by Rabbi Jeremy Sher This Hanukkah season, as we get ready to commemorate the rededication of the Temple, I’m thinking back to a very special time of personal rededication: my immersion at Mayyim Hayyim, one of the formative experiences of my life. I had been to Mayyim Hayyim several times to witness immersions, but it […]
Continue Readingby Kimberly Creem Earlier this year, my daughter, Lily, became a bat mitzvah. I’d been looking forward to this for years. Beneath the Surface, Mayyim Hayyim’s program for Bat Mitzvah girls and their moms, sounded like a wonderful idea. When I told Lily we were going to sign up, she wondered if we’d know anyone […]
Continue Readingby Diane Baum On a recent Sunday in October, the bar and bat mitzvah class of seventh graders from Congregation Beth Elohim in Acton visited Mayim Hayyim to learn about mikveh. Here is what my 13-year-old daughter had to say about it: The mikveh was interesting and beautiful. We learned through discussion and charades where […]
Continue Readingby Rebekah Erev In 2000, a group of radical queers in Olympia, Washington welcomed me into a chavurah (group of friends) of artists, musicians, and organizers. We had all experienced feeling excluded, living on the fringes, and shared a desire to welcome and acknowledge the beauty of the liminal space we occupied as queers. We […]
Continue Readingby Carrie Bornstein, Executive Director The last time I wrote for this blog I was preparing to deliver a baby as a gestational surrogate, for a Jewish couple from London. So, yeah… that happened. On September 28, 2017 I delivered a 6 lb., 10 oz. baby girl – you can read the whole birth story […]
Continue Readingby Esther Sadie Brandon I am now a breast cancer survivor. In the summer of 2015, an immersion at Mayyim Hayyim was my medium to mark the transition from being in treatment to healing. The words Refuah Sh’leimah can be interpreted as a prayer for wholeness. Integration is the neurological process of bringing together differentiated […]
Continue Readingby Lisa Berman, Mikveh and Education Director It was a hot, sunny day during Sukkot last month and I was in Jerusalem visiting my daughter. During our ten days together, we’d plan an adventure each day. One day we scoured the Muslim Quarter of the Old City for a 200 year old address-less pastry shop […]
Continue Readingby Rabbi Miriam-Simma Walfish Niddah is the practice of abstaining from sexual intimacy around the time of menstruation. When contemplating the rabbinic laws surrounding menstruation, it can be easy to wonder: Why is there a whole area of Jewish law devoted to the intricacies of determining the beginning and end of women’s menstrual cycles? At times, […]
Continue Readingby Leeza Negelev, Associate Director of Education Often when I teach youth about mikveh, I talk about how a ritual can help us get from Point A to Point B. We start with the secular. For a few minutes, a group of middle school students and I will generate all kinds of transitional moments and […]
Continue ReadingOriginally posted in March 2017 by Anonymous As a Jewish woman living a traditional halachic life (governed by Jewish law), I am often faced with questions from myself and others regarding my religious choices. One question that will likely always come up is that of the place of women in halachic Judaism. In modern-day Orthodoxy, […]
Continue ReadingOriginally posted on January 18, 2017 by Cantor Sarah Bolts and Michael Chernicoff Sarah: I honestly didn’t know what to expect from a pre-marriage class. I grew up in the Orthodox community, where pre-marriage classes came in the form of “kallah (bride) classes” in which a bride would learn about the laws of niddah (regular separation […]
Continue Readingby Cantor Rachel Stock Spilker We return to who’ve we’ve always been, are meant to be, but have not yet become. (R. Dov Peretz Elkins) The whole country was focused on the moon and the sun in August for the highly anticipated solar eclipse. We bought our special sunglasses, decided where we wanted to be […]
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