Immersion
My first time at the mikveh wasn’t supposed to be for me.
Growing up, I had never felt that mikveh immersion was for me at all. I had heard about it only as a part of niddah, something married women did when their period ended each month. On a Jewish teen trip to New York, I visited a mikveh for the first time. I remember looking at the bath and thinking it seemed interesting, but removed from my life and even from my growing interest in Jewish practice.
My period had started in sixth grade, and was only ever a source of suffering and anguish. I would bleed buckets—my body overcome by pain (I would learn, ten years later, that this was endometriosis), not to mention monthly bouts of depression.
Why would I want to honor that, let alone think about it for a moment more than I have to?
A few years ago, I started a medication that stopped the worst endometriosis symptoms, and also stopped my period altogether. By this time, I had come out as queer. I was in a lesbian relationship, with no ability to menstruate. What could mikveh possibly have to do with me? Once again, the practice was relegated to being a thing for other people, something I admired but never thought to do.
But since starting rabbinical school, I have come to understand that mikveh is about a lot more than niddah, and that this ritual has been embraced by queer and disabled Jews. In fact, just across the parking lot from my school sits Mayyim Hayyim, an open mikveh that seeks to make this practice meaningful and accessible to all.
Though I had never stepped through the door, when their mikveh guide training course popped up in my school’s listserv, something drew me to sign up.
I felt drawn to be a source of support in these vulnerable moments of transition, whether joyful or painful. But as the course began, it became clear that if I was going to guide others through this ritual, I would have to see what it was like myself, period or no period.
Filling out the form for my immersion, I realized that I was in fact in a transition moment. After years of agonizing pain, I had finally gotten a medication to alleviate some symptoms of my chronic illness. I had also just started psych meds for the first time, easing symptoms I had always thought were “just how my brain worked.” I could mark this moment, I thought. It could be the beginning of healing.
That’s how I found myself at Mayyim Hayyim on a Tuesday afternoon, squeezing my girlfriend Hannah’s hand, with only a vague idea of what was about to happen.
My mikveh guide explained how I would need to prepare for the immersion. As she spoke, I suddenly felt afraid to be left alone with my body. I wanted to protest, to say that being present with my body has never been safe. To back out of this whole plan. But then she and Hannah were gone. So I undressed. Took off each of my earrings and cuffs one at a time. Removed my mascara. Gingerly began to follow the purification instructions.
In the shower, I scrubbed my scalp with coconut shampoo. Rubbed my legs meticulously with Dove soap. Turning to face the shower head, I let the water pour on my face for what felt like eternity, until my forehead and cheeks were tingling. I gently brushed my toenails and fingernails. Pumice-stoned my heels. It occurred to me that I’d never done something like this before—tended to my body slowly and intentionally, being with each body part, instead of just wanting it (the shower, manicure, haircut) to be over quickly so I could have the result. I was shocked to find it was exactly what my body needed.
I stood before the mirror, shiny, clean, and naked except for my glasses.
Instead of looking at myself, my eyes caught on a page of kavanot set by the sink, on which Hebrew phrases from our tradition were accompanied by intentions. “The body, unadorned, is beautiful,” it said. “You are made in the image of God.” “You are a miracle.” “Each part of your body is holy.”
My eyes filled with tears. Until that moment, I had not felt these words to be true. Instead, throughout my twenties, living with a progressive chronic illness, I had come to believe something I wouldn’t have admitted to myself or to anyone else. That my body—with all of its pains and aches and illnesses and scarred tissue—was defective. It could just as well have been tossed out. Who needs it—this thing that is so broken, that has caused me so much tsuris? As my illness got worse, my relationship to my body became fraught with anger, betrayal, then dissociation. If I could have kept my soul and gotten rid of my body, I would have.
But reciting these kavanot, it dawned on me how wrong I was.
God created me in God’s image: all of me. Not just the easy parts, or the pain-free parts. The whole thing. All of it, with infinite divine wisdom. How could any part be anything less than holy? Anything less than a miracle?
I could finally bear to look at my body, the only one I’ll ever have. My heart was filled with awe and tenderness. Instead of berating myself, new, kind thoughts arose: I love you. I am so sorry for what we’ve been through. Thank you for carrying me through all of it. Thank you for doing your best. I’m here with you, now.
I wrapped myself in the requisite white sheet, finally ready.
In my head played lyrics by my favorite songwriter, Olivia Barton:
A white sheet in the sun on the water
A white circle on a white page
Look close enough and I’ll remember
The part of me that was never injured
There’s a part of me that was never injured.
I sang those words on repeat, imagining a glowing orb of light in my stomach.
I walked into the mikveh. Hannah was waiting for me in there, the sun a spotlight on her freckled face.
At the sight of her, I was instantly crying.
“Oh, my lovey,” she said over and over.
Since an early movie date when I collapsed on the sidewalk and she jumped into action, she’s been by my side through the very worst. The constant ulcers, the vomit, the cracked joints; the hospital visits and doctors offices with no end in sight. The hopelessness, the dread, the flare-ups, the flare-up-related-depressions. She’s been there to hold me and gently pluck me out of thought spirals, to tuck me into our cozy bed and make hundreds of cups of tea just right. In the moments when I felt guilty and ashamed of how much it all was, she assured me there was nowhere she’d rather be—no one she’d rather love. I could not be luckier.
With her as my witness, I walked seven slow steps down into the bath.
As soon as my body was immersed in the warm water, I wanted to stay forever. I said the blessings, and dunked three times, while Hannah sat on a wooden seat, smiling. Each time I dunked, I felt my body more. I felt how easy it was to be in the water. I swam around like a fish. Pretended I was in a womb.
I lovingly touched the backs of my knees, my lower back, the folds of my belly, my neck, my lymph nodes, thinking about all the hundreds of times I’ve felt them for signs of crisis.
I am here with you, my touch said. We can be here. We’re okay.
The mikveh guide had given me a page of blessings specifically for illness and healing. On it I found these words:
“May I take from my pain only that which serves to make me wise, and leave behind that which serves to harden my heart.”
My illnesses, physical and mental, have made me wiser. They have helped me to empathize with others’ pain, to treasure rest, to learn disability theory, to find gratitude and joy for the tiniest moments that go unnoticed. They have helped me to write words that make people feel less alone, to prioritize accessibility, to find peace in missing out and find comfort in the home space.
My illnesses, at times, have hardened my heart, too—have forced me to dissociate from this body and from my reality.
I brought all of this into the water. I prayed that it would wash away the parts that harden, that I would emerge with only the parts that serve to make me wiser and kinder.
When I walked up the seven steps and Hannah wrapped me in the warm white sheet, I could sense that something had been cleansed, and something else had shifted in my soul.
After my immersion, nothing material changed about my body. My knee still aches. I still need more sleep than most people can believe. I still live a chronically ill life.
What did change was how I relate to my body.
The purification ritual insisted that my body was something holy—something to be cared for, rather than discarded. Held by the water, I began to forgive myself for blaming my body for so long.
Gila Axelrod is a Boston-based rabbinical student, educator, and writer. Her work explores topics such as queerness, body liberation, illness, and grief through a Jewish lens.
