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The mikvah
Quiet, private, and entirely ordinary — whatever your background, and whether this is familiar or completely new to you.
1670 Phantom Avenue, San Jose
408-460-3675
By appointment.
A mikvah is a pool of water built to specific requirements, used for immersion. Its best-known use is by married women each month, according to the laws of family purity. It is also used before a wedding, at the completion of a conversion, by men before Yom Kippur and at other times, and for immersing new kitchen utensils.
A mikvah is not about physical cleanliness — you arrive already clean. It marks a change of state, and it is one of the oldest continuously kept practices in Jewish life. There is more on all of that on the about page, and on what it means to the women who keep it on the page about why.
You come by appointment, so you will not run into anyone. There is a private preparation room with everything you need. You take as long as you like. When you are ready, an attendant is there to help; she does this every night, she is not watching you, and you can ask her anything. The immersion itself takes under a minute. Then you get dressed and go home. That is the whole of it.
If it would help to see the building first, without an appointment and without immersing, you can ask for that. People do.
Every night of the year, by appointment. Times are already worked out from nightfall.
ReadThe evening in order: what to bring, who is there, how long it takes, and what is private.
ReadThe general shape of it — and the things people would rather not ask out loud.
ReadThe count, the seven clean days, hefsek Taharah, the immersion — and when to ask a rav.
ReadWhat a Mikvah is, what taharat hamishpacha means, and why it is called a foundation of a Jewish home.
ReadLiving water, the monthly rhythm, and the part nobody puts on a poster.
ReadNew metal and glass kitchenware, and the separate pool it goes in. A different thing entirely.
ReadCall or text Pat directly to arrange a time, to change one, to say you are running late, or to ask anything at all about the Mikvah itself. She is the person who will be there when you come.
For anything else — preparing, the halachos, or a question you would rather ask a woman than a man — ask Mussi Weinfeld directly. Call 408-910-2034 and ask for her, write to Info@chabadalmaden.com marked for her attention, or book half an hour and choose her. A question about halacha that needs a rav goes to one, and it can go without your name attached.
There is deliberately no form on this page. Everything else on this site drops a message into an inbox the office shares; a question about the Mikvah goes to one person instead. These pages also carry no analytics of any kind, and are kept out of search engines.