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Looking deeper into the Mikvah Waters
Looking deeper into the Mikvah Waters
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By Rabbi Levi Haskelevich
What is a Mikvah? When and who uses it?
The construction of a Mikvah is of utmost importance in Jewish life. It is prioritized to such a great extent that it would even mandate the sale of a synagogue or the Torah scroll if there was no other way to secure the needed funding i .
The Torah states (Leviticus 11:36): “...a spring or a cistern, a gathering of water remains clean…” G-d instructs us that a certain gathering of water, a Mikvah, should be used to bring ritual “cleanliness” to certain ritual “uncleanliness”. The Torah is not talking about physical dirt or hygiene, rather a spiritual category of cleanliness.
A Mikvah is used in a) the process of conversion to Judaism for both men and women, b) in order to enable a person’s transition to ritual purity, and c) as part of the process of rendering metal and glass dishes fit for use if they were manufactured or owned by a non-Jew.
The sages of the Talmud informed us of the many details required to deem this water gathering a Kosher Mikvah, mandated by the Oral Law, the Torah Shebaal Peh.
In reality, what might look like an ordinary pool contains a complex system that makes it a Kosher Mikvah. In our Mikvah, there are two pools or levels, one atop the other. When the rainwater accumulates and trickles down naturally, or one might say by the hand of Heaven, with specific rules limiting human intervention or the water passing through a man-made vessel, it is then stored in a special pool, and in many cases beneath the floor. The upper pool is filled with tap water which is filtered, heated and chlorinated. The
