Religion Magazine

New Law Keeps People out of the Mikva

By Gldmeier @gldmeier
MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) with the other Haredi MKs have been working to prepare and pass a new law that would give the Rabbanut more control over the public mikvaot. They were concerned about more encroachment of the Reform and Conservative into Israel, as they have been by the Kotel, and were worried about Reform conversions being performed in public mikvaot.
Despite the fact that we believe that a Reform conversion is meaningless, their use of the mikva as part of the process does not damage or ruin the mikva in anyway. However, the Haredi MKs are worried about the Reform attaining some sort of foothold in Israeli society, and some sort of legitimization in people's eyes, so despite the mikva not being ruined, the Haredi MKs don't want the Reform using it. The Supreme Court even decided that the Reform and Conservative have the right to use the mikvaot for their conversions.
So, they have been working on putting together a new law. Some initial drafts raised the ire of many groups, as they tried to give the Rabbanut too much control and too much micro-management ability over who can use the mikva.
They finally came up with the final version of their new law and passed it. According to The Times of Israel, the new law is that Reform and Conservative people will not be able to use the mikva at all. The mikva management (I assume via the mikva lady) will have the right to turn people away from using the mikva.
I don't know how anybody will know who is Reform, who is Conservative, who is simply not religious or whatnot. Plenty of not-Orthodox people have used the mikva until now, and I hope they won't get turned away because of this new law.
A Haredi askan commented about this that in the USA the Reform don't have any mikvas and have no use for them, so there is no reason they should need them here. The only reason they want to use the mikvaot here is as a tool to gain legitimacy and an opening into society via conversions.
I don't know how many mikvaot the Reform operate in the USA, but a quick Google search shows that they do have some. I don't know how frequently they use them, or for what, but the statement made above is obviously wrong. Besides for that, Haredim do things differently in Israel than they do in the USA, so why can't the Reform?
Another issue I see is that if someone Reform (more likely Conservative) wants to keep taharat hamishpacha and go to the mikva, why should anyone have the right to prevent them from doing so?
I thought the final law would specifically deal with preventing conversions by Reform, but they opened it up and said any immersions by Reform and Conservative are not allowed. Maybe they will only ban people who converted Reform or Conservative - but I don't know how a woman entering the mikva will be identified as a convert, let alone as a Reform convert.
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