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Showing posts from November, 2009

The Waters of Life

A mikveh is a pool of water. In fact, the word mikveh literally means pool or collection. The very first time it is used is in the opening passage of the Torah, Genesis 1: 9-10, where God commands the waters be gathered together (mikveh) to reveal land. The primary stipulation that separates a mikveh from say the local pool is that a mikveh must be composed of “living waters.” The “living waters” have to flow from some naturally occurring source of water: It cannot be static. Water purifies. It is the source of our being. After all, our body mostly made of the stuff? We instinctively recognize that the intrinsic qualities of water as where we all came from. For all those months of gestation we were rocked in fluid, protected in a soft cocoon of water inside our mother. Just hearing the sound of water calms infants and loosens up the mental calluses from adults. That is why so many of us head for the beach during vacation. We are soothed and buffeted by the return to the primordial wate