The Lilith Blog

October 29, 2018 by Karen Paul

To My Friend, Whose Celebration Was the Day of a Massacre

We were at the mikveh on Friday, nine of us, seven celebrants and two attendants who witnessed our joy as you marked your birthday and a moment of pause in your high profile, high impact job. It was a soul-filled morning, saturated with reflections on some relationships that spanned decades, and some that were bright and new but still profound. 

You had never been to the mikveh, the ritual bath that cleanses and prepares Jews for many roles – that of sexual preparedness and procreation, that of convert, that of celebrant. Preparing for immersion strips you down to your barest place, with not a spot that can come between you and the waters. The waters which are rain waters, waters that have been a part of this earth for millennia, touching your skin, soothing your heart, marking your passage.

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The Lilith Blog

August 23, 2018 by Tara Mendola

Bloody Waters at the Mikveh

The tablecloths in this palatial Newton synagogue are all Tiffany blue, as are the event programs and the lanyards for our nametags, which have High Holiday-style fundraiser cards on the back.  My nametag is as expected. My companion S’s, however, lists the name and title of a Baptist preacher, a woman who runs an abortion outreach group funded by Planned Parenthood. This woman had invited me to be her date to this shindig weeks before—presumably as she didn’t want to be the lone Christian clergyperson at a mikveh fundraising gala without a Jewish wingwoman—but had succumbed to a late-spring cold at the eleventh hour.  S., magnanimously, agreed to come with me instead. 

“Come on,” I’d said to my friend S, “It’s a mikveh gala with circus arts. It cannot possibly be boring.” 

“Alright,” she’d said, grimly, “but I am not changing and I am not putting on heels. It’s 6PM on Thursday; that’s a time for people with nannies.”

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