Tag #120451 - Interview #87387 (Rifca Segal)

My mother went to the ritual bath, I was there with her myself. The ritual bath in Sulita was very rudimentary, it consisted of bathtubs that were placed one next to another, and if you went to the bathroom, you undressed in front of women. But haf of it was for men, half was for women, there was steam as well, and also a mikveh. There wasn’t a separate mikveh for women and one for men, just one, but they took turns going there. I think they changed the water, you couldn’t do it otherwise. But this wasn’t for washing purposes, it was a ritual tradition, holy water. [Editor’s note: Mikvah or (mikve) is a ritual bath for the purpose of ritual immersion required by biblical regulations after ritually impure incidents (e.g. sexual activity, menstruation) have occurred. The word mikvah means a 'collection', generally a collection of water. The water has to be "living water" such as springs or groundwater wells. Full immersion in the mikvah nullifies most forms of impurity. It is not the water itself that purifies but the act of the immersion, which is subjected to detailed regulations specified in classical rabbinic literature.] But I never entered the mikveh, I have always been nauseous by nature. I only saw it, it was very rudimentary, with a cement pool, and a few stairs for getting into the pool, the water was up to the waist, but it wasn’t clean. My mother used to go in, for my father’s sake, as my father wanted to go to the mikveh.