Ancient Second Temple era mikveh serves Jews of all gender, denomination
Shmaya is the only mikveh in Israel with this mission, and includes among its diverse clientele people converting to Judaism not through the Orthodox Rabbinate.
By WENDY BLUMFIELDThe ancient Second Temple era mikveh is excavated in the Lower Galilee (L). It was moved to Kibbutz Hannaton and is now the modern mikveh Shmaya (R).(photo credit: Courtesy)If one gives a child a bucket and spade, it is very likely in the State of Israel that they will discover some ancient relic, a coin or shard from a water vessel centuries old.Not all archaeological sites can be excavated or preserved; but when during the construction of a road intersection at Hamovil Junction near Kibbutz Hannaton in the Lower Galilee, a Second Temple mikveh was uncovered, some people were determined to make sure that it was not destroyed under a concrete road.Tour guide Steve Gray, who lives on Kibbutz Hannaton, was volunteering at the dig when the mikveh was discovered. He called Anat Harel, another tour guide who lives on Hannaton and serves on the kibbutz’s mikveh committee, and Rabbi Haviva Ner-David, who chairs the committee, to come see the find.Ner-David wrote her doctorate on mikveh and calls mikveh and spiritual companionship her pulpit. She was amazed by the synchronism of this mikveh being uncovered just a few kilometers away from Hannaton’s Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body and Soul, the only mikveh in Israel open to all to immerse as and when they choose, where she officiates a wide range of immersion rituals and facilitates group mikveh workshops.They consulted with the archaeologists in charge of the dig – Dr. Walid Atrash, Elghani Ibrahim – and Kamil Sari, Director of the northern region of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who, despite the fact that they are not themselves Jewish, were equally as excited about the find and confirmed that the ancient mikveh could be moved – with the appropriate permits and funding. They were able to gain the full support of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the local Jezreel Valley Regional Council, but not the funding needed to make the transfer happen.Eventually, through crowdfunding with donations from contributors worldwide and a government allocation through the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage to cover the deficit, sufficient funding was available to beat the race against time to rescue the mikveh before it was covered with concrete. Miraculously, in late September, in the midst of a pandemic, the transfer was achieved. The 57-ton mikveh was cut and lifted out of the ground, protected in a cage, and lifted with a crane onto a flatbed truck to be transported up the road a few kilometers to a site next to the Shmaya mikveh. Spectators and volunteers who had lent their hands to the project celebrated with much jubilation.The uncovering of the mikveh at the archaeological site showed that there had been a thriving farming community in that area, which is outside the walls of Tzippori of 2,000 years ago. I, however, was interested to know how a New Yorker from an Orthodox family came to be ordained as a rabbi, move with her husband and seven children to Jerusalem and leave Orthodoxy to call herself a post-denominational rabbi.And how she eventually found her place at Kibbutz Hannaton, transforming a run-down neglected mikveh into a space for ritual transformation, transition and healing. It is the only mikveh in Israel run by a woman rabbi, not the Orthodox Israeli Rabbinate.As a teenager, Haviva learned about the religious practice of women immersing after uterine bleeding. “But as a kid, I did not understand where my mother went once a month, quietly and returning with wet hair,” she says.
When she did understand, as a feminist she distrusted these laws but found her own way to keep them and make peace with them. “I saw the sexual repression and misogyny involved in these practices, yet I tried to look for deeper meaning,” says Ner-David. “I was a spiritually-inclined person, and Orthodox Judaism was the only way I knew to God at the time. I tried to fit into the religion of my childhood while pushing the boundaries. I became an Orthodox feminist.”When she married, she and her husband Jacob moved to Washington DC, where she studied for a degree in Creative Writing, and she applied for a part-time job running a mikveh in a Conservative synagogue. The idea of running a mikveh appealed to her, as she has long been a “water person,” as she puts it. She swims daily as therapy for FSHD, a type of muscular dystrophy she was born with. “I feel most free in water,” she says.They then relocated to New York and Ner-David studied at the Drisha Institute, a women’s yeshiva. Running the mikveh inspired her to want to become a rabbi, and in the Orthodox world at the time, this was the closest she could come to studying for ordination.In the late 1990s the family moved to Jerusalem where Ner-David studied with Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky for 10 years and was privately ordained by him, while simultaneously writing her doctorate at Bar Ilan University on the subject of mikveh. Later, she studied at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary for interfaith ordination and certification as a spiritual counselor. Haviva incorporates her spiritual counseling skills into her mikveh work, in addition to her thriving spiritual counseling practice.Her clientele consists of people from various faiths and backgrounds – including many rabbis and rabbinical students -- and she works with both individuals and couples. With a specialty in dreamwork, she considers helping others hear the deeper messages in their dreams holy work. “A dream is a message from your unconscious, your soul, like a knock on the door,” she says. “As Rabbi Hisda in the Gemarah says: a dream not deciphered is like a letter not read.”Twelve years ago the family joined Kibbutz Hannaton, and with the support of the kibbutz, she founded Shmaya. “I had dreamed of opening a mikveh in Israel that would welcome all to use as they choose.”Shmaya is the only mikveh in Israel with this mission, and includes among its diverse clientele people converting to Judaism not through the Orthodox Rabbinate. (Reform and Conservative/Masorti conversion is recognized by the Interior Ministry but not by the Rabbinate).Haviva fulfilled her mikveh dream. The mikveh is known across Israel and the world for individuals, couples and groups who are looking for a different mikveh experience. People make private appointments and come for a wide range of life cycle, transition and healing ceremonies. “If requested, I will leave the room to give the maximum privacy or if support is needed, I will stay.” All humans are welcome.“There is no reason, not even in classical religious Jewish law, to refuse mikveh to people who are not Jewish, even ministers of other religions who feel that it is a significant part of visiting the Holy Land. The epitomal mikveh is the ocean, which we learn from the creation story in Genesis. If all are welcome into God’s first mikveh, the ocean, with no questions asked, why should our policy be any different?”Ner-David is busy using her creative writing skills too. She has written several books, essays and blogs. In April her novel, Hope Valley will be published, and soon after, her book for engaged couples, Getting Married Jewishly, will be available. Her husband Jacob started the Jezreel Valley Winery at the kibbutz, before the COVID-19 restrictions they would organize joint events with visits to the mikveh followed by food and wine. The couple’s seven children range from ages 27 down to 10. The youngest was born at Hannaton.The biblical name Hannaton appears in the Book of Joshua in the area of the border between the tribes of Zevulun and Asher in the Lower Galilee, 12 kilometers from Nazareth. The kibbutz was founded in 1984 by students affiliated with the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. In 2006 the kibbutz suffered a severe financial crisis but in 2008 it was recharted as a renewed pluralist liberal Jewish kibbutz. Since 2011, the kibbutz has thrived, accepting new members, Israeli-born and immigrants and constructing new housing.It is now hoped that an archeological garden will be created around the Second Temple Mikveh so that visitors using the modern mikveh Shmaya can experience the continuity of the ritual act they are performing. “People who come for conversion or those who have not experienced mikveh previously want to know the history of this ritual. It is a significant addition to their mikveh experience when people who come to immerse at Shmaya can see a 2,000-year-old mikveh that looks amazingly like our modern mikveh.”■Haviva Ner David’s website is www.rabbihaviva.com
