Mikvah, Safety and more

A visit from Aliza Kline of the Mayyim Hayyim community mikvah brought up a kind of intense and weird nostalgia and homesickness in me today.

When Aliza arrived at my work, she called to ask about parking. I said I'd meet her outside and when I got there, the driveway was blocked by a van. After I yelled and got the van moved, the driveway was still made very difficult by cars parked on either side. Then she had to take her car down the steep, curved incline to our parking, while I was simultaneously berating the man who was blocking easy entrance (he said he wasn't) and talking to a student who wanted to talk to me.

Later, after the presentation, her entrance seemed like a metaphor to me about my life in Israel. There was one moment during it when I thought "wait, she's not an olah, she may not be able to handle this".

Aliza started her presentation talking about what makes a ritual work. In 11 years in Israel, I feel I have not heard people ask this kind of question. I had trouble understanding it - rituals work and don't work - it's rarely one or the other to me. She asked the students what a ritual was and they had answers - I could not remember what a ritual is. I was trying to figure out which parts of my life are ritual and which are not, and did not feel sure I could distinguish.

But I should back up. That was after another conversation on our way over to the Beit Midrash. My boss had mentioned the old mikvah in Brighton, and I said I had been there before my wedding, and then started on thinking about that and about what it has meant to me to pass at the mikvah - pass for straight that is, because I've never been to the mikvah when I was not a lesbian, and I've never been out at a mikvah, whatever that would mean.

Aliza talked a lot about safe space and what it means to create a space where people are going to feel safe taking off their clothes. I didn't even feel safe talking about it. I noticed most faculty were not there, and I noticed the relative ease with which the students participated, and I thought about how much more restrained a culture Israel is when it comes to talking about sexuality.

I thought about my kids, and about how I went to the mikvah before I got pregnant, for a period of months each time, and about how I was always passing as a straight person. I thought, and almost said something, about how the mikvah lady told me "livriut" and about how I prayed to get pregnant each time. I thought of the Reform rabbi who married us and who had recommended mikvah to me when I was trying to get pregnant, and I thought of the ultrasound technician who, the day after the first time I went to the mikvah in that process, asked me, "did you go to the mikvah?" Could she see it on my face? It was the one and only time in the fertility process that I was asked. I didn't think of, but think of now, the kavannah a friend gave me for mikvah, and how I prayed for everyone who was trying to get pregnant, and how until this day I have a track record - all the people I have prayed for, there and elsewhere, that they be blessed to become parents, have received that blessing.

I listened to Aliza talk about making mikvah in Massachusetts safe and accessible space for everyone. It kind of reminded me of how I feel when I daven with a Reconstructionist siddur - like, oh, my spirituality used to be like that - open, full of possibilities. Aliza had asked for an example of what doesn't work and when I said, "when you can't bring your whole self there" she said, "like maybe when a mechitza isn't done in a way that can work for you," and I thought of the many Shabbat mornings I spend in a mechitza shul where I daven and what it means to try to bring my whole self there to a space that doesn't reflect my values and what it means to pray or be part of any ritual moment and not be all of me but still feel transformed and uplifted. And what it means to sit with contradictions and discomfort and not knowing.

I thought of the parking lot entrance, and how much that feels like my ritual life here. I wondered if I will one day experience some reclamation of mikvah. Alen said maybe we shouldn't be planning a trip to disney world and instead should be thinking of going back to Massachusetts for a trip to Mayyim Hayyim. Then I think of my very real moments in the mikvah, and my very real kids, and thank G-d.