Mikvah Maintenance - Rabbi Menachem Mendel Wilschanski shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lema’an Yishme’u,” a podcast of Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 The Tosefta at the end of Tractate Sotah says: “And purity leads to Eliyahu Hanavi and to the resurrection of the dead.” What could be more important than bringing about the true and complete Geulah? And purity brings it about. How important it is that we ensure our mikvaos are pure! After all, when Moshiach comes immediately, when the Rebbe is revealed, everyone will need mikvaos to go up to the third Beis Hamikdash. It matters to us that the mikvaos be pure, kosher according to halacha, and well maintained. We’ve already given the class explaining the entire design of a Chabad mikveh, how carefully it is built and how many advantages it has. But it is no less important that the mikveh remain kosher and be properly maintained. Maintenance means cleanliness, hygiene, and making sure everything needed is always in place and readily available. We need to oversee it and know what to watch for in terms of halachic maintenance, and especially hygiene. You build a mikveh to last, but maintenance has to be ongoing. Once, when the Rebbe Rashab arrived in a city in Russia and asked for a mikveh, they called the attendant to open it for him. It was before dawn. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates how he went in with the Rebbe Rashab, and they were shocked to see that a mikveh meant for women’s purification was full of fleas and all kinds of other creatures on the water. Out of respect, and to spare everyone’s feelings, I don’t want to describe everything recorded there. It was truly unpleasant. The Rebbe Rashab instructed them to call the attendant over and explained to him what a position he was in: he could enable people to come, immerse and become pure, and raise a blessed, upright generation—but he could also drive people away. What a great merit it was to maintain the mikveh in purity and cleanliness, and, G-d forbid, how serious the opposite was. Cleanliness, too, leads to restraint and to purity. The Arizal says that in a place that is not clean, holiness does not come in the way we know

02:45 Speaker 2 as its proper presence. In a clean place, it can rest. So, as we said in the previous class about building mikvaos, we promised that, with Hashem’s help and without making a vow, we would discuss and learn about mikveh maintenance in the simplest way possible. Anyone who wants to can study it further. It isn’t difficult. In fact, anyone who knows how to maintain a swimming pool well can maintain a mikveh too, with a few additional rules. First, let’s talk about halachic maintenance—what must be maintained over time. Rainwater usually comes from roofs and passes through a channel for hamshachah. We cannot rely on the fact that we built the mikveh seventy years ago, or even sixty years ago—or that we built it two or three years ago. We must always check the mikveh roof and the hamshachah channels. We need to see that these areas are always ready to carry rainwater to the mikveh in purity and, above all, in accordance with every standard of kashrus. I’ve seen many mikvaos where the roof is closed off. The people who operate the mikveh and are responsible for it tell us, “What could possibly happen? Every year the rainwater falls, enters the storage tank—the reserve rainwater reservoir—and waits there until we use it to fill the lower pit of the Chabad mikveh or the other reservoirs: the side hashakah pit and the zeri’ah pit, as we learned.” I told them: a roof in a city, surrounded by buildings, is certain to develop problems before long. What sort of problems? You go up on the roof and find bags and cans. You also find cracks, whether in the structure or in the tar. Once, there was even a roof higher than all the others, with no buildings at all within the surrounding area. They asked me, “What is there to check?” I insisted on going up to the roof. What did I see

05:08 Speaker 2 there? The people who had last tarred it had done a good, professional job, with a proper layer of tar. They had simply left all the tar cans at the edge of the roof. Why take them down? Sometimes people forget; sometimes they can’t be bothered. Rainwater collects in the cans and then runs from them onto the roof. Now a halachic question arises: was that intended or not? Was the water put there willingly or not? Does the law of water placed upon seed apply or not? What? What? With rainwater for a mikveh, we don’t want to get into these questions at all. We always make sure the roof is even, smooth and ready, without leaving room for any question—certainly not when an actual receptacle is involved, and a metal one at that. Remember, besides not wanting vessels or anything resembling a vessel on the roof, we also don’t want the water to pass through any kind of strainer, because of the Mishnah and the halacha on this subject. And according to what the Rebbe Rashab told the Frierdiker Rebbe, we don’t want the rainwater to touch iron. That is a stringency we observe. I hear that those who follow the Chasam Sofer also observe this stringency, keeping iron out of the water’s path. So what do we do with a roof made of iron? We cover it with a layer of wood and tar over that, or with wood alone, or with tar alone. But cracks can develop. Over time, it can split, and the tar can deteriorate. That, too, needs to be checked. We also need to check that pigeons haven’t settled right on the drainpipe where the water flows down, if any part of it is open; generally, it should be covered. We must check that it hasn’t become blocked, and that the roof hasn’t filled with debris from branches and trees that prevents the water from reaching its destination. Mikveh maintenance must be done at least once a year, and especially

