guide my steps
I’m a mikveh guide!
Or as my friend Sarah likes to say: I’m a mivkeh lady!
This is not new information; in fact, I completed my training at Mayyim Hayyim at the beginning of May. But since I’ve hardly written in this space since the beginning of the year, I thought I would start to do some catching up.
it’s official!; photo by salem pearce via instagram
In the spring I participated in an eight-week course for new mikveh guides. The group was mostly middle-aged women, save one man, as well as Sarah and I and two other students. We were the ninth cohort of mikveh attendants trained since Mayyim Hayyim opened its doors 10 years ago. The training consisted of history and law of mikveh, most of which I already knew, logistics of facilitating immersions, and general education about the different reasons people might immerse. Mayyim Hayyim is a community mikveh that allows all Jews to immerse for just about any occasion, which makes it unique among most mikva’ot. Folks come to celebrate conversion, marriage, childbirth, gender transition, and cancer remission — as well as to heal from divorce, miscarriage, and sexual abuse, to name a few.
I have written about mikveh in general before in this space. I shared my last two pre-High Holiday immersion experiences, in the fall of 2012 and in the fall of 2013 (both at Mayyim Hayyim) as well as at least a little about my conversion immersion. I also wrote about a powerful play about mikveh I saw at the DCJCC a number of years ago.
As you might imagine, my experiences as an immersee have been quite moving. I was a little nervous about how it would feel to be on the other side, to witness immersions, and indeed, the curtain has been pulled back a little. I can still see the magic of Mayyim Hayyim, especially through the eyes of those who visit, but it’s hard to view as a refuge a place where I’m asked to do laundry. (Keeping the machines cleaning the constant accumulation of sheets and towels and robes and bath mats and wash cloths is part of my job now.) I was able to do my annual pre-holiday dunk last month, but I’ll admit that it felt less special than it had in years past. I did have a really wonderful experience facilitating the immersion of a friend who was preparing for a big life event, and I hope to be able to talk about that in this space soon.
embroidery on the towels at the park slope mikvah; photo by salem pearce via instagram
What I do want to share is my experience this summer in New York. I did a fair amount of reflection on the ritual of mikveh this summer for a number of reasons — one of which is that my friend Sarah facilitated a series of salon conversations about the practice of niddah as part of her work as a summer fellow with ImmerseNYC, another community mikveh.
Niddah is the term in Hebrew for a menstruating woman, with whom intercourse is forbidden; the metaphorical impurity of menstruation is expunged by immersion in the mikveh some days after the end of her cycle. It’s an ancient practice — still held by many Orthodox communities — most definitely informed by misogyny. However, there is a movement in more liberal Jewish circles to reclaim the practice. Though at first skeptical, I’ve come to believe more in that possibility.
So this summer I twice immersed at the Park Slope Mikvah, which I discovered by accident on a walk around my adopted neighborhood. I scheduled the appointments around my menstrual cycle, but mostly out of respect for the space, which caters to women who practice niddah. I was more interested in exploring a regular practice of mivkeh — and in experiencing a different mikveh.
With all due respect to Mayyim Hayyim, the Park Slope Mikvah is unparalleled in its facilities. It’s brand new (open for less than a year), and it feels like a spa: Beautifully appointed rooms with music and candles and huge bathtubs; embroidered, fluffy white towels, robes, and slippers; gorgeous, shimmering pools; and supplies in a gift-wrapped box, complete with preparation instructions on Park Slope Mikvah stationery. Even more welcoming than all of these creature comforts were the two mikveh ladies that witnessed my immersion.
The mikveh in Park Slope is a project of Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish outreach organization. So the folks associated with it are by profession welcoming. But I don’t present as a typical woman who practices niddah, and the guides still could not have been more kind and helpful. One mikveh lady in particular was effusive in her blessings. And the names of the preparation rooms reflected this expansive feeling: I prepared both times in the hilariously dubbed “Chamber of Chic Simplicity.”
park slope mikvah handwashing sink; photo by salem pearce
I don’t know how I would feel about restricting intimate contact with my partner for about half of each month, which is the traditional practice of niddah, but this summer I was struck by the effort it takes to go to the mikveh each month (and I only went two months in a row), and by the appeal that I’m guessing that visit has for many a busy woman. Having the time to take a bath — and being expected to take that time in careful preparation for immersion — seemed even to me, without children or partner, to be a decadent luxury. During my training this spring one of the instructors pointed out that for some women, the time they spend at the mikveh is the only time they will truly have to themselves all month. I feel like I understand the appeal of the mikveh a little more now.
