West Orange ritual bath to undergo $500,000 expansion and renovation

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

The Essex County Ritualarium is falling apart, according to president Eli Gold.

Thirty years ago, he spearheaded the fund raising to build the West Orange mikva, which serves that town and surrounding communities. At that time, the concept wasn’t very popular. “People said, ‘What do you need a mikva for? We can go to the pool or take a bath.’”

Today, Gold is looking forward to the mikva’s renovation to meet the growing community’s needs, with more space, updated decor and the installation of more advanced technology. The town zoning board unanimously approved the mikva’s renovation and expansion in a May 19 meeting. Organizers have raised about half of the estimated $500,000-600,000 needed for the renovation, and Gold hopes the rest will be committed by the end of the summer. He estimates that the construction phase itself will last about six months.

The mikva was originally dedicated at a brunch in 1976. At that time, Gold recalled, “Only a handful of women used it each month.”

Today, that number has skyrocketed to about 240 per month, and some nights there are 18-20 women, according to Pnina Popack, president of the Jewish Women of Essex County, the women’s division of the mikva.

Jewish women immerse in a mikva, or ritual bath, once each month. They are required to avoid sexual contact with their husbands during menstruation, and they mark the end of the separation period with a trip to the mikva.

The explosion of mikva use in West Orange reflects an explosion around the country. There has been a revival of mikva use among liberal Jews as well. Conservative and Reform synagogues have built their own; there is even a nondenominational mikva and education center known as mayim chayyim, literally living waters, that opened recently in the Boston area.

In addition to the Essex County Ritualarium, in the Essex/Morris/ Sussex area, there are three other mikvaot, two run by local Chabad organizations in Short Hills and in the Morristown area, and one at Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center in Livingston.

With two pools — only one of which can be used at a time — three preparation rooms, and a waiting area that doubles as a post-dunking beauty room, the mikva in West Orange can hardly handle the nightly traffic. If it’s a busy night, women can wait a long time for their turn, and then “they feel rushed,” said Popack. “There can be eight women in the waiting room and four trying to blow their hair and put on their makeup at one table.”

The wear and tear is also taking its toll on the facility. “It’s literally being held together by band-aids,” said Popack.

The Essex County Ritualarium originally opened to serve the Newark Jewish community at 10 Lyons Avenue in the Weequahic section. Documents at the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest indicate it was completed around 1954.

There were no band-aids on the walls on a recent visit, but there were gaping holes in the drop ceiling and in the tiling of some of the preparation room’s bathtubs. Walls had been patched along the narrow hallway, and while the water in the mikva pool itself may have been clean, as Gold and Popack assured a visitor, it had a distinctly unappealing greenish hue.

And as Gold explained, an insufficient air system means mold has developed with the constant usage. Outdated technology and a shift in approach to Halacha means a filtration system can be installed that will enable the pools to stay clean. Currently only one pool can be used at a time because after two nights of usage, each one has to be emptied, cleaned, and refilled. Added space also means women won’t have to spend as much time in the waiting room. The building will be expanded by about 10 feet all around, yielding eight preparation rooms instead of three. A new decor means the avocado green and aquamarine tiling reminiscent of the 1970s will give way to a more contemporary look, with beige tiles in the preparation rooms and blue tiling and new lighting in the pool area that will make the water “sparkle,” according to Popack. There will also be a handicapped-accessible preparation room, which will double as a room for brides preparing to use the mikva for the first time.

“We want to make sure that women coming in [to the mikva] will feel good about coming and enjoy coming,” Popack said. Right now, she explained, they come to fulfill the mitzva of family purity “not out of love, or because they enjoy it, but because it is the correct thing to do.” But, she said, it doesn’t have to be that way.

“We would like to make it a pleasant experience. We don’t want people to say, ‘I’m wasting my whole night here’…there’s a concept of hiddur mitzva, beautifying the mitzva. That’s what we’re trying for.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.