07:14 Speaker 2 before collecting rainwater. Whether it is for the reserve reservoir—the storage tank of rainwater kept aside to fill the mikveh—or for rainwater flowing from the roof directly into the storage tank, or not into the tank but into the lower pit, the side hashakah pits and the zeri’ah pit, an inspection is essential. Before we open the roof outlets or pipes to collect rainwater, before we give instructions to block all the places where excess water drains away from the mikveh area—when, once a year or once every two years, we want to collect rainwater and give instructions to remove plugs and close off various outlets so the water will collect and be stored—we must check that the roof, drainpipes and all the hamshachah channels are kosher and meet the highest standards. That is the halachic side. We need to be doubly careful if anyone besides the mikveh’s owners and those responsible for it has access to the roof. If it is the roof of a building or a shul, and other people also have keys, the situation is even worse. You can warn them ten times, but if they don’t care—it isn’t their mikveh—they may do all sorts of things up there without your knowing. So check it again and again. That covers the halachic side. On the practical side, we’ve already said how strongly the Rebbe Rashab spoke about cleanliness. In his many letters, the Rebbe says that the more beautiful, hygienically clean and inviting a mikveh is, the more it will draw the hearts of Jewish women. We so want them all to come and raise a blessed, upright generation. So build it beautifully, with great beauty. How do we build it? We’ve built it. But if we don’t maintain the water, and it becomes dirty and cloudy, or smells as it shouldn’t, with an odor that doesn’t

09:24 Speaker 2 Well, let’s call it a stench—it will drive away the next people who come in. So we’ll move on to the straightforward method used in mikvaos today. First, the cleaning staff clean and remove oils and hair from the water. Oils and hair can also be in the showers, so the preparation rooms need cleaning too. Everything must always be clean. Then we come to the water itself. We fill the mikveh with tap water, and that tap water comes into contact with the lower pit—the Chabad pit—where the rainwater is. It also comes into contact with the side pits, in places that have them, through contact from the side and zeriya. So when we check the mikveh—the rainwater, sorry, the tap water we fill it with and immerse in—we need to make sure that water is always clean and smells good. It must not only look pleasant; its maintenance must actually be up to standard. What does that depend on? The water’s pH and its cleanliness. We put chemicals in the water to keep it at the right pH and the right chlorine level, which keeps the water clean, as well as clear. When bacteria develop in water, they create a stench—a stench. So, of course, we have to monitor it carefully. The mikveh water, the tap water, comes into contact with the side pits. When we check the mikveh, we generally don’t need to check the side pits, but we do always need to consider the Chabad pit, the lower pit, together with the immersion pool, because they are one above the other. When I calculate how much of the chemicals I need to bring the water to the desired level of cleanliness and pH,

11:37 Speaker 2 I have to take into account the amount of water in the pool—that is, the immersion pool that people enter. It contains municipal tap water, and in a Chabad mikveh I must always include the lower pit in the calculation too. We once had a case where the tap water was always clean and clear, chemicals had been added, and everything seemed wonderful, but a stench rose from the pit containing the rainwater. We changed the water, and it didn’t help. Why? Because when the chemicals were added, the calculation hadn’t included the rainwater below along with the tap water above. Suppose we have 1,500 liters in the upper pool and 1,500 liters in the lower pit. Together that’s 3,000 liters, three cubic meters of water. We take the tester that measures the pH of the water. The pH is essentially what tells us how to prevent too many bacteria from developing in the water, so the water won’t be harmful. Let me explain. We know that when there are a lot of bacteria in the water, they create a stench. To get rid of the bacteria, we add chlorine. Just as chlorine cleans the house, it is also added to water. Chlorine is the cheapest option, and it’s what is generally used in Israel. In the United States they have another substance. They use something much more expensive—five times as expensive. I don’t think it’s available in Israel. Bromide, and... there’s another substance used abroad. When added to the water, it is meant to clean it and remove the bacteria that cause the dirt and the stench. Now, chlorine evaporates quickly from warm water, and it can also harm hair and eyes. So it has to be kept at a certain level, not too high, so it won’t cause

14:00 Speaker 2 too much harm. Especially if the level rises, it doesn’t just cause harm; it creates other problems that are hard to get under control afterward. You always have to keep it balanced. So when we work with the water, we generally use a tester. In Israel, mikvaos have a very simple one. Where we work, we use this tester. You see? It measures the water. It has a scale here that gives us the pH level. pH is the acidity level, and here we have the DPD reading for chlorine. That’s one option. You can also use test strips, a somewhat older and common method. Pool owners use them. A strip works more or less like this: there’s a container with a small tube, and you take out one strip. On it are all these little squares, these little patches, with different colors. You put it in the water, take it out after fifteen seconds, and check the colors. We use this method here; it’s simpler. You fill this with water: you put it into the mikveh, take in some water, close it, and then look at the colors. The brighter—let’s say, the more vivid—the color, the more you can tell whether the pH is too high. If the pH is too high, you know that’s not right, because we need to reach a middle level of 7.6. Note that: 7.6. Yes, 7.6 is a good level. Here’s the pH, the water’s acidity level: 7.6. And 7.4 is good too. Between 7.4 and 7.6 is the middle range. If it’s too high, we need to lower it. If it’s too low, we