To be sure, the heterocentric focus of the mikveh in Park Slope is procreation. Hence, for instance, the plaque above the ritual handwashing sink:
The unique eggshell shape of this vessel sink in both sculptured and inspirational . . . Just as an egg opens to reveal new life, the mikvah waters breathe new life into our most meaningful relationship. The mikvah has always been — and continues to be — a place of spiritual rebirth and renewal. a mitzvah that celebrates Jewish marriage and family.
As heavy-handed as it’s possible to read this — along with the meditation prayer for fertility that I was handed to read after immersion — I think the fact that the mikveh is clearly engaging in literal hiddur mitzvah (“beautification of the mitzvah”) speaks to the potential power of the use of the ritual for any reason.
One final note: As of this writing on 10/14/14, the D.C. Jewish community (of which I was once a part) is reeling from the news of the recent arrest of Kesher Israel Rabbi Barry Freundel on charges of voyeurism — specifically that there was he installed a hidden camera in the showers of the synagogue’s mikveh. While assuming Rabbi Freundel’s innocence until proven otherwise, I mention this as a way of understanding the vulnerability and intimacy inherent in this ritual.
10/15/14 update: Read Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s beautiful response to these allegations here.
mechitza
I spent this weekend at a Rabbis Without Borders rabbinical student retreat on “Spirituality, Social Justice, and the Rabbinate.” Students from several different schools gathered at the Pearlstone Center in Reisterstown, Md.: Besides Hebrew College, there were contingents from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical School, HUC Los Angeles and Cincinnati campuses, Jewish Theological Seminary, Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies, Academy of Jewish Religion, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. (Update: I very unfortunately forgot to note the fabulous representation from ALEPH – Alliance for Jewish Renewal – Smicha Program *and* International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism — which I regret. It was an unintentional mechitza.)
One of these things is not like the other.
YCT is a new-ish school training men to become Modern Orthodox rabbis “who are open, non-judgmental, knowledgeable, empathetic, and eager to transform Orthodoxy into a movement that meaningfully and respectfully interacts with all Jews, regardless of affiliation, commitment, or background.” The idea is to change Orthodoxy from the inside, as one of the students explained.
The impact of their participation that I felt the most was in the davennen. Their school policy requires, in accordance with Orthodox principles, that the YCT students not daven alongside women. The way this is generally achieved in the Orthodox world is via a mechitza, a partition to separate those participating in tefila.
This presented a challenge for the prayer services, since all of the other schools practice egalitarianism, not least in that they admit both women and men. The tefila committee, which met before the retreat (and of which I was not a part), decided on separation via what was dubbed a “tri-chitza“: spaces reserved for men, for women, and for mixed seating. The configuration was used for four of the five services we davenned together; the fifth, lead by the YCT students, was set up in a more traditional way, with seating for men and seating for women.
the farm at the pearlstone center in reisterstown, md.; photo by salem pearce (via instagram)
As one of the retreat faculty members (who is a huge fan of mechitza) explained, the idea developed as a result of an evening of joyful, raucous, downright Dionysian prayer, after which the rabbis reflected that if women had been present, it might have turned into an orgy. Thenceforth, women and men prayed separately.
On a visceral level, I find mechitza loathsome. Historically it has been a tool for silencing and disempowering women by marginalizing their prayer and limiting their participation: Women are not counted as part of the minyan (the quorum of 10 adults needed for prayer). In many spaces, women are also not allowed to lead tefila, to read Torah, to have aliyot. What’s more, the service often only takes place in front of the men’s side. In extreme cases, women are relegated to a balcony where it might be difficult to see or hear anything at all.
