Mikvah – Part Three : “Conversion to Judaism/Your God My God”

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

February 16, 2001

Tonight I continue with the third of my four sermons on the mikvah, entitled: Mikvah, Conversion to Judaism –subtitled, "Your God My God." As I said last week, despite new families sharing Shabbat with us each week as we celebrate another Bar/Bat Mitzvah, I cannot repeat previous weeks' sermons. I refer everybody to our synagogue's website and highly encourage you to join our listserv where these sermons are being emailed every week and eventually will be archived on our web page. Those addresses are on the front of this weekend's brochure. A great deal of information of our entire synagogue program is found at that excellent cite.

I am truly ecstatic this Shabbat because the concrete floors and walls of the mikvah and the bor, the cistern holding the rain water, were poured this week, in conformity with all halachic requirements. Hopefully in another month, the good Lord will send another few days of rain and it will gather the 191+ gallons of natural water necessary to enable its usage. Then, not only our President Dr. Arthur Harrow and his wife Judy will bring their new daughter, a new American from China, Ilana Shira, to Mikvah, formally entering her into the covenant of the Jewish people as they did with Hannah, but so will a large number of men and women and children, who have been patiently waiting for this Mikvah, ever since driving to Norfolk became a physical impossibility.

It is this subject, the use of mikvah as the defining ritual of conversion, and the issue of conversion to Judaism, which I am addressing tonight. Of all the sermons in this series, this is really the easiest and the simplest. I also specifically did not begin this series with the subject of conversion because that is not the original or primary usage of mikvah in Jewish tradition. It use to elevate our personal kedusha, our holiness quotient, to sanctify our physical bodies and consecrate a woman's creative ability, image of the Divine, has always been and always be the original and fundamental usage of the mikvah. Despite the fact that its monthly usage by women fell into neglect, that even its mention, especially in Conservative Judaism, fell into disuse, it does not alter the truth of the matter of the history and place of mikvah and taharat hamishpacha, family and personal purity. The usage of mikvah for conversion is a derivative of the original purpose of mikvah. While the need for an accessible mikvah to facilitate proper ritual conversion to Judaism initiated our project, I continue to stress and reiterate that that was not the original or primary purpose of a mikvah. I hope and am educating our congregation and sharing with our community the wider and core use of mikvah in our Jewish tradition. It is my abiding hope to inspire our members and community to use the mikvah for these central religious reasons.

Hopefully everyone recognized the source and authoress of the subtitle of this sermon. It comes from the Megillah of Ruth, spoken by her, when she refused to leave her mother-in-law Naomi, when Naomi was about to return home to Judah. She had left with her husband and two sons during a famine. They died and Naomi was left with two daughters-in-law. Orpah listened to Naomi and agreed to return to her family to start life over. Ruth made a sacred pledge to her mother-in-law, whose words have been echoed by those choosing Judaism as their personal faith:

For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death part me from you."

Judaism from its inception welcomed adherents from other faith and ethnic communities into the Jewish people. Judah's children from Tamar, an Ammonite, Joseph's children Ephraim and Manasseh born from an Egyptian, Moses' wife Tzipporah, daughter of a Midianite priest, just to name the famous and recognizable, all were amalgamated into the body of Am Yisrael. Ruth is just another person in this illustrative list.

We don't know how people converted to Judaism in our earliest history. They just joined our family, with or without such a declaration. The membrane surrounding our people was permeable and many found the message of Judaism magnetic. We did not seek them. Judaism has not been a missionizing faith. It has been embracing to those who sought us. That phenomenon has been unceasing. Despite the history of persecutions, the demands made to observe the mitzvoth, joining a minority group, people of different faiths, colors and ethnicities, have continued to seek the shelter of the Shechinah, God's presence as taught, believed and perpetuated by Judaism. They have brought us their love, their talents, the strength. Throughout our long history, they have contributed immeasurably to Judaism and the Jewish people. Our synagogue is richer, wiser, and enhanced because of those who have chosen Judaism to be their faith.

Conversion is a never-ending process of growth and learning. A person born in one culture does not have the background of those born in another. No matter how much I do in the Basic Judaism program, it can't replace growing up in a Jewish home and teach everything there is to know. A person converting to Judaism is in a state of constant discovery.

It is also a moment in time. When deemed appropriate, a person immerses in the mayyim chayyim, the living, and creative, natural waters of a mikvah. They immerse twice, totally underwater without touching the floor or walls. Then they rise and recite in Hebrew the berachot: "Blessed art Thou O Lord our God King of the universe who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning tevilah – immersion." And: "Blessed are Thou O Lord our God King of the universe who has kept us in life and sustained us, and enabled us to reach this day." Then they immerse one more time. This is their defining moment. They entire the mikvah as a Gentile and emerge from mikvah as a Jew. How does this happen?

It follows directly from the understanding that these waters are not just waters. They are waters of creation. They reflect the waters when God created the world. These waters have symbolic and ritual power. They come straight from God. Not the tap. As in Genesis God took unformed chaotic water and created our world, a Gentile enters these waters from God and is recreated in them, in their embrace of a person like the "bag of waters" which surrounds the baby in the womb, and emerges from these waters now born into a new faith. Regardless of their age, this is a moment of birth, religiously and spiritually. It is not from what the bet din, the Jewish court present, or I say or do. We only testify and validate what the person has done. Rather, each person, man and woman, who chooses to cast their lot and destiny with Am Yisrael and accept into their hearts the faith of Judaism, are reborn in a deep abiding way. It is not the idea of being "born again." Our belief is that now they begin a new religious and spiritual life. They were on a path of study and exploration and now they have physically walked through a door into a new life. They embrace and are embraced. That mystical and spiritual event occurs invisibly yet discernibly in the waters of the mikvah. Then they are prepared to echo Ruth's words:

"For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you."