Mikvah as Ritual Cleansing of the Body and the Soul

The image I’ve selected for this week’s blog post is of a mikvah, a sacred pool of natural water used for ritual bathing in Orthodox or conservative sects of Judaism. The photograph is taken from above to capture the enclosed brick walls with a small arched doorway to enter. The space looks small and slightly claustrophobic, providing ample privacy. Seven steps descend into the turquoise pool of water, which does not seem to be very deep, maybe about waist-high. The stonework appears weathered; perhaps this is a historical mikvah site. The photo is dark and highly contrasted, meaning it may have been taken using a flash camera, during nighttime, or the mikvah is completely closed off from natural sunlight.

The mikvah ritual is written into Jewish law to cleanse the body of impurities by submerging into a bath. Women are instructed to perform the mikvah following menstruation and childbirth to purify themselves before being allowed to engage in sexual activity with their husbands. Note that this ritual is to be performed naked, so I was not able to source an image with a person in the mikvah. The water must be naturally sourced because “water in its natural condition, not affected by human intervention, is what concludes the process by removing uncleanness” (Britannica 2024). The “uncleanness” refers to bodily excretions like menstrual blood, semen, and fluids from childbirth. Interestingly, all of these bodily fluids are representations of life, yet they are deemed dirty and impure in this Orthodox Jewish tradition. Possibly they are equally associated with death? Douglas mentions "menstrual pollution is feared as a lethal danger" (Douglas 2002:150).

Mary Douglas writes about purity, dirt, and the body: "we are not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but we are positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea" (Douglas 2002:3). Douglas describes dirt as symbolic of morality or value. What is considered pure or polluted is socially constructed. Different cultures ascribe their own meaning to the body and have rules/rituals/laws to make the body conform to an ideal. Within Orthodox Judaism, the body is viewed as impure when it has released certain fluids. Women are a vessel for reproduction (sacred), meaning they need to be cleansed before they can engage in sexual activity. Douglas writes "each sex is a danger to the other through contact with sexual fluids" (Douglas 2002:4). A pure act like sex cannot be contaminated with an impure body (like a woman on her period), or else morality and the value of the body is compromised. No specific sin or consequence is stated for having an impure body, but it is considered an offense to worship while contaminated. In this sense, the mikvah ritual maintains the moral hierarchies present in Judaism, which correlate with the list of impurities found in the Torah. 

Douglas, Mary. 2013. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "mikvah." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 14, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/mikvah.