In the Modern Orthodox world, these latter elements are generally not found, but the purpose of a mechitza is still to ensure that people daven with those of the same gender. Which is problematic. It’s heteronormative; it’s based on the false assumption of a gender binary; it creates potentially unsafe situations for genderqueer folks. Ultimately, it is a space created entirely on the terms of and for the needs of cisgendered men.
I go to a pluralistic school, so I am used to experiencing all different kinds of davennen. Hebrew College was founded to challenge the conventional wisdom that the Jewish world can be pluralistic in all settings except for prayer. And we still struggle with community tefila — which, to be honest, usually means that no one is completely satisfied with services. But egalitarianism is our bright line. Everything else goes. This weekend was meant to be about pluralism, too. It is so important, especially for movement-based students, to talk to one another, learn from our differences, and experience other ways of doing Judaism. This weekend suggested that my pluralism might have limits.
To be fair, everyone was pushed out of their comfort zones this weekend. When I walked into the prayer space on Friday morning, I thought, “What? You call this a mechitza?” It was just a table with chairs on either side. Mechitzot can take many forms, to be sure, but they are usually solid partitions, or at least a line of person-high potted plants (as in the case of a Chabad minyan I went to a few times when I was in D.C.). The point is to obscure the sides from one another. This mechitza did not in any way do that, so it was largely symbolic. And I am not denigrating it by so calling it, as much of what is important in Judaism is symbolic, or might seem within the mere letter of the law and not the spirit. Indeed, the symbolic nature of the mechitza made it hurt more, as it seemed to be separation just for separation’s sake. I think that it was probably not the mechitza to which the YCT students are accustomed. Nor was the davennen. For me, the pain stemmed from the fact that because of the mechitza, the space felt like it belonged to just one contingent. I became an outsider, praying on their terms. Most uncomfortable of all, I felt like I was condoning the mechitza with my presence.
But I don’t consider my discomfort and the potential discomfort of the YCT guys to be morally equivalent. Their discomfort is because of an incursion on their male privilege; mine is the result of oppression.
I do feel that it is important to point out that my painful experience had to do with the issue of mechitza and not with YCT students themselves. Their hands are tied, to a certain extent: a condition of their continued enrollment is adherence to the tents of Orthodoxy as laid out by their school. And these are good guys, and I think they are fully aware of the difficulty mechitza presents. But their project is to struggle within Orthodoxy, and that is not my fight.
my favorite (problematic) cloth bag; photo by salem pearce (via instagram)
(Sidebar: The first time I encountered YCT was in Washington, D.C., in 2009, at the Jewish Federation’s annual General Assembly, where the institution had a booth. I was just beginning to think about rabbinical school and hadn’t heard of this one. I stopped and spoke with them for at least 20 minutes before they told me that, unfortunately, I was not able to attend their school. “But we hold women in high regard and believe that there is a special place for women in Judaism!” Completely annoyed, I left abruptly, but not without the tote bag they had given me. But as much as I feel a twinge of irritation every time I see it, I continue to own it because it is, hands down, the best cloth bag I’ve ever used. Roomy, more square than rectangular, sturdy, and with wide shoulder straps. It asks, “The Rabbinate. Is it in you?” To which I answer, “Yes! Just not with you.”)
I’ll admit that I took a perverse pleasure in the fact that the men’s section was small, at the edge of the room, and not in front of the tefila leaders or Torah readers. In other words, their experience approximated that of women in Orthodox settings (with the important difference that the separation had been effected at their own request). But I hated that I thought that. And it didn’t alleviate my own hurt. And none of these feelings were conducive to my being in a prayerful space.
I would love to see Orthodox Judaism become a more welcoming space for all Jews. And I don’t know whether I can be any part of it.
riddle, wrapped in a mystery
Trigger warning: One of the books reviewed here contains a brief episode of sexual assault, which I allude to in my review.
I had originally planned to pair the first book in this post, Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, with another book that I read at about the same time, before I left D.C. in May. However, I just finished Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: My Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, and I think it’s a better fit with the former.
Both are memoirs (my favorite genre) written by women who struggle in becoming who they are, Hamilton’s journey less purposeful than Feldman’s. Both women suffered by my curious googling after finishing their stories.
