Observance or isolation? Orthodox Jewish women are unsure how to practice sexual purity in a pandemic. via TheAtlantic
Around the country, Jewish communities have all but shut down, closing synagogues, canceling Passover seders, conducting funerals by Zoom. Yet one kind of Jewish public space has remained mostly open: mikvahs, or pools used for ritual immersions.
“Every time any of us go outside, we’re all just petrified about touching, petrified about breathing,” she told me. At the mikvah, “there are a thousand surfaces that I have to put my things down on that could have been contaminated.” Like many other mikvahs, the facility in Riverdale has been screening women for symptoms, sanitizing its rooms between uses, and strictly limiting the number of people who can be in the building at the same time.
Some mikvahs have found the risks of immersion to be intolerable. Mayyim Hayyim, a pluralist, egalitarian mikvah in Boston, decided in late March to close for the duration of the pandemic. “The board ended up being really split over what to do,” Carrie Bornstein, the executive director, told me. “There was just a really strong feeling, ultimately: If even one person could have the risk of being exposed because of coming to Mayyim Hayyim, we just don’t want to take that risk.
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