Here is a bottle of Purity from the Hampton Inn. What’s in it? Shampoo. I saved it for a moment like this. I wish that it just came out of a bottle. That would be easy.
Today’s Torah portion is one of those complicated ones and it feels so dated. When I was a kid sitting at Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, we would read a responsive reading from Psalms. Every week we said, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord and who may stand in G-d holy Temple? Only those with clean hands and a pure heart.” And I knew that wasn’t me, that couldn’t possibly be me. My mother was always saying, “Wash your hands.” So clean hands, not so much. How did clean hands and pure heart get linked?
What is purity? Freedom from contamination. Cleanness, clearness, clarity, freshness, healthiness. As someone in the congregation pointed out, the ads for “Pure Michigan” And if you watch those ads you will see water prominently featured. Pure is something not mixed with anything else, pure gold, not an alloy. Or Ivory soap, 99.44% pure. And as someone quickly pointed out. But not 100%. And that is exactly the point. Once we are not 100% pure, and none of us are, then what? Pure is free from harshness or roughness or being in tune, like a musical note, a pure note. Pure is free from what weakens or pollutes. Or free from moral fault or guilt. Ritually clean. Back to cleanliness is next to Godliness.
We know this…particularly at this season of spring cleaning, of Passover cleaning. We borrowed it from the Puritans. Please note their name. Puritans! Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
And this has been inculcated in the culture. A few weeks ago we celebrated scout Shabbat. Now I am a third generation scout, making Sarah a fourth and my granddaughters, fifth. We’ve been doing this for a long time. The Girl Scout law has had many versions. 1912: “A Girl Scout Keeps Herself Pure.” In 1920 it was “A Girl Scout is Clean in Thought, Word and Deed.” The current one is to “show respect for myself and others through my words and actions.” There seems to be a connection between purity and cleanliness, between words and actions.
We know this. Think about the song we sang all the way back in the beginning of the service. Elohai neshoma sh’natata bi t’horahi. “The soul which You have given me is pure.” This is one of the things that separates us from Christians who think that because of Adam and Eve we are all born with what they call Original Sin. There is something holy, profound, pure about breath itself. Later we sing, Kol haneshama t’halal yah. Let every breath of life praise G-d. And then almost immediately, Nishmat kol chai.
So life and breath in its very basic form is pure. Then what goes wrong?
What are the things that make us not pure? I think that they are things that cut us off from the Divine. I think it is about behavior. About not following G-d’s commandments, mitzvot, or even that Girl Scout law. Behavior that is not righteous, is not correct, is not proper, the real meaning of kosher.
Then there are the things in our parsha. Things that erupt from us—blood, rashes, semen, puss—that seem to be against the normal flow.
Tameh and tahor are often translated impure and pure, unclean and clean, unfit and fit. Many women get upset by this language. If we call a woman who is menstruating or who just had a baby unclean, it is not a big jump to call her dirty. And since we have dropped the requirement for men to immerse after an emission, why this seemingly unequal burden on women. Some suggest misogyny. Some suggest that it was the men who wrote the rules. I would suggest fear—blood, other fluids, the source of life spilling out.
How do we become pure again? Three ways. The priest offers a sacrifice for us. We don’t do that any more. We separate ourselves from the community until we heal. We don’t have a formal process for that, although some people do it intuitively. And we can immerse in water. Either in a natural body of spring fed water or in a mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath.
Let me suggest another translation or tameh and tahor, one I learned at Mayyim Hayyim, the community mikveh and education center in Boston. Ritually unready and ritually ready. Ready for what? Ready to approach the Divine. Ready to reconnect. Ready to come close.
So what does this have to do with us? We don’t have sacrifice (thank G-d). We don’t put women outside the camp in some kind of Red Tent. We don’t cut ourselves off from community when we feel a need to become pure. How do we do this? Do we need to do this at all.
At Mayyim Hayyim where I was a mikveh guide and educator, and a staff person briefly, we talk about this connection. There is no magic in the water, and yet people come out changed. It changes your status from impure to pure, from non-Jewish to Jewish, from ritually unready to ritually ready. There are three remaining commanded reasons for mikveh—becoming Jewish, becoming a bride and after a woman menstruates. Mayyim Hayyim has successfully developed other uses for the mikveh. Before chemotherapy, after chemotherapy, after tamoxifin, after divorce, before Bar or Bat Mitzvah, after sexual abuse, for a milestone birthday. They have revitalized some uses like in the 9th month of pregnancy, before a major Jewish holiday, before Shabbat. I suspect the list would be limitlessness. So if there is no magic in the water, what is this about? Why does this work?
There was a good discussion. Someone said that when she does a lot of gardening, she loves taking a shower because she washes off layers and layers of dirt. “You feel so good when you come out.” And while you go into the mikveh clean, since you shower or bathe first, it does feel good. 95 degree water, softer than in my house in Chelmsford or South Elgin. My skin always feels better! Someone added that what she was trying to explain is being “reborn”.
