The mikveh is the ritual bath that is utilized by Jews to achieve a state of purity. Most typically women go to the mikveh at the end of their monthly period, though mikvehs are also used for other purposes, including as part of the conversion ceremony. A group of Orthodox women are participating in a “mikveh strike” for what reason?

Mikvah Mei Chaya Mushka in Crown Heights by Mk17b is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED via Wikimedia Commons

A. Women in Williamsburg are protesting the conditions at a local mikveh. They say that they have been unable to get the owners to sufficiently clean the facility, and as a result they have called for a “mikveh strike” until the men who are in charge of this mikveh commit to providing a clean and hygienic facility.

B. A mikveh on the Upper East Side of New York has begun providing services to patrons who belong to Conservative and Reform communities. Some of their practices are not as strict as those of the Orthodox. For example, converts who want to go to the mikveh have not completed a conversion process according to Orthodox standards. Orthodox patrons of that mikveh have called a “mikveh strike” in protest of this facility allowing uses which they do not approve of.

C. A group of Orthodox women in Brooklyn are protesting against a man who will not give his wife a get, a Jewish divorce. These women have begun a “mikveh strike,” refusing to go to the mikveh at the end of their menstrual cycles, which then means that they cannot have marital relations with their husbands as would traditionally be the case at that time.

D. Men can visit a mikveh for a number of reasons. For example, some men go to the mikveh to regain purity after contact with the dead, while others routinely go before Yom Kippur. A group of Orthodox women in Monsey, New York have started a “mikveh strike” against a local mikveh, because the hours available are skewed towards the men’s needs, and not sufficiently conducive to women’s schedules (especially citing the lack of women’s hours during the day when children are at school).

E. A mikveh was recently built in the basement of a building in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. The first floor of the building happens to be the site of a bowling alley. To promote the new mikveh, the facility is offering a special wherein users who first go bowling upstairs will receive a 10% discount for each “mikveh strike” they roll during the game. Anyone bowling a perfect game earns a free mikveh visit.

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