Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Paula Brody & Family Education Center

Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Paula Brody & Family Education Center immerses you in Jewish tradition. It is reclaiming and reinventing one of Judaism’s most ancient rituals—mikveh immersion—for contemporary spiritual use with the aim of teaching all who are interested and making the mikveh a sacred space that is open and accessible to all. Mayyim Hayyim works to provide new access points and changed attitudes about mikveh. Guests soak up knowledge about Jewish ritual, helping to dispel any belief that mikveh is dirty, archaic, or mysterious. Since Mayyim Hayyim opened in 2004, worldwide demand for mikveh has grown, up 8 percent last year alone, with guests traveling for hours to experience something they can’t find locally. Mayyim Hayyim has made mikveh radically inclusive for everyone. At Mayyim Hayyim ownership of the mikveh is shifted to the community; anyone is welcome for healing, celebrations, life transitions, and conversion to Judaism. Taking this idea seriously means welcoming and valuing every member of the community: young and old; gay and straight; tattooed or pierced; rich and poor; able-bodied and di erently abled; observant, secular, and unaffiliated; and people of all ethnicities. The mikveh is also fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Mayyim Hayyim believes that mikveh can be a catalyst for vibrant, accessible Jewish life and envisions a world where entering a wedding weekend with a celebration at the mikveh is just as commonplace as signing a marriage contract. Mayyim Hayyim is creating a national association of like-minded mikva’ot called Rising Tide to support those already in and new to the  eld, and has written a clergy toolkit facilitating clergy’s ability to recommend Mayyim Hayyim’s offerings to congregants. A self-published book, A Jewish Healing Guide, supports those on a fertility journey and their loved ones, and a Synagogue Ambassador Program trains volunteers to educate about and advocate for Mayyim Hayyim in their home community. Mayyim Hayyim believes in a future where there will be a wider recognition of mikveh as a meaningful ritual relevant to all in modern Jewish life, and much of that will be due to its hard work. After all, its efforts have made quite a splash in the Jewish community.