I think it is because it is a whole body experience with nothing that separates us from the Divine. Not clothing, not jewelry, not bandaids, not even nail polish. No barriers. I think part of why Mayyim Hayyim works, why immersing fully in water with no barriers between you and G-d is that there is a strong connection between the spiritual and physical. Many describe this experience of being in womb and being reborn, returning to that sense that the soul is pure. Coming out clean, pure, ritually ready. Able to continue or go on. Able to connect.
Mayyim Hayyim does a lot right. From the moment you walk through their gates there is a sense of warm and welcoming, of beauty, of calm. You have a sense that whatever burden you have, you will be taken care of. If you have joys to celebrate, they will celebrate with you. If you are going through a difficult time, they will cry with you, or create a ritual, a ceremony with you that is meaningful to you. Or they will just give you the non-judgmental space you need, a broad smile and a warm hug.
Shortly after Mayyim Hayyim opened almost 10 years ago, just such a thing happened After years of struggling with psoriasis, someone found a cure. He wanted to immerse, to celebrate his newfound wellness. His rabbi in Detroit had linked the painful disease with tzaarat that we read about in the Torah, in this very parsha Often translated as leprosy, maybe psoriasis is closer. The ritual team created a liturgy that included a prayer of gratitude:
“In gratitude I come today to celebrate the blessings in my life. I honor those who have helped me along the way and give thanks for their supportive presence. As I prepare to immerse in the waters of the mikveh, I appreciate the journey that has brought me to this moment.” Immersion Ceremony for Gratitude.
How does this connect to these parshiyot? As Mayyim Hayyim said about this parsha, “Tzara’at is the physical manifestation of a spiritual disease. Fittingly, a spiritual yet physical disease comes to its close when you enter a physical yet immensely spiritual place, the mikveh.”
While it can be hard to see the connection between the various strands in this parsha—they all have to do with life and death and culminate in immersion. Why would birth and the recovery from a repugnant disease be marked the same way—with immersion? What is the connection between niddah and brit milah, between menstruating and circumcision? Again, Mayyim Hayyim helps us by teaching “Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor (12th century France) suggests that the menstrual blood that women monitor in observing niddah functions for them as covenantal blood, parallel to the blood of circumcision.” Is it possible then, that perhaps they are not that repugnant after all.
Today we also read Chapter 12 of Exodus as we continue to get ready for Passover. Rav Kook writes that we only achieve true redemption and freedom on Passover through removing all boundaries, everything that impedes, all the chametz (leaven) in our lives. Some people have the tradition of immersing in the mikveh before Passover. How can immersing in the mikveh as a way of cleansing ourselves from spiritual chametz make our Passover more meaningful, more redemptive? I suspect it is not cleaning under the refrigerator. That’s schutz, not chamatz!
The end of the Psalm 24 with which I started with is important. It had been truncated at Temple Emanuel. It ends by saying “Such are the people that seek G-d, who long for G-d’s presence” That is the function of the mikveh, of removing things that are tameh, ritually not ready. That we are doing here today, becoming ritually ready, becoming pure, by our prayers, by our deeds, by our thoughts.
In this holy place, let’s take it a step further. Let’s learn from Mayyim Hayyim and make this a safe, non-judgmental space. How do we do that? Some people have a tradition of a Shabbat box. When they come home on Friday afternoon, they leave their keys, their cell phones, their money in a box on the counter, to be picked up again after sundown on Saturday.
What if we have a Shabbat box here? Not for keys and cellphones—although we could do that too. What if, like at Mayyim Hayyim, we suspend our judgment when we walk through the door. Here we embrace diversity. Some are Orthodox. Some are Reform. Some are intermarried. Some are not. Some stand for Kaddish, some sit. Some seek silence, some sing out loud. Some sit with family, some sit alone. Some shuckle, some dance, some stand up straight. All of these ways to daven are within normative Judaism. All of us are Jews. Just Jews. All are trying to do the same thing—connect with the Divine, find that sense of purity, or wholeness, of peace.
So we are living out this Psalm. “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord and who may stand in G-d holy Temple? Only those with clean hands and a pure heart.” Seeking the Lord in the spirit of holiness, purity. As such, that is our reward. Together—if we create this non-judgmental, safe space. Come let us ascend the mountain of the Lord! For me, I’ll jump into the water. I may bring that bottle of shampoo with me. It is a kind of hide and seek game as the Psalm suggests. Ready or not here I come!
So I wrote this before the article came out in the Boston Globe this weekend about Mayyim Hayyim, celebrating its 10th anniversary. Kol hakavod Mayyim Hayyim, you have made a lasting difference in the Jewish community. Not only in Detroit, Australia, Israel as your article suggests but in this Jew now in Chicagoland. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/west/2014/03/29/after-years-mikveh-newton-embracing-new-rituals/p0NyW0clopYzCrxXqteNXI/story.html
Happy Birthday!