What is mikveh?
Mikveh is an ancient Jewish ritual practice of water immersion, traditionally used for cleansing, purification and transformation. It’s been conventionally used for conversion to Judaism, for people before they get married and for niddah, the practice of cleansing after menstruation. There is a mystical connection to mikveh as a metaphor for our first mikveh of birth. Entering a mikveh is a transformative and healing experience and we have long wondered why it is not available to more people, including the significant Trans and Queer populations in Jewish communities.
When we make ritual, we are working with the divine forces of presence and intention. The magic of mikveh comes in making contact with water. Contact with water marks a threshold and functions as a portal to bring closer our ritual intention, and olam haba - the world to come.
What is queer mikveh?
To us, a Queer mikveh welcomes anyone, regardless of spiritual background. As Jews in diaspora we want to share and use our ritual practices for healing the land and waters most of us are guests and settlers on, for the liberation of all beings. We also want to acknowledge the Indigenous people who are also Jews who we strive to learn from and befriend through this work.
We have come up with this working definition and welcome feedback!
Queer mikveh is a ritual of Jews in diaspora. We believe the way we work for freedom for all beings is by using the gifts of our ancestors for the greatest good. We bring our rituals as gifts. Queer mikveh acknowledges that our path is often (not always) to live on lands that are not historically our peoples’ and we honor the Indigenous ancestors of the land we live on, doing mikveh as an anti-colonialist ritual for collective and personal liberation. Often a Queer mikveh seeks to bring attention to Indigenous water protection efforts, Indigenous led #LandBack or Black-led land projects. This may look like a fundraiser responding to an ask from these communities, a call to action and/or a commitment to learning and engaging more of these efforts. The Queer mikveh may also be an act of solidarity with a specific action.
Queer mikveh is a physical or spiritual space that uses the technologies of water and the Jewish practice of mikveh to mark transitions. Transition to be interpreted by individuals and individual ritual. Queer mikveh in its essence honors the story of the water. The historical stories of the water we immerse in, the stories of our own bodies as water and the future story we vision. Queer mikveh is accessible physically and spiritually to any and all people who are curious about it (and practice in reverence). You don’t have to be a practicing Jew to enter queer mikveh. You don’t have to be Jewish. Queer mikveh is an earth and water honoring ritual.
Queer mikveh exists whenever a Trans or Queer person/persons or an ally gather to do mikveh. Each person is their own spiritual authority and has the power to create their own ritual for individual or collective healing.
Who gets to do queer mikveh?
Everyone! Mikveh practice is available to all of us as a healing tool at any time. You don’t need any credentials. Your own wisdom is all the power you need to be a Jewish ritual leader. We do mikvehs in lakes, rivers, bathtubs, showers, outside in the rain, from teacups and in our imaginations.
Mikveh has been continually practiced since ancient Judaism. It is an offering of unbroken Jewish lineage you can claim/re-claim as your own. Queer mikveh practice can be a tool to all Jews and non-Jews who want to heal wounds caused by white supremacy and colonialism. It’s a prayer for healing our bodies, spirits and the earth.
Am I Jewish enough for queer mikveh?
If you ate buñuelos or latkes, if you only ate challah and don’t do anything else Jewish, if you never went to Hebrew school, if you grew up poor or working class, if you don’t know who your ancestors are, if your grandparents converted to Christianity to survive, if your family lit candles on Friday nights but didn’t know why, if you’re JOC (Jew of color) or are Indigenous and Jewish or Black and Jewish, if you’re Disabled, if your dad is Jewish and your mom’s not, if your family converted, if you’re Trans or/and Queer, if you’re a Jew by choice, if you don’t know any prayers and feel weird when you hear them. And five million other reasons because white supremacy and anti-semitism told you you weren’t Jewish enough. They’re all lies. You belong to Judaism and you are Jewish if you want to be, if it feels strange and if it feels right: You are Jewish. And that is enough.
Am I queer enough?
Guaranteed, if you are queer it’s 99.9% possible that you’ve asked yourself this question. It’s comparable to a teenager asking themselves, am I cool enough? And they are completely interconnected. As queers and non-binary people, many of us didn’t have the most positive teenage experiences related to our gender and sexuality. So, when we become adults, there’s leftover teenage insecurity we need to resolve. Thus, the feeling of not being “queer enough/cool enough.” The secret is, everyone is cool. Everyone. It’s a fact of life. Coolness is relevant and our experience of living is always relevant. It may not be relevant to everyone but it is relevant to an important group of people. They may be friends, they may be strangers but they are looking for you as much as you are looking for them. That’s everything.
The queer community often helps us understand our relevance, helps us find a place when we’ve felt misplaced most of our lives. However, it can often feel like a clique because of our experience. Sometimes it’s legit, exclusive and hurtful. But no matter how you’ve been treated, your experience is yours and it’s important. You are queer enough.
Where can I queer mikveh?
Good question ;) It depends on what’s important to you around mikveh practice. If you want to mikveh in a conventional mikveh space, there are some amazing organizations and synagogues making mikveh more accessible to more of us Queers. However, these places are few and far between at this point (this project is a prayer that this shall change, goddexxspeed!).
The ocean is always a great option. There’s no debate on that. It’s just a matter of finding a spot that feels good and safe for you personally. Lakes are also good places. Depending on how conventional you are, you could do a mikveh with sound too. Like a sound bath. Or drink a glass of water and make it a mikveh ritual, or immerse in your bathtub. There are lots of options, we are all about empowering people to claim ritual and make it your own. Make it accessible for you, your unique body and your unique spirit.