by Lisa Berman, Mikveh and Education Director Unsettled, energized, anxious, fatigued –we are all experiencing a panoply of emotions at this time of decision-making in our country. This has been a time of political transition unlike any most of us have known in our lifetimes, unprecedented in its fraught nature. Transitions are not new to […]
Continue Readingby Ronna Benjamin A little over a year ago, just after a “clean” mammogram, my primary care physician found a lump in my breast during a routine physical, and insisted on the ultrasound that saved my life. Countless women who have been through this sort of thing know what happened next: the biopsy, the agony […]
Continue Readingby Esther Sadie Brandon In so many ways, water is our medium for transition and change. Immersing in the mikveh at Mayyim Hayyim was my medium to mark the transition from being in treatment to healing. I am now a breast cancer survivor. In early spring of 2015, I was diagnosed with an early stage carcinoma […]
Continue Readingby Leah Robbins, Administrative and Marketing Assistant When I walked into my first day on staff at Mayyim Hayyim yesterday, I had tucked away the pain of this weekend’s horrific events that have been weighing so heavily on me. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I have been wrought with fear and grief over […]
Continue Readingby Sheryl Mendlinger In a recent blog post, What’s with the Water, Carrie Bornstein asks us to reflect on how water has been an agent of change in our lives. There are several of those moments in my lifetime when water has given me those ‘moments of awe.’ I have always felt that water is my […]
Continue Readingby Kelly Banker, Intern Is visiting the mikveh always a peaceful and pleasant experience? As mikveh guides and as an organization, we strive to make it so. And I believe that here at Mayyim Hayyim, we do make immersion experiences as positive for people as we possibly can. But, ultimately, we cannot fully know what […]
Continue Readingby Elisha Gechter You see blood and it changes everything. You go from being unharmed to wounded, from ritually ready (tahor) to ritually unready (tameh), and sometimes from being pregnant to losing that pregnancy. And that’s what happened to me – at 10 weeks pregnant, responding to a middle of the night cry from my […]
Continue Readingby Kythryne Aisling Before coming to Mayyim Hayyim, many people at Temple Beth Jacob had told me what an amazing place it was. As someone who lives with severe chronic pain, and who has a daughter with sensory processing issues, I wasn’t so sure how it would go. While the main reason for our visit was for my daughter and I to formally […]
Continue Readingby Kelly Banker, Intern The poet Mary Oliver says: “To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” Although Mary Oliver […]
Continue Readingby Daniel Goldberg December 8th, 2015: my first mikveh experience. I’ve been Jewish all my life, but up until a few months ago I didn’t even know this ancient ritual could be practiced by men, other than for the purpose of conversion. I met Rachel Eisen, then an intern at Mayyim Hayyim, at a Jewish event […]
Continue Readingby Carrie Bornstein Thanksgiving is over, which means that most of us are back to mile-a-minute multi-tasking as our noses fall right back onto that grindstone. Over the years I’ve seen practices emerge, celebrated on Facebook and elsewhere, about adopting an attitude of Gratitude, a.k.a. The Gratitude Challenge, #givingthanks, and #365Grateful. I’ll admit – while […]
Continue Readingby Rabbi Ilana C. Garber I love everything about the mikveh – the warm waters, the transitions and transformations, the healing and hope. I had immersed in the mikveh long before I was married: marking yahrzeit for my father z”l, becoming a rabbi, and moving to a new town and new job. Then I immersed […]
Continue ReadingSearch
