Sally Rosenberg first experienced the magical waters of the mikvah soon after her daughter, Kayla, was born some 20 years ago.
"I was so nervous and worried about caring for her; someone suggested the mikvah might calm me down," said Rosenberg, a Reform Jew who decided to plunge into a ritual regularly used by traditionally observant Orthodox women to mark the end of their menses and period of abstention from intimate relations with their husbands.
"I discovered that when I was under the water, time was suspended and I was peaceful," she said. "It allowed me to focus on myself and what was really important in my life."
Ritual immersion is an ancient practice required for conversions and often used by brides before their weddings. Men may use it prior to Shabbat and holidays.
After she tried it, Rosenberg loved the experience so much that she began describing herself to friends as a "mikvah-holic." She shared her enthusiasm with women she encountered as a leader of Torah study groups and Rosh Chodesh (New Moon) observances at Temple Israel.
"When I started reading what the mystics had to say about the mikvah, I thought, 'This has so many possibilities for us,'" said Rosenberg, who teaches foreign languages at St. Mary's Episcopal School.
Today she serves as a "mikvah lady" or guide for immersions before weddings, for healing after divorces or illnesses, and for conversions, celebrations of special birthdays and other times of significant life transitions.
Susan Hiller, who grew up in an Orthodox synagogue, remembers going to the mikvah almost 40 years ago right before her wedding to her husband, Richard.
"My mother told me I had to go," she said. "I had no idea what it was. I had no preparation for what the experience would be like."
She remembers feeling some fright and embarrassment but little else.
"I remember going into the water and dunking three times," she said. "I don't think I got anything spiritual out of it."
But after learning more about the meaning of mikvah in study groups at Temple Israel and being spiritually moved while witnessing a friend's immersion for conversion, she decided to mark her 60th birthday in the mikvah.
Like everyone who goes to the mikvah, she came to it completely bare, without any jewelry or even contact lenses.
"You enter the mikvah as you were on the day you were born," Rosenberg said. "When you hold your breath under the water, you are enter an environment you can't live in. When you come up, you are coming back to life."
Unlike her bridal experience, Hiller found her birthday trip to the mikvah rewarding.
"The lights are low, candles flicker, and the water is warm. It starts out shallow on the first step and then deepens so much that by the seventh that you are almost under water. You say a prayer before you go under three times and when you come back up. This time I understood exactly what I was doing."
All Orthodox synagogues have mikvahs, small pools deep enough to allow a full immersion of the body. By Jewish law, "living" waters — collected either in cisterns when it rains or from other natural sources such as streams — must be mixed with water that is publicly supplied.
Many conservative synagogues, including Beth Sholom in Memphis, have them, but they are rare in Reform temples.
Reform Jews are encouraged to adapt rituals in ways that are relevant to them rather than because they are required do them, Bauman said.
"So Reform women are not bound to go to the mikvah monthly, but they may still value the ritual intrinsically and use it in a meaningful way," she said. "In Judaism, rituals are the way we mark holy moments with more than words."
For example, not only do Jews say blessings at Shabbat, but they also light candles. They read the story of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt at their Passover seders, and they also refrain from eating bread for a week.
"Rituals are our unique path to God," she said.
Susan Tobey went to the mikvah as a way of healing after a difficult separation and divorce.
Rosenberg, who is her sister-in-law, suggested she mark her transition to a new life by going to the mikvah.
"Sally used her amazing way of finding meaning in Jewish texts and rituals and applied them to my situation," Tobey said.
Rosenberg and Tobey symbolically "buried" the bad aspects of the marriage in a container filled with soil. Then they tucked a plant into the soil so Tobey could be conscious of her own transformation as she watched the plant change and grow.
For every positive aspect of the marriage recalled, they placed a small rock in a glass container to be preserved and remembered.
"I cried a lot and laughed some," she said. "It took a little while for the closure to settle in."
She would do it again to mark another time of transition. "It's a way of using a traditional ritual to help delineate and sanctify challenges in our lives," Tobey said.
"Being immersed in water is so elemental," she said. "When the water rushes over me, whatever chaos that may be happening in my life stops. I feel re-energized and in touch with who I am and why I am here. I feel loved. Mikvah can give us the spiritual connection we are craving."
In Natalie Jalenak's formative years, Reform Jews eschewed many traditional rituals like men wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls and, certainly, visiting mikvahs, except possibly for conversions.
"I never even heard of the mikvah until I was out of college, and the whole concept of regaining purity every month seemed foreign. I was scornful of the whole idea."
But as she learned more about the other ways the mikvah can be used from Rabbi Tara Feldman, formerly of Temple Israeli, she decided to experience it herself.
"My whole attitude about it has changed," said Jalenak, 73. "I don't know that I would ever use it again, but I know I will never sneer at it as an outdated practice."
To make their mikvah experiences meaningful, Rosenberg blends elements unique to each person's situation with ancient prayers. She also draws on materials published by Mayyim Hayyim, a non-denominational mikvah in Boston that is arguably at the apex of modern mikvah use in America since opening in 2004.
Mayyim Hayyim, which means "living waters," suggests immersion ceremonies for bar and bat mitzvahs, birthdays, weddings and anniversaries, graduations, ending treatments for illnesses, mourning deaths, after divorce, miscarriage or abortion; coming out as a gay, lesbian or bisexual; becoming grandparents; or embarking on or returning on a journey or sabbatical.
For those recovering from a divorce, Rosenberg might tell them to think of the water of the mikvah washing away the bad feelings and experiences and extinguishing the fire of anger.
"Water is a solvent that allows you to get rid of what you need to dissolve mentally, emotionally and spiritually," she said. "It helps us release what we need to release."
For a bride, she emphasizes the transformation from being one soul to a commingling of two souls.
"I have yet to see someone walk out of the mikvah without taking a deep breath and smiling," she said.
It's what she loves about being a modern mikvah lady.
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