At the end of April, while in New York for a conference, I met my friend Megan (and another friend of hers) for dinner. They had chosen Prune, Hamilton’s small East Village eatery. Both had read her memoir. After the fantastic (although not so vegetarian- or kosher-friendly) food, I decided to check it out. I don’t eat most of the food that Hamilton loves or prepares or writes about, and my mouth still watered. She has a simple aesthetic as a cook: To use simple, real ingredients to make delicious food. Even a non-foodie like me knows how rare that is. I remember and still think about some of the dishes she describes, and I wonder if they are really as good as she says — and if I’ve wasted years being a vegetarian and then observing kashrut.
Two quick asides about the cover: First of all, I had no clue that the art was an upside-down chicken head. Seeing the digital image in this post now makes that mistake seem ridiculous (it took my husband to disabuse me of the notion that it was an odd kind of shellfish mentioned in one of her recipes), but I think it was hard to get the distance necessary to discern the image correctly at a book’s usual distance from one’s face. The second thing is the endorsement by Anthony Bourdain. He proclaims, “Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.” This never failed to make me giggle each time I resumed the book: How many chef memoirs are out there? (Yes, yes: probably more than I know.) But more to the point, Anthony Bourdain wrote his own memoir about his professional life as a chef. I am not running to check it out from the library, because it is clearly at most the second best memoir by a chef.
Hamilton came by her style — and her success — the hard way. The book takes the reader from her childhood in rural Pennsylvania, where her cooking education began in her mother’s kitchen, to her teenage years in New York as a coked-out waitress, to college and graduate school, and back to New York, where she worked terrible catering jobs until she started Prune. The story finally ends in Italy, the mecca of good food, where her husband’s family lives (more about that later).
Hamilton is a great writer. Her graduate work was in creative writing, and she tells wonderful stories. She also has the distance from most of the events of the book to be able to make them coherent and shape them into a larger narrative (perspective which Feldman lacks, but more on that below). What was missing from Hamilton was explanation and motivation, particularly for some of her more unorthodox (see what I did there?) choices. After a lot of turmoil in her childhood (her parents’ divorce, financial troubles), Hamilton struggles to make it to and to stay in college. And then she dispatches her four years there in mere sentences — and is then suddenly off to graduate school, with nary an explanation for her choice of post-undergraduate education. She is also by then in a relationship with a woman, who follows her to Michigan and returns with her to New York.
Her foray into restaurant ownership is just as, if not more, mysterious. As Hamilton tells it, a neighbor happens to drop by to ask if she wants to see some real estate he owns. Her catering jobs leading to no foreseeable career, Hamilton essentially decides to buy the space, once home to a failed restaurant, on the spot – but with no indication that she has ever before considered this step. Just as suddenly, the restaurant is not only up and running – again, without explanation of how she started the business, which by her own admission she knows nothing about – but hugely successful, with lines, stretching down the street, of customers waiting for Saturday and Sunday brunch.
And! Hamilton is by this time pregnant with her second child. The father of both is an Italian doctor whom she started seeing while still living with her girlfriend, each without knowledge of the other. The reader is again offered almost nothing to understand this choice. Please note: I generally believe that folks do not owe others explanations of their sexuality, but as this is a memoir, and the choice, unusual, a fuller exploration seems warranted, especially in light of her clear ambiguity about the relationship with her children’s father.
Hamilton never lives with him, though they co-parent. This decision, however, seems less by design and more by inertia – like the pregnancies. She falls for the doctor after he cooks her a delicious, authentic Italian meal from scratch; indeed, the attractions of his extended Italian family in Rome, his mother’s cooking, and their rural villa in Puglia seem more compelling than he himself.
Later in their relationship, he attempts to cook the wooing meal for her again but forgets a key step in the process, rendering the homemade pasta disappointingly edible. Hamilton feels similarly about his family as their charms began to wane, the Roman apartment becoming cramped and hot, the food becoming predictable and uninventive, and the villa becoming provincial and isolating. The book ends with the impending dissolution of her relationship.
