Mikveh, the

For most women, heading to the mikvah – the ritual bath that lies at the heart of Jewish family purity laws – does not involve surprise encounters with wild animals, traipsing through three-feet of snow or hacking through a frozen river in subzero tempera...

History was made on Tuesday, July 9, when the Jewish community of Shymkent, Kazakhstan, gathered to inaugurate ‘Mikvah Mei Elazar,’ the city’s first-ever mikvah. The mikvah’s opening marks a coming of age for Jewish life on the vast Kazakh steppe. Shymken...

On Sunday, March 3, nearly 100 people gathered in celebration and support of the newly inaugurated Mei Perel Glikel - The Salem Mikvah in Oregon’s capital city of Salem. The sparkling new mikvah is a milestone for the city’s 1,500 or so Jews, said Fruma P...

Jews have been living on the Caribbean island of Jamaica for well over 400 years. During the Spanish rule, they hid their Judaism, pretending to be Catholic out of fear of the Spanish Inquisition. After the British conquest of 1665, they were free to buil...

Upon Rabbi Mendel Lifshitz’s arrival in Boise, Idaho, 18 years ago, a local Jewish professor insisted that he and his family attend a rodeo. “He called one day and said, ‘I got you tickets. Let’s go!’ ” “My wife and I reluctantly went,” says the rabbi, “a...

With only a few hours’ notice on a Friday in November 2018, 150 anxious Sabbath-observant Jewish passengers on a delayed Tel Aviv-bound El Al flight from New York walked into a hotel near Athens International Airport to find that it had been fully prepare...

Everyone who encountered Yossi Kohn remembers his smile. Even after he lost his father to a car crash at the age of 7, he continued to bring joy to others, greeting newcomers in his yeshivah, making others comfortable and putting their well-being before h...

Tucked away on the shores of the Rio Grande near the southernmost tip of the U.S.-Mexico border, McAllen, Texas, has had a Jewish presence for more than 100 years with a small but active Jewish population. But a mikvah, the cornerstone of Jewish family li...

You can walk almost anywhere in Center City, the bustling historic neighborhood in the heart of Philadelphia. But to get to a mikvah from the most walkable neighborhood in one of the most walkable cities in the United States, you’d have to drive at least ...