The Mikveh
Here’s a picture Leslie took before the mikveh at the Los Gatos J.C.C. where it is housed.
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| Rabbi Shifra with the hat, Deborah the attendant next to her mural likeness, Dawn next to Shifra, my friend Linda - who encouraged me greatly - next to me. |
As I mentioned in my last post, I had to get very clean for the mikveh — the ritual bath in which I would emerge reborn as a Jew. No foreign substances. Nude, of course. The idea is to be as close as possible to the condition of a newborn… or at least, as close as a 70-year-old woman can get. I’m pretty much a natural woman without embellishments, but I did have to remove my two rings.
It was my fingernails that were the issue.
