Living Waters

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Bekah and I hike the trail beside a river swollen from spring snowmelt. It’s that time of the month, which, in the Jewish tradition, occurs about seven days after that time of the month has ended. Bekah’s best friend is out of town so she’s asked me to accompany her to the ritual bath known as mikvah. As an observant Jew she must immerse herself in the mikvah mayim chayim—a gathering of living waters—after her cycle ends and before resuming conjugal relations with her husband.

It is March 1991. We are here because there is no indoor mikvah in Eugene, Oregon—the closest being in Portland, four hours of travel to and fro. A ritual bath in the Willamette River, despite a raging current, is only 10 minutes from Bekah’s house. It’s the age-old dilemma: traffic or drowning?

Fir needles, peeled bark, and decaying maple leaves cushion our path. The brisk air is made colder still with the rustle of winds through stands of alder. I’m wearing jeans, plaid flannel, hiking boots, and a burnt orange Gore-Tex jacket I’ve owned since I first heard of Gore-Tex, about 10 years earlier. Bekah wears a flowing ankle-length dress made of rayon, a silk headscarf, leather moccasins with buttons made from buffalo nickels, a thick wool shawl she knitted with matching gloves. We’re an odd couple, even for Oregon. Like the Blues Brothers, we are on a mission from God.

Bekah and I are both Jewish. She is deeply religious, and I observe the usual doubts of a nonbeliever. I’m unsure about God, less sure about the wisdom of our congregational rabbi, utterly unconvinced about the need to observe more than one or two of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) that Bekah’s family incorporates into daily life.

We are friends by way of our children, because children don’t insist upon friends who are exactly like themselves. We’ve managed to minimize clashes between feminism and tradition by focusing on our common interests. She’s invited our clan to her home for dinner a few times, a kindness I cannot return because Bekah and her family observe the dietary laws of kashrut and they cannot eat a cooked meal at our house. Having been an on-again, off-again vegetarian, I value the decision to eat consciously, so I don’t take it personally. But the ritual of mikvah gets me where I live, inside my body, and I was both surprised and curious when she asked me to accompany her.

The laws concerning immersion arise from a scriptural passage: Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your unclean-nesses, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you (Ezekiel 36:25). Like so much of the Torah, the real story is told through rabbinic interpretation, and it’s the interpretation I find bothersome. While sex is viewed as a spiritual act, there is a prohibition against relations during menstruation. I view the ritual as old-fashioned, a remnant of a patriarchal religion that’s segregated and punished women since Eve first tried a new recipe with apples. Bekah interprets the ritual in a wholly, holy different way. She believes that human activities become deeply spiritual acts when they are sanctified through prayer and religious observance.

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