The Jewish Community has had a mikvah — ritual bath — as part of its community since the late 1880s. The Kansas City Community Mikvah is located inside Kehilath Israel Synagogue and was operational a few months after the Overland Park building opened in 1986. Almost 30 years later, it’s been renovated and will be celebrated with a Chanukat Habayit re-dedication ceremony on May 10.
The value of a mikvah to a community cannot be understated noted Ayala Zoltan Rockoff, chair of the Kansas Mikvah Association, who said it is actually a prerequisite to Jewish family life.
“According to the Talmud, the importance of having a mikvah ranks even higher in Jewish law than that of having a synagogue (Talmud Megilla 27a).”
The Jewish community actually has two mikvaot, the Community Mikvah at K.I. and Mikvah Chana at the Chabad House Center. : {mprestriction ids="1,3"}The Community Mikvah is the only one in town used for conversion to Judaism. In addition to conversions, Jewish law requires that women immerse before getting married and when keeping the laws of taharat hamishpacha (family purity). There are also various non-halachic reasons that both men and women visit the mikvah.
Rockoff said it is very common for brides and grooms to use the mikvah before their wedding, “as a re-birth or a renewal experience before they embark on the next chapter of their lives.”
“It is customary for people to immerse, mostly men but women, too, before the High Holidays as they begin a new year so it’s another time for spiritual renewal,” she continued.
“We also have some people who like to use our mikvah on a daily basis. There are people who immerse on erev Shabbat and sometimes people like to go to the mikvah when they’ve had a major life event and they want to reconnect with God and have a quiet, spiritual experience.”
Another use for the mikvah is for the immersion of dishes and utensils before their use in a kosher home.
“We’re very proud that we are able to serve all of those functions for the community,” Rockoff said. “Our Community Mikvah is truly a community mikvah.”
“We are very fortunate to be housed within Kehilath Israel Synagogue. Rabbi Mandl was the champion of the mikvah and made sure there was a home for it on the Kansas side when the synagogue moved to Kansas,” Rockoff said.
History in Kansas City
Rabbi Herbert Mandl, who came to K.I. in 1977 as its senior rabbi and now serves as rabbi emeritus, is the unofficial historian of the mikvah. He explains that K.I. first began housing the community’s mikvah in the early 1960s, when it was located at Meyer Boulevard and Rockhill Road. He said Max and Sarah Hyman donated the money to build it.
Before it was at K.I., Rabbi Mandl said the city’s mikvah was located in a free-standing building at 34th and Park.
“The neighborhood had become both dangerous and it was rat infested,” he said. He knows there was at least one other mikvah before that, and suspects it was near Independence Avenue where a lot of Jews lived.
When the congregation decided to move to Johnson County, Rabbi Mandl urged the congregation’s leaders — Sherman Dreiseszun, Maria Devinki and Frank Morgen — to agree to build a mikvah in the multi-million dollar building.
“It’s so important,” Rabbi Mandl said. “Everybody uses mikvah for conversion now. You’ve got a problem if you don’t have a mikvah.”
Time to renovate
When Rockoff and her husband, Rabbi Daniel Rockoff — who serves as the rabbi of the community’s only Orthodox congregation BIAV — arrived in town in September of 2008, the mikvah was 22 years old and in need of a facelift.
“The mikvah was fully functional and working fine,” Ayala Zoltan Rockoff said, “but we thought that we could bring more people to the mikvah and make it a more pleasant experience for the community if we upgraded and renovated it.”
It took a couple of years before Rockoff and other volunteers were ready to take on the challenge. The mikvah committee became an official 501(c)3 organization, separating its operation from K.I., and began seeking funds.
The first grant was secured from the Dreiseszun Family Foundation. The Kansas Mikvah Association also held a wine-tasting fundraiser, giving them enough money to begin planning the renovations.
During the fundraising process, a challenge grant was obtained from Mikvah USA, an organization that is funded entirely by donations from those who want to increase the number of people doing the mitzvah of using the mikvah on a regular basis.
“The Jewish Community Foundation also generously gave us some grant money,” said Rockoff, noting JCF also helped pay for a new hot water heater. The mikvah charges usage fees to defray the cost of basic operations and cleaning.
“We had a lot of support and it’s just taken a long time to make sure we did this renovation right,” she said.
Mikvaot are not common structures, so Rockoff said it was important to find the right people to work on it “who knew how to deal with an atypical type of indoor spa as well as make sure that all the halachic concerns were met.”
“There are very specific guidelines for maintaining the integrity of the mikvah water, so we of course wanted to make sure we worked with people who would be able to accommodate that. The main person who worked directly with the contractors to make this happen was Adam Rich. He is an architect and he did an outstanding job. All of this was completely volunteer.”
Rockoff said contractors were hired, materials were purchased, and “we got a lot of help from a lot of places.”
“It’s really beautiful now.”
Rabbi Mandl agreed.
“It’s awesome now. It looks like a New York spa,” he said.
The mikvah today
Rockoff said now that the mikvah has been remodeled, they’ve seen an increase in users.
“It was a good time to remodel it because we do have a lot of young, observant families who have moved here in recent years who are regular mikvah users. This helps us bring people closer to using the mikvah and making it a comfortable, spiritual experience for everybody.”
Changes and updates — both cosmetic and mechanical — were made to the mikvah itself, the bathroom and the waiting room. One of the most noticeable was the retiling of the mikvah with the blessing etched on the wall.
“It’s in great, great shape and we’re ready to show it off and celebrate what we’ve accomplished and celebrate all the people who are involved in it.”
“Also it’s an opportunity to give people a chance to see what a mikvah is and learn about its different functions and just be exposed to an area of Jewish life that they might not have known about yet.”
Occasionally the mikvah had to be closed during the renovation.
“We’re very grateful to Devory Wineberg at Chabad for allowing us in certain cases to use Mikvah Chana,” Rockoff said. “They’ve been wonderfully accommodating and we thank them.”
Maintaining its integrity
Mikvah immersions for men and women are very private.
“We have a very dedicated group of people who are very committed to confidentiality and helping people to do a mitzvah,” Rockoff said.
Kansas City has not been faced with any mikvah scandals, such as the one that happened in Washington, D.C., last fall. Rabbi Barry Freundel has pled guilty to secretly videotaping women in his Orthodox synagogue’s mikvah and is awaiting sentencing on 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism.
Rockoff said the Mikvah Association was very proactive when that story came out.
“We made sure that Rabbi Mandl and my husband (Rabbi Rockoff) sent out an email from the Mikvah Association explaining that only female attendants have access to the mikvah at night when women use it and that there are security cameras only around the mikvah, not inside the mikvah on any level,” she said.
“The letter explained that the confidentiality and the sanctity of the mikvah is paramount,” she continued.
Many people who used the mikvah were surprised such a message was sent at all.
“We’re glad that people were not generally concerned, but we really wanted to be very proactive and let people know that people’s privacy is very, very important to us.”
Now it’s time to celebrate.
“This is a community event. It’s not a fundraiser. It’s a nice evening with food and a great speaker. We really just want to involve the community as much as we can in celebrating a quiet, but beautiful institution that we have that doesn’t get a lot of press.”{/mprestriction}
