THE RITUAL IMMERSION

Professor Miri Rubin

This stone formed part of a thirteenth-century mikveh, and was recovered in the course of excavations on 1-6 Milk Street, London, in 2001.

The mikveh stone

A mikveh is a Jewish ritual bath large enough for full-body immersion, and fed from a stream to create a continuous flow of fresh, clean water. It is required by Jewish law, for the use of men and women and for the purpose of ritual purification.  Unlike a domestic or public bath, the mikveh  was not a place of washing but of purification. Its user arrives at the mikveh clean in body and prepared in spirit for an immersion that is ritually purifying. Men might immerse as an act of penance or purification, and all menstruating and sexually active women were expected to immerse and so remove the perceived pollution of menstrual blood.

Medieval Jewish communities that were settled and prosperous invested in building mikveh, some elaborate and multi-storeyed and adorned. This ashlar stone, made for high quality building, bears the marks of a mason’s chiselling and helps us imagine the fine structure of which it was part.