Washington Jewish Week

A morality play'Mikveh' provides glimpse of insular community
by Lisa Traiger
Arts Correspondent

The rituals of mikvah are among the most private in Judaism. Women who follow the laws of family purity, immersing themselves once a month in a ritual bath, do so only in the evening, typically by appointment. Their husbands don't accompany them, and can't even wait in the nearby parking lot.

Visits to the mikvah are meant to be private, neither discussed nor acknowledged by anyone who might see a woman entering or exiting the ritual bathhouse. This month, Theater J, at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, pulls back the curtain of this ancient practice most often, but not exclusively, followed by married Orthodox women of child-bearing age.

Mikveh, by British-born, Israeli playwright Hadar Galron, premiered at Tel Aviv's Beit Lessin Theatre in 2004 and drew Israeli audiences from across the social and religious spectrum. The drama, set in a fervently Orthodox community, was voted play of the year. CONTINUE READING

Washington City Paper

Mikveh  By Hadar Galron; Directed by Shirley Serotsky 

The cleansing power of rainwater meets the abrasive power of modernity in Mikveh, an uneven melodrama about domestic abuse and budding feminism in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Israel.

Hadar Galron’s play—an Israeli hit receiving its English language premiere at Theater J—is set in a bathhouse, and looks at the practical impact on the community of the Laws of Family Purity, which, as posited in the Torah, prohibit intercourse with a menstruating woman on grounds that she is ritually impure. Tradition has it that immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath) on the evening of her seventh post-menstrual day cleanses her, making her fit once again for sexual relations.

Mikveh attendant Shoshana (Sarah Marshall) presides over this private ceremony with unquestioning efficiency, making sure the community’s women arrive at her mikveh pool with no traces of makeup or nail polish, and that they emerge suitably purified. Her customers—who include a frightened bride, a politician’s wife, a flibbertigibbet, and an aging gossip—rely on Shoshona’s discretion. The mikveh is one of the few places they can let their hair down, so to speak. But if there’s camaraderie, there’s also a shared sense of denial. CONTINUE READING

Metro Weekly

Feast and Famine
Theater J's Mikvah is familiar and wonderful

By Tom Avila
Published on May 12, 2010, 10:39pm

There is something about Hadar Galron's Mikveh that seems familiar. This would not seem so strange were it not for the fact that Theater J's production is actually the English language, world premiere of the Israeli writer's play. Were it not for the fact that it's not every day (at least not in Washington) where you open a program to be informed – where the ''Time'' of the play is listed – that it is Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the new month in the lunar Jewish calendar. Or that the year is 5764.

It's not every day that Sarah Marshall wanders out as the audience is taking its seats to fold a few towels and check on the bright orange goldfish swimming slowly around its bowl onstage.

But despite how ''different'' things seem to be on the surface, no matter whether the ritual bath of the mikveh is a part of your tradition or as far from your experience as you can imagine, there is something familiar here. Not comforting. But familiar.

The story of eight very different women and the manner in which their lives intersect at the mikveh (a precisely executed ritual bath in the Orthodox Jewish tradition for the purpose of restoring purity), Galron's play is the theatrical equivalent of a chick flick. It's Thelma and Louise meets Steel Magnolias meets Beauty Shop meets... well... something Orthodox and Jewish. That's why it feels so familiar and what ultimately makes it enjoyable if not necessarily groundbreaking. CONTINUE READING

Mikveh

May 17, 2010 By Tim Treanor

A ritual is a device by which we give ourselves over to a set of predetermined behaviors, thus eliminating any possibility of choice or decision. At its best, it allows us to release our egos, and rest our minds in the cradle of God’s hands. It is always, though, a form of social control.

This is true when the ritual is high mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame and when it is the morning chant at an ashram on the plains of India, and even when it is in a venue as cheery and modern as a locker room, and administered by someone as experienced and friendly as Shoshana (Sarah Marshall). This is the mikveh, which is (among other things) a place where Orthodox women go to ritually cleanse themselves after menstruation, and reinforce the social bonds of Orthodox Judaism – including, in Hadar Galron’s take, forced marriage, forced childbirth and wife-beating.

I do not know if this colossal indictment of Orthodox society is just or not, but it is dramatically compelling. Galron won a “production of the year” award in 2004 in Israel, and the dramatic bones of the piece are solid, if not entirely polished. Shira (Lise Bruneau) has joined the mikveh as an assistant after having been fired from her previous place of employment because her penchant for ferreting out uncomfortable truths made everyone…uncomfortable. She starts down the same path almost immediately at the mikveh, by drawing attention to facts which have previously escaped Shoshana’s “don’t ask…don’t tell” approach to information.  CONTINUE READING

We Love DC
We Love Arts: Mikveh
By Jenn Larsen, 3:00 pm May 10th, 2010

What is our personal responsibility to others in the face of repression and abuse? Do you interfere in someone else’s life when you see injustice? To act or to collude in silence… and while we argue about the need for action, what’s happening to those suffering right behind our backs?

Mikveh, playing now through June 5 in its English language world premiere at Theater J, is not really a play about religion, though it takes place in the confines of an orthodox community in Israel. Rather, it’s a play about the moral battle between action and inaction. It also highlights how women’s territorial natures cripple them – as they police themselves from within, they are being policed by others from without. Their inability to rise above petty jealousies can be detrimental, sometimes to the extreme.

Though the action centers around the mikveh itself (a ritual bath, here used mainly to purify post-menstruant women), you don’t need a background in the Talmud or Family Purity Laws to understand the play. That’s what I love about Theater J, no matter the subject, there’s a dedication to clarity and consistent storytelling, always marked by strong ensemble acting and high production values. Mikveh is no exception – though at times the play veers dangerously close to a Jewish Orthodox version of The Women (the gossipy babymachine, the uppercrust bitch, the abused wife, etc.) – it’s worth it to explore these issues with such powerful actors. They are ably helmed by director Shirley Serotsky, whose handling of Hadar Galron’s engaging script mines the truth behind stereotypes.  CONTINUE READING