by Elizabeth Eggert, Administrative and Marketing Assistant
Here’s a conversation I’ve been having a lot over the six months I’ve been working as Mayyim Hayyim’s new Administrative and Marketing Assistant:
“Oh, you recently graduated college, what are you doing now?”
“I work at Mayyim Hayyim, which is a pluralistic mikveh, education center, and art gallery.”
When I have this conversation with friends and family from across the country, many of whom aren’t Jewish, I usually get some variety of the following questions: “What’s a mikveh?” “People still go to the mikveh?” “What does pluralistic mikveh mean?”
I love answering these questions and the conversations they provoke, but I especially love what often happens when I have this conversation with people in the Boston Jewish community I’ve become part of. I’ll introduce myself to someone, and they ask “what do you do,” and I’ll say “I work at Mayyim Hayyim, which is –“ and often, before I can even say “a pluralistic mikveh in Newton,” the person I’m talking to will cut me off and say, “I love Mayyim Hayyim!”
As one of the people who books immersions here at Mayyim Hayyim, I love that I get to learn about what brings people to the mikveh – that they trust us with their stories, both joyful and painful. I love that I get to share in people’s simchas (celebrations), even if it’s just hearing the sound of Siman tov u’mazel tov drifting up to my desk on the third floor, or wishing someone a mazel tov as I walk downstairs to heat up my lunch. I love seeing guests’ smiling faces in the photos I send to them after their immersions. I love checking the guestbook on my way in the door and seeing the new inscriptions (“Thank you again for this beautiful, healing, peaceful space. It truly does feel like my tefilot (prayers) are being heard”).
And I love that I get to work in a place that makes people so passionate they cut me off to tell me how much they love it.
Elizabeth Eggert is Mayyim Hayyim’s Administrative and Marketing Assistant