Jewish Purification Rite Makes Comeback : Religion: Orthodox Jews will seek spiritual cleansing at a mikvah, or ritual bath, during High Holy Days.

Sandra and Don Geisinger of Redondo Beach desperately wanted children, but after spending four years and thousands of dollars on fertility doctors, they had begun to lose hope.

Then they met Rabbi Eli Hecht at Chabad of South Bay, an Orthodox synagogue in Lomita. He advised the couple to heed Jewish conjugal laws that prohibit sex during part of the wife’s menstrual cycle. He also suggested that Sandra Geisinger visit the synagogue’s mikvah, or ritual bath.

Although the Geisingers are Reform Jews who attend religious services just twice a year, they decided to follow the rabbi’s advice.

Nine months later, Sandra Geisinger said, she gave birth to a son. And three months ago, the couple had a second child, also a son.

“I think that (the mikvah) did it,” Sandra Geisinger said. “I don’t get into such spiritual things, but the way that happened, it was really, clearly a blessing.”

Hecht acknowledges that the days on which sex is allowed under Jewish law coincide with the time when most women are fertile. But he also believes the Geisinger’s story “proves the power of mikvah, that God’s blessings for sexual bliss and children are received by observing his family purity laws.”

Beginning today, which is the start of Rosh Hashanah, and for the next 10 days, dozens of Orthodox Jews in the South Bay will seek the kind of purification only a mikvah can provide. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, is the start of the High Holy Days, which culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Some visitors to the ritual bath may be women who also harbor hopes of conceiving children. But many others, including men and children, will come here to rid themselves of last year’s transgressions and to be spiritually cleansed.

“It’s a sign of contriteness, of having subjugated all physical passions,” Hecht said. “It’s a time to purify yourself. The more purified you are, the closer you feel to God for the Jewish new year.”

Although Jews first used mikvahs thousands of years ago--many Hebrew scholars believe they are the precursor to the Christian baptismal rite--the practice today is generally confined to the Orthodox Jewish community.

The earliest reference to mikvah, said Rabbi Moishe Y. Engel, who has written several articles on the subject, comes in the Old Testament’s book of Leviticus, in which God commands ritual bathing for a variety of reasons. Among those required to undergo the purification ritual are married woman who have recently menstruated.

According to Orthodox Jewish law, husbands and wives must abstain from sex during menstruation (a minimum of five days) and for seven days afterward. Only after the woman has immersed herself in a mikvah may sexual relations resume.

Today, many people in Judaism’s huge Reform and Conservative movements consider the use of a mikvah outdated, irrelevant and even demeaning to women--though they still take to the baths for conversions or pre-marriage rites.

Jews in the much smaller Orthodox movement, however, have continued to use mikvahs to keep family purity laws. And, Orthodox Jews say, the practice is flourishing and gaining renewed interest, especially among younger women.

“There is, in the last 15 years, a major mikvah revival going on throughout America and the world,” Engel said. “It’s become popular even for (Jewish) couples to adopt mikvah as the first thing in their religious growth.”

Of the 1,000 or so mikvahs throughout the world, as many as 200 are in use in the United States, Engel estimated. There are more than a dozen mikvahs in California, including locales in West Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Long Beach and San Diego.

Mikvas Chana, jokingly called “God’s swimming pool” by Hecht’s children, is the only Jewish ritual bath in the South Bay. It was constructed six years ago when Chabad of South Bay put up its current building on Narbonne Avenue.

More than 750 visits by women have been logged since it opened, according to Raizy Hecht, the rabbi’s wife and mikvah matron, who oversees women’s immersions.

“It’s a connection to our roots,” she said. “You know our great grandmothers did the same thing, so it’s a nice feeling.”

A sloping walkway near the lunch benches on the side of the building leads to the entrance, which is unmarked and usually locked.

Visitors, who pay $15, initially find themselves in a small reception area. A map dotted with dozens of stick pins showing mikvah locations around the world hangs on one wall. Copies of a brochure in several languages describing the laws governing the use of mikvahs are neatly arranged on a desk.

From the reception area, visitors are directed to the changing areas and bathroom facilities--women on the left, men on the right.

Particular care has gone into the women’s furnishings. The changing area and bathroom are decorated with pink tile and stocked with slippers and a basket of carefully rolled pink towels.

Both the men’s and women’s bathrooms open to the mikvah chamber, a large room with pink and earth-toned tiles, towel hooks and wooden benches.

The mikvah, which Hecht designed, is constructed to conform to Jewish law, but it is nevertheless unusually modern.

Instead of the traditional L-shaped design commonly found in older constructions, Mikvas Chana forms a circle, with a spiral staircase and a steel handrail leading to the bottom.

To meet ancient Jewish guidelines, the bath was built above a 200-pound holding tank containing rainwater that has been drained from the roof through clay pipes. Two holes on the floor of the pool allow the bathing water, which is drawn from a tap, to mingle with the rainwater.

But unlike its ancient predecessors, this mikvah contains chlorinated water and a 24-hour filter, which is turned off during use.

It’s no accident that the mikvah, as well as the adjoining rooms and accommodations, remind one of a pricey health spa.

“A lot of women maybe have been away from mikvah for so many years . . . they might be afraid of it,” Raizy Hecht said. “So we wanted to make it as pretty and as aesthetic as possible to bring people back to appreciate the beauty of the mikvah.”

Although Orthodox Jewish men and women both have access to the mikvah, their experiences are vastly different.

The men, who tend to use the mikvah before the Sabbath and High Holy Days, usually bathe together in the early morning.

“They sit around on the steps and chat,” Hecht said. “It’s similar to a Roman bath.”

Women, however, mainly use the mikvah as a purification rite before resuming sexual relations with their husbands. They are restricted from using the bath except at night and are given private appointments.

Before a woman can enter the mikvah, she must bathe for 30 minutes. She must also remove all her jewelry, nail polish, makeup, contact lenses and even bandages. She is asked to trim her fingernails, brush her teeth, and wash and comb her hair.

“The water (of the mikvah) is supposed to cover your entire body,” Raizy Hecht said. “Nothing, not even your makeup or a piece of dirt, should come between you and the water.”

She must also recite a special prayer after the second of three immersions in the water.

Reform and Conservative Jews, who rarely have contact with a mikvah, frequently scoff at the idea that a woman is “impure” during menstruation. And many say they are glad that so-called family purity laws are no longer practiced by most Jews. In the South Bay, less than 1% of the area’s 45,000 Jews are affiliated with an Orthodox synagogue.

“To look at our natural body functions as impurities can build a wall and lead us to not respect our bodies and one another,” said Rabbi Ronald Shulman, who heads the Conservative Congregation Ner Tamid in Rancho Palos Verdes. “I think we (Jews) have evolved to a new understanding of . . . the body, and the mikvah strikes me, at its roots, as being antithetical to that.”

Orthodox Jews, however, disagree. They say the so-called impurity of a woman during menstruation refers to a spiritual state, rather than a physical one. They say the ritual does not degrade women, but rather sanctifies their sexual relationship with their husbands.

Mikvah proponents also insist that the period of enforced abstinence has a renewing effect on the relationship between husbands and wives.

“It gets rid of the monotony,” said Debbie Allison, 29, of Lomita, who uses Mikvas Chana monthly. “When you’re not with each other physically, you have to communicate intellectually, verbally and as a friend.”

When the couple resumes sexual relations, Raizy Hecht said, “It’s like a new honeymoon. You’ve gone for two weeks (without it), and you look forward to it. The newness of marriage is there every month.”