Curious about so many unanswered questions, I googled Hamilton for more information. The (perhaps unsubstantiated) gossip indicates that her divorce was less about her growing disaffection for the Italian side of her chosen family than the fact that she was having an affair with her sister’s husband. A potential second affair – and I use that word carefully, since there is no evidence that the parties involved either time had open relationships – combined with the bafflement about her life’s trajectory – ultimately made the story end for me on a sour note. I don’t know know what to believe about her experience, and that seems odd in a memoir.
Since I started by judging Hamilton’s book by its cover, I begin by judging Feldman’s by its name. As my husband pointed out as soon as he saw me reading it: “I’m sure it’s a great read, but that title is terrible. Did the editors have a contest to see who could come up with the most clichéd name in the shortest amount of time?”
Unorthodox was featured in Lilith magazine along with several other books about women’s experiences with Orthodox Judaism. Feldman grew up a Satmar Hasid in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn speaking only Yiddish; was given the minimal high school education – complete with the daily hour of “English” that allowed the religious school to maintain state accreditation – as befits a girl in that community; was married to a man chosen by her family at age 17; and became a mother at age 19. She left her husband a few years after her son was born.
Feldman’s telling makes it clear from the outset that she simply doesn’t belong in the world of her family of origin. She wants to read books in English – and sneaks into the public library to get them, hiding them in her room – and instinctively feels that the Hasidic approach to mental illness (from which bother her uncle and her father suffer) and to sexual assault (of which she is a victim), of not seeking professional help from the outside world, is troubling. She is fated to leave the community, as her mother did years before. She feels it instinctively and deeply, and from her position on the other side, that feeling certainly seems to have been validated.
The book begins with Feldman sitting down to a meal with her estranged mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for years. Writing a book about her experience requires brutal honestly, she figures, and she wants to start with answers from her mother. But this beginning seems only to serve to burnish her credentials as a writer – she’s telling us she set out to be honest, so what follows must therefore be so! – because we’re aren’t actually privy to what her mother says. It’s only later in the story that we discover, along with Feldman when she watches the documentary Trembling Before G-d, about queer folks in Orthodox Jewish communities, that her mother is gay.
The memoir is a quick read, and I zoomed through it, especially when I realized that tales of her married sexual life were forthcoming. (Yes, I am that prurient.) That part of the story did not disappoint: Her marriage begins with a year of physically and emotionally painful attempts to actually have sex, a problem made worse by the fact that everyone in the small community knows about and weighs in on the saga as it occurs. Whatever the root cause of the difficulty, it is also exacerbated by the profound lack of sexual education in the community: Feldman recounts the story of her neighbor, whose husband’s haste, force, and ignorance on their wedding night caused her colon to rupture when they inadvertently had anal instead of vaginal intercourse. Feldman and her husband are similarly clueless. It’s lurid details like this, along with many others, about religious doctrine and anti-Israel rallies, about arranged marriages and purity laws, and that make this a fascinating glimpse into a notoriously insular community.
As the narrative winds down with her decision to leave her husband and Hasidism, she describes the difficulties that this will entail, particularly in gaining at least joint custody of her son. But, in a bizarre omission, nothing of her preparations or the legal battle are recounted. The book ends with her and her son in a new apartment, but we have no idea how they got there.
And so I googled Feldman. Unsurprisingly, the book has come under vitriolic attack by the Satmar Hasidim she describes. And unfortunately, at least some of their objections seem to be warranted: One of the more gruesome accounts in the book (which I do not need to recount here; it will be immediately obvious) was revealed after the book’s publication to be dubious as best. She also omitted the existence of a little sister, and the timeline of her mother’s abandonment has been called into question. Custody of her son was won only after she hid with him at various friends’ houses for several months and survived protracted legal action by her husband’s family.
Unlike Hamilton, Feldman ultimately comes across as young a naïve – she’s writing mere months after her departure, and she is scathing in her indictment of almost everyone in her family. As I finished the book, I wondered whether time would allow her to take a more charitable – or at least more balanced – view of their actions, and if she might end up regretting some of her words.
no power in the 'verse 