Water ritual is foundational in both Jewish and Latin cultures. As with many traditions, Judaism has a deep connection to water as a transformative, creative and healing element. Mikveh, a ritual bath Jews immerse their bodies in at important life transitions, uses water as its central element to facilitate the status change made possible with immersion. Mikveh is for anyone who is Jewish and those at the moment of conversion.
Two Organizations
Mayyim Hayyim began to make mikveh accessible to the diversity of the Jewish community in 2004. In 2017, we began the Rising Tide Open Waters Network which brought the Open Mikveh Movement to the world-wide Jewish community. Since then, we have seen more Jews connecting to mikveh for both traditional and newer reasons for immersion.
Similarly, Jewtina y Co. was born as a place for people with both Latin and Jewish identities to meet their intersectional traditions as a source of meaning and empowerment. Founded in 2019, Jewtina y Co. nurtures Latin-Jewish community, identity, leadership and resiliency through a variety of learning immersions, travel experiences and the signature, PUENTES Leadership and Resiliency Fellowship.
Together, guided by Jewtina’s value of Colaboración, which prioritizes accessibility and equity within its programs, and Mayyim Hayyim’s value of Ahavat Yisrael, loving the diversity of the Jewish people, we worked to address an important inequity in the Open Mikveh Movement: the lack of representation and resources in Spanish and Portuguese relevant to Latin-Jews.
Story of our Partnership
When Soreh Ruffman, Director of Rising Tide, and Kimberly Dueñas, Director of Learning at Jewtina y Co., first met, Kimberly acknowledged that Mayyim Hayyim could have hired a translator rather than seeing an opportunity for a shared project. Yet, in partnership, Jewtina could help decide which resources to prioritize in translation and could add the unique insight of Latin-Jews in the creative process of translation. Since Mayyim Hayyim resources are essentially spiritual, that spirituality needed to be conveyed in the translated text. Jewtina provided translation with both the Latin and Jewish experiences in mind, knowing the languages, their depth, and ensuring that spirituality comes across. Importantly, as a partner, Jewtina would disseminate the resources to their international community and ensure that these materials are truly comprehensible to Latin-Jews.
Spanish and Portuguese
Together we decided to translate two resources into both Spanish and Portuguese. Jewtina has been making a conscious effort to create tri-lingual resources to honor their communities from both Spanish speaking and Portuguese speaking Latin America. In pursuing this partnered resource, it was imperative for us to ensure that from North America to Central and South America, our community members would see themselves in each word and include them during the most transformative moments of their lives.
Rituals for Healing and Renewal
Both Latin cultures and Jewish cultures look to water as a source of healing, which informed our decision to translate our Toward Healing immersion ceremony and our Seven Kavanot for Mikveh Preparation (which are linked on our immersion ceremonies page). For example, in many Mesoamerican indigenous traditions, the elements, particularly water, is held as sacred and vital to community life, it is related to as an ancestor. Water being a source of life and a conduit of transformation, that both holds and reflects story, tradition, life, death and culture. Considering the transformational power of water, Latin-Jews can interact with this resource to both celebrate and remember the places where water played a role for their ancestors in healing and nourishment. In the translation of these ceremonies, Latin wisdom from the land will shine through as a guiding force for practitioners.
Healing rituals often include restoring hope, renewal and rebirth, which are central themes when using the mikveh. In Jewish tradition, the mikveh is seen as the womb, and when entering, “[one] is reentering the womb, and when [one] emerges… [it is] as if born anew. Thus, attain[ing] a completely new status” [Waters of Eden, pg. 13]. That new status mentioned above is for the person emerging from the waters to create and decide for oneself, but the waters are there to help in the creation and rebirth. There is a temporary death, holding one’s breath underwater, and re-emerging transformed by the creative and healing powers of the water. We imitate the process of healing, moving between statuses and emerging with renewed hope and power.
Spanish and Portuguese resources available online.
With Gratitude
Through the generosity of Women of Reform Judaism’s YES Fund Grant, Mayyim Hayyim has begun the important journey of making resources accessible to the full diversity of the Jewish community. By translating two of our most used resources into Spanish and Portuguese, we are making mikveh practice more accessible. We are grateful to WRJ for helping us begin this journey. We are also grateful to our partners at Jewtina y Co. who value this work. We truly hope for this project to be the initial spark in an enduring and fruitful partnership between Mayyim Hayyim and Jewtina y Co.
Kimberly Ariella Dueñas
Kimberly Ariella Dueñas (she/ella) is a California native with a global spirit. Born into a multicultural home, she discovered that the best way to explore her dynamic Jewish identity was to immerse and involve herself in the world – beginning with tracing her roots to rural El Salvador and across Europe.
An international Jewish educator, Kimberly Ariella is passionate about providing a safe space for people to develop deeper connections to their Latin and Jewish identities. Her passion for community healing, led her to join the Jewtina y Co. team as a founding member and the Director of Learning in charge of innovative identity, community and wellbeing programming. Prior to working with Jewtina y Co. she was an experiential Jewish educator in Los Angeles, CA and volunteer educator at the Jewish Community Center in Mumbai, India.
Kimberly Ariella is a graduate of the American Jewish University, where she was selected to be the valedictorian of her graduating class. She is a former JDC Entwine Jewish Service Corps Fellow and community representative, a Selah Fellowship (Bend the Arc), and is a member of the Schusterman Foundation’s ROI community. In 2024, she was awarded the Pomegranate prize for Jewish Education from The Covenant Foundation. She finds joy in celebrating the multitudes of her traditions with her loved ones and community.
Kimberly is Director of Learning and Founding Member of Jewtina y Co.
Soreh Ruffman
Soreh Ruffman [she/her/s], sought connection to her Jewish identity from a young age, asking the elders in her family to share their stories, avidly studying to become Bat Mitzvah and seeking every opportunity possible to act as an educator for youth in her Jewish community. These experiences allowed her to find a home as an educator and community organizer.
Soreh graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she interned with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children doing prisoner advocacy work. She earned her master’s degree in special education from California State University at Sacramento, organized with Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective and taught in Oakland public schools for 10 years.
Seeking deeper connection to her Jewish roots, she farmed at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She developed her mikveh practice during this time, which helped to change her relationship to chronic pain and root more fully into a Jewish life.
Soreh is the former Director of the Rising Tide Open Waters Network at Mayyim Hayyim.