardless of gender, marital status, sexual orientation, physical abilities (we have a chairlift to make it fully accessible), etc. Women, myself included, find a new way to connect with the niddah practice in a totally judgment-free, woman-centered space where their experience is their own. People of all genders immerse to deepen their spirituality. New Jews of all denominations convert in an atmosphere of joy and celebration. Here’s a quick glimpse. Before Mayyim Hayyim, there was hardly anywhere in the world where an openly genderqueer or trans person, an LGBT couple, or even a bat/bar mitzvah girl or boy could immerse. Now it’s a normal, daily occurrence, here and at a growing number of community mikvehs around the globe. We’ve unlocked this ritual and given it back to the people.
It wasn’t enough for Rabbi Freundel to look at porn for his sexual gratification. No – he preyed on women in this moment that encompasses vulnerability and spiritual intimacy. He set up hidden cameras in the mikveh preparation room, and spied on them while they were getting ready to immerse. They were connecting with God through their own bodies, and he filmed them doing it and used it for his own sexual gratification. Can you imagine if that was you, having willingly made yourself naked and vulnerable, going through your own spiritual or therapeutic process, and finding out that someone was watching the whole time and getting off on the site of your naked body? And not just anyone – your rabbi. The horror is compounded by the allegations that many of the women he filmed were candidates for conversion under his auspices – he thus abused their trust in him as the spiritual leader shepherding them into Judaism. The violation is unfathomable.
Freundel’s actions have sent off a firestorm in the Jewish community, with numerous calls to change the male-dominated power dynamic in the Orthodox world – this scandal is this dynamic taken to its most egregious conclusion. It has come out that the rabbinic body overseeing Freundel, the Rabbinic Council of America, was told years ago that he crossed inappropriate boundaries with women, and they did nothing. It is questionable whether Freundel’s actions would have come to light at all if the president of Kesher Israel had not been a woman. It is due to her leadership that the synagogue is responding to the scandal with remarkable transparency and sensitivity, publishing the arrest warrant, holding a community forum with police, and continuing to reach out to victims and community members with support.
This is looking to be a watershed moment in the Jewish world, coming at a time when many Orthodox men and women are challenging the patriarchal setup and calling for drastic change. This is certainly going to be the case at next month’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. Stay tuned.
Tags: DeDe Jacobs-Komisar, judaism, religion, the menstruations
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This is a) fascinating and b) omgwtfnowhyREVOLTING. And I say that having been raised Catholic during the many sexual abuse scandals. There’s just something about a position of power over religiously-submissive people that seems to be a magnet for sex offenders.
thanks for sharing this. i’ve been sitting here writing and rewriting a comment, but basically: i think it’s incredible that there are places like mayyim hayyim where mikvehs are inclusive places of sanctuary, self-development, empowerment. and i’m stunned into mostly-wordless horror over freundel.
Wow.
Thanks guys!
I wonder if filming women as they were immersing themselves was part of the rabbi’s perversion – like, he would only want to view the bodies of purified women as some sick reconciliation with his spiritual beliefs, rather than relying on “impure” bodies in porn for his pleasure.
Oh my heavens, I hadn’t considered this, and for some reason it has increased my squick-horror level by a factor of twelve.
the fact that he also viewed them as they were preparing themselves (before immersion, and therefore impure) makes me think it was probably just a sick, opportunistic power play.
GROSS. AAAAAAAAAAAH.
I am a Jewish woman who has never actually immersed in a mikvah, due to the issues at its core that you allude to above, and I’ve been thinking about going to Mayyim Hayyim for a while. Hearing from you has made it much more likely that I’ll go, so thank you.
One of my dear friends has gone there several times, and her experiences have been 100% overwhelmingly positive. (edited to take out link, as I did not get her permission to post it. D’oh, my bad.)
As a Jew by choice, this scandal horrified me. The mikveh where I converted was a beautiful, holy place, and I someday hope to start my own, feminist and open to all like yours- I feel unwelcome in most mikvehs. Mikveh is a treasure!
Ignoring the awful rabbi, this was such a lovely post. There is a series on the BBC at the moment about the spiritual and religious side of three important rivers- the Nile, the Ganges and the Yagtze which is really interesting (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04l911c/episodes/guide). There was a programme called Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain’s Holiest Places, which did an episode on how water keeps popping up in various religions as well.
I’m really glad that Kesher Israel is handling this better than my childhood shul did when our rabbi ended up on To Catch a Predator.
My husband used to work for him at Panim. My father, a journalist and himself a survivor of secular abuse as a teen, interviewed the rabbi when he got out of prison and was trying to join a shul.
Hadn’t heard about Freundel, that’s just stomach-turning.
I’ve heard (very good things) about Mayyim Hayyim. It sounds like a wonderful experience there.
