By Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh
There was a time when couples married very young, often scared, innocent, moving directly from their parents’ home into a new family’s household. This was especially true for brides, who would leave the only home they had ever known and enter their husband’s family, expected to adapt quickly to new rhythms, expectations, and relationships.
One of the ways this transition was marked was through the mikvah. While immersion has always been rooted in the laws of family purity (taharat mishpacha), it was also something deeper: a ritual of emotional and spiritual preparation. A moment to ready oneself for a new chapter—no longer a daughter living among parents and siblings, but a wife, and eventually a mother, stepping into an unfamiliar family.
In our tradition, water has always been understood as transformational. The Torah opens with water—creation itself emerging from its depths. The Israelites cross water to leave slavery and become a people. The prophets return to water again and again as a language of renewal, return, and life. Water marks transition.
The mikvah carries this power: to prepare us as we move from one stage of life to another. While it has long been, and remains, used by brides before marriage and during niddah, as women prepare for renewal and conception, it has always been more than that.
Today, people come to the mikvah to sanctify change itself—after divorce, illness, or loss; to mark milestones like birthdays, ordination, gender transition, or recovery; as part of a journey toward Judaism through conversion; or simply because they feel called to pause, reflect, and begin again.
There is no single “right” reason to come, only the beginning or ending of a chapter that words alone cannot hold. Water is powerful, and the mikvah is uniquely moving in a way that cannot fully be explained, only experienced. This is an invitation: for anyone who feels curious, searching, or standing at the edge of change, come experience it for yourself.
What Is A Mikvah?
A mikvah means a “gathering” of water. It is a pool of living water, drawn from an ocean, river, spring, or rainwater—or, in the case of an indoor mikvah, carefully engineered to meet those same standards. A kosher mikvah holds a minimum of forty se’ah of water, traditionally understood as enough to fully cover the body of an average-sized person. While the precise measurement is debated, it is commonly estimated to be between 87 and 150+ gallons, sufficient for complete submersion, including the top of the head.
It is one of Judaism’s oldest rituals, and also one of its most intimate: full immersion, with the body entirely unclothed.
I’ve seen mikva’ot as large as a jacuzzi and others no bigger than a well. Each one holds the body like a cocoon. And in the end, it isn’t the size of the space that matters, it’s what unfolds inside it.
For that reason, preparation for the mikvah matters as much as the immersion itself. The point is not simply to enter the water, but to arrive fully present, reconnected with the body before stepping into living waters. It is about readiness.
Preparation requires removing anything that creates a barrier between our bodies and the water including jewelry, piercings, makeup, nail polish. Not because these things are wrong or shameful, but because the mikvah invites us to enter as we came into the world, with nothing extra.
Immersion becomes a return to an original state, before adornment, before performance, before the layers we gather as we move through life. Almost like being born.
It is a reminder that before we were anything else, we were whole and that returning to that wholeness, even for a moment, can carry us through our most joyful and most challenging times.
I often joke that here in Los Angeles, this can be especially annoying. Hair extensions, lashes, manicures, all the things we work hard to maintain, have to come off. But when you do it fully, when you don’t rush or cut corners, the experience feels differ ent. Deeper. More honest.
In a world that asks us to constantly present, curate, and perfect ourselves, the mikvah insists on something else: come as you are. Set down the accoutrements of life. Come reconnect with your truest self.
At the AJU Community Mikvah—the only non-Orthodox mikvah in the city, which I oversee— seven steps lead downward into the water. In Jewish tradition, seven marks completion and transition, like the seven-day week. These steps are not decorative; they choreograph a crossing.
The ritual itself is intentionally structured for modesty. The lights are dimmed. You ring the bell only once you are fully immersed. A witness is present seeing only the crown of your head, to confirm that the immersion is complete and ritually kosher. Those accompanying you may remain on either side of the curtain, inside or outside, according to your comfort.
And because a mikvah requires living water, the AJU Community Mikvah uses large blocks of ice to bring in this water. The ice melts into a separate reservoir and gradually warms.
When you immerse, a plug is released so that this living water flows into the immersion pool. This moment is called hashakah, meaning “the kiss”—the point of contact where the pool’s water meets the reservoir of natural rainwater, rendering the entire mikvah ritually valid.
You step down.
You breathe.
You go under.
And when you emerge, something has shifted.
And yet for many people, the word mikvah carries baggage often because it is associated with women’s bodies, immersion after menstruation, or religious spaces that feel closed rather than open. But the truth is that the mikvah has never belonged to just one group of people or to just one purpose.
Yes, immersion has long played a role in family life and intimacy (taharat hamishpacha), and it still does. But it has always been used by men and women alike: by individuals preparing for holidays, weddings, or sacred responsibilities. Even dishes are immersed (tevilat keilim) to mark their entry into Jewish use.
Today, the mikvah has expanded further still, becoming a ritual space that meets people where they are, inviting intention rather than limitation when words are no longer enough. I see this every day at the AJU Community Mikvah. Alongside traditional blessings and even specific psalms recited during immersion, there is also space for private intention.
Maybe you arrive holding a hope to start a family, to heal, to grow. Maybe you want to be more present, more patient, more vulnerable in your relationships. Or maybe you come seeking wholeness, purpose, or clarity about the mission of your soul in this world.
One of my favorite things about the mikvah is that there is no single way Jews experience it.
Jews from every background come to immerse, and each community brings its own language of joy, blessing, and meaning into the water.
In some Moroccan families, the mikvah is a full celebration. The bride often arrives with her entire family, music playing with special sweets in hand. Each woman offers a blessing before an immersion, wishing the bride laughter, children, joy, fulfillment, dignity, and respect.
In Persian families, women sing traditional songs for brides and grooms, read poetry, and light candles. Great-grandmothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, mothers-in-law—all the women who came before—gather to hold the bride in that moment, surrounding her with continuity and love.
Others may choose something quieter. Some come with a best friend, a sister, or a mother. Some come with their partner, immersing one at a time so they can share the moment together. Others come alone, seeking privacy, stillness, and space to commemorate a loss or a milestone or transition. At AJU’s mikvah, a curtain allows the space to open or close depending on the moment, making it possible to welcome extended families, close friends, couples, or individuals seeking privacy, while still allowing light to move gently through the room. The space widens or cozies up depending on what the moment demands.
There is no single way to do it. And that’s what makes it beautiful.
The thing about the mikvah is this: I can explain it endlessly. I can talk about water, symbolism, tradition, and law. I can try to describe the goosebumps I feel when I witness an infant immersing for conversion, or the tears of joy on a bride’s face as she recites her blessings before her wedding day.
But Judaism has always understood something essential, you cannot fully understand Jewish ritual by reading about it. You understand it by doing it.
Even during COVID, when nearly everything moved onto screens, mikvah immersion could not be virtualized. You had to show up to understand its profound significance—the way the experience lingers, the way the change ripples outward into the rest of your life.
Perhaps that is why, according to Jewish tradition, the construction of a mikvah takes precedence over the building of a synagogue, and even the purchase of a Torah scroll. While the synagogue is central to communal prayer and learning, Jewish family life cannot continue without the mikvah, as ritual immersion is required prior to procreation.
But even more than that, beyond laws and requirements, what is life without marking the moments that make us human: beginnings and endings, loss and change, growth and becoming? Without ritual, without marking time, life becomes a blur.
So, whether for traditional reasons or modern ones, I invite you to seek out your local mikvah. Experience Judaism by doing Jewish, by stepping into a practice our tradition has carried for generations. Our ancestors knew exactly what they were doing.