There's a Shark in the Mikvah!

There’s a Shark in the Mikvah!
Penny Harow Thau & Naava Pasternak Swirsky
109 pp.


There’s a Shark in the Mikvah! (“A light-hearted look at Jewish women’s dunking experiences”) is a local Beit Shemesh release. It contains about fifty short stories on the adventures women have experienced in the course of keeping this very special mitzvah. Some of the adventures include: finding a mikva late at night, hiding ‘mikva night’ from family members, the cleanliness of mikvas, mikva ladies, husbands driving their wives to the mikva (and waiting for them to come out!), Friday night mikva experiences, hiding from your mother-in-law in the next room, and much more.

The stories are quite cute and have a very personal touch. Most of the stories are certain to crack a smile out of you, some are even inspiring. It’s a fun read. While the book is tastefully done, with the stories anonymous and not overly revealing, some of the more orthodox may be uncomfortable with a book whose every page invokes thoughts of women immersing in a mikva.

Here's a sample chapter:
Taxi !
Although I was living in London at the time, my future husband and I flew to Israel for our wedding. The day before our wedding, we went to see the rabbi to finalize wedding details. We told the rabbi that I still needed to go to the mikvah. As we left the office, the rabbi handed me a piece of paper with the address of a local mikvah on it and instructed me to ask a taxi driver, as discreetly as possible, to take me there. The next morning, a very nervous me, along with my mother and aunt, went to the taxi stand of the hotel where we were staying. I was “makeup free” and holding a bag. As I had been told to do, I approached the window of the first taxi and showed him the piece of paper. The taxi driver looked at me, looked at my bag, looked at my entourage and said, “Are you going to the mikvah?”
I nervously replied, “Er... Just the parking lot of this address, please.”
He then said again, “Are you a kallah? You’re going to the mikvah!?”
And before I could reply, he started honking his horn to his fellow taxi drivers waiting outside and shouted out of his window – “Mazal Tov! We have a kallah!”
With that, about five or six taxi drivers got out of their taxis and started dancing with each other in a circle, singing “Mazal Tov and Siman Tov!!!”
Later on that evening, at my wedding reception at the hotel, a few of those taxi drivers came by especially to wish me Mazal Tov yet again.


To order a copy: sharkinthemikvah@yahoo.com

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