A 19th-century woman-controlled mikveh story: I was visiting Vicksburg, MS and staying at a B&B in a restored antebellum town-house, which had been owned by one of the four or five Jewish families in the city at that time. The people who owned it were well-meaning, but profoundly ignorant of Jews and of Judaism–talked about “the Jewish Book of the Dead” and all sorts of strange stuff like that. In giving us the tour of the house, they mentioned as a very freakish thing that the house had been built with two indoor bathrooms (which of course would have been very unusual for the time), and that the wife/mother of the family that built it had insisted on having a cistern connected to one so she could bathe in rainwater. “She must have been quite a spoiled princess,” they told us, which pissed me off so much that I didn’t tell them that what they had was not two bathrooms but an ordinary bathroom and a mikveh. And ever since I have loved thinking of the handful of Jewish women in Vicksburg quietly going to visit the lady of the house to immerse themselves in luxury and quiet.
May I just say your mikveh looks absolutely beautiful and spiritual and glorious. The stone tiles! The light! The water! I would find a way to go in every day.
I immersed at Mayyim Hayyim before my (lesbian) wedding last summer, and it was an amazing experience. Thanks for the work you do there, and for writing this.
High five to everything you wrote and your username. MHC, possibly?
One terribly sad thing I heard about the aftermath of Freundel’s violations of trust was that some people have called for the conversions he performed to be declared invalid. I realize that Reconstructionists like me are not permitted to really put forth arguments on the subject, and I gather there is a whole lot of complication here with regard to the relationship between American temples and the Israeli rabbinate (cough), but it really seems cruel to make those people start again from the beginning on account of their misfortune in trusting a scumbag rabbi.
I thought that was very sad too. Especially since conversion is a lengthy, hard process. They got taken advantage of and to get your faith revoked, on top of it? That would just be crushing.
Ugh, this sort of thing makes me SEETHE. I’ll never understand the way some Jews feel that it is so important to police the Jewishness of others. People have been trying to destroy us for centuries, do you really want to quibble about who “counts” based on factors beyond their own control? It’s as if one’s actions and personal faith have literally no importance whatsoever.
I feel a little guilty that this is my first reaction to this piece, but: with my cycle I’d be niddah more than half the time.
My partner, who grew up Orthodox, says there’s such a thing as “halachic [Jewish legal] infertility,” where a woman’s fertile time is in niddah and she can’t get pregnant in the days she’s allowed to have sex with her husband. Oy.
Partner and I plan to go to a mikveh before our wedding, but not at any other time. We’re two women, you see, and we aren’t in sync with each other, so…. that isn’t going to work so well.
OMG this is a plot point on an episode of Srugim!
ETA: er, the halachic infertility, that is, not the difficulty of attempting niddah with two women’s cycles. I’m only midway through the second season, though…
Srugim is my jam! A good friend of mine plays the “reformit lesbit” in the pilot episode.
This is such an interesting piece! I have conflicting feelings about the concept of niddah, but I love what you’re doing at Mayyim Hayyim.
Also… “This is looking to be a watershed moment in the Jewish world”
That was totally unintentional!
how timely! i went to mayyim hayyim for the first time tonight and had a really positive, welcoming experience. my grad school thesis was about how mikvehs could be radical feminist spaces, and its so great to see content like this on the internet. thanks for writing!
What that Rabbi did was horrifying, it’s fantastic there’s such a place as Mayyim Hayyim, and radical feminism is a specific branch of (largely discredited) feminist thought, which is generally opposed to a number of the groups you’ve mentioned as being welcome. You might consider the phrase “radically feminist” instead of “radical feminist” in order to prevent semantic confusion, since a lot of people who know what radical feminism is are likely to flee screaming from a space that describes itself as radical feminist. I’d hate for people to miss access to what sounds like an amazing space over such a misunderstanding.
I mill around on the fringes of Judaism, too… something to commit. If/when I do work up the nerve or adequate interest, reading this has made me realize that I’ll want to connect myself with a community that’s as women-run and focused as possible. I wish I lived anywhere near that mikveh.
Same here. In thinking about my upcoming marriage, I've been wondering if I'll feel comfortable going to the community mikvah in my city – I struggle a lot, a really lot, with the aspects of my religious practice that are so fundamentally grounded in patriarchal theories about women and our bodies. I honestly think it's going to be a game-day decision, which is no kind of way to have a thoughtful, measured experience? But maybe if I were still living near my parents (who live about 10 minutes from Mayyim Hayyim) it would be easier to figure out.
Wait, but the RCA and the head of the Rabbanut in Israel have both issued statements saying that Freundel's conversions were still halachically valid! So gross.
Oh, I missed that announcement, but I'm glad! I saw somebody making the argument that Freundel might have been too lax with people on account of wanting to see them naked, and I was feeling a lot of rage.
Srugim is my jam! A good friend of mine plays the "reformit lesbit" in the pilot episode.
I love this. I’d really like to hear more about the work with Mayyim Hayyim and more of your thoughts about the positive aspects of mikveh; we don’t really have anything similar in the UK which I think is a great shame, and the Orthodox and Reform communities tend to be split along political lines.
In other news, a friend of mine once deflected some unwanted attention at bar by roaring ‘niddah’ directly into his face. It was one of the best things that’s ever happened.
This is a fascinating essay and report — so educational! Thank you so much for this insight to a private religious rite. It is awesome that there’s a feminist mikveh. (And oh man, The Red Tent was one of my favorite books, growing up.)