16:07 Speaker 2 need to raise it. We’ll see how in a moment. Here I’m measuring it, and I have this tester. It tells me exactly what the water’s pH is. Now, too much acidity isn’t good; it isn’t healthy. It also changes the water’s appearance afterward and creates problems in the water. To balance it, we have these tablets, like medicine tablets. If you can see, we take them with us. Here we have the pH tablets. We put one in the water until we get the desired result. On the other side here, if you notice, we have the DPD. That’s for the chlorine. With this simple method, we also have to balance the chlorine. How do we balance it? Here too, we want to reach a middle level of around 1.0 at most. You see? We have it here in the middle range. And here too we have tablets, like medicine tablets, for chlorine, which we put in the water—usually a whole tablet or half a tablet. We determine that by measuring as we go. There’s a measurement based on the amount of water. Everyone should check it for themselves; now isn’t the time to go into it. That’s how we get the desired result. When we add chlorine to the water, it kills the bacteria and also keeps the water clear. At the same time, there’s another point. Besides what we mentioned earlier—that it can harm the eyes and hair—it also evaporates quickly; it disappears quickly. So it needs closer monitoring, especially in warm water. Thirty-five degrees Celsius.

18:13 Speaker 2 In the water, within two hours it drops to half the level it was at when you tested it and put chlorine in the water. Let’s say you have 1,500 cubic meters. You put in, say, two tablets and reach the level you want—1.0 on that scale. Excellent. You see that the water is fine, it isn’t too chlorinated, and you’re pleased. You turn on the water heater, and within two hours it drops to 0.5. If we’re talking about 1.0, note that it will fall below 0.6 within two hours. It evaporates quickly, depending on the temperature, the amount of water, and the structure of the room. A person needs to know how long it takes the chlorine to evaporate. Then he needs to plan ahead—“a wise man has his eyes in his head”—and add the chlorine so that when people come to immerse, the water has the desired amount of chlorine. That way, things won’t develop that harm the water and cause it damage. So this is a level of maintenance for one or two people. Sometimes the attendants also know how to do this work, but they need guidance, and you have to measure what each mikveh needs. Some people do it in a slightly more complicated way. And no, I don’t mean places that use electrical equipment for this; that’s much easier. Here in Israel, you need a special license from the Ministry of Health to use the electrical devices that measure the water and dispense the chemicals. Most mikvaos don’t have that. Large mikvaos and bathhouses do—here in Haifa, we have a large bathhouse with special authorization. They use the electrical devices. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way most people do it: measuring by hand and maintaining the mikveh themselves. So

20:13 Speaker 2 Here we’ve described a very simple approach to acidity: if the acidity level is too high, you add a little more water, take some water out, add more of a chemical or less of it. Then there’s the chlorine: you raise it or lower it. But there’s a slightly more complicated method, involving what’s called alkaline. Alkaline is the... it’s the acidity level in the water, the pH. The pH in the water, and we need to bring it down. Leaving chlorine out of the equation, we use another substance to lower the pH. Here, in this case, we raise and lower the pH based on the precise readings from the tablets, and adjust the chlorine as well to create a balance. But sometimes we need to balance the pH itself. Then we bring in another substance, which is supposed to lower the... the... the pH. It’s supposed to lower the water’s acidity level. A substance for adjusting pH is acid. It’s also called acid. It has another name, but there are acids, various kinds of salts, that lower it. Hydrochloric acid and all kinds of substances like that lower the pH level. You can buy it—ask at the store and they’ll give it to you—and you can experiment with that too, to find out how much your mikveh needs to reach the desired level on the scale, the scale that measures acidity. As for keeping the water clean, that’s worth discussing at greater length. When we talk about adding chemicals to raise and lower levels, it’s fairly simple. After a few times, anyone gains experience with his own mikveh: the quantity of water and the whole surrounding atmosphere, so to speak. He already knows

22:24 Speaker 2 what he needs to do. As for keeping the water clean, in my experience there’s a particular problem that keeps coming up in Chabad mikvaos especially. If people don’t talk to one another, they don’t learn how to overcome it quickly. Sometimes it takes years to discover the secret. In Tzfas, for example, I saw that after a few years the workers discovered the secret themselves. I spoke with my friend Rabbi Shcharitzki[?], and he told me that over the years the workers had developed their own ways of working. But I want to suggest a simple method, perhaps two approaches, to prevent a problem that keeps recurring in Chabad mikvaos. People immerse in the mikveh, and the mikveh is warm. As a result, oils and dirt are released into the water. There are bacteria too, and however you look at it, they do get a few moments to multiply. Very often a sort of line of dirt forms at the waterline. Right? Like the scum in a pot after cooking: right where the soup reached, a nice little ring of... of fat forms. I know what it’s called—scum. In a mikveh too, we get that black line of dirt. It’s greasy as well as dirty, and the attendants always, always complain about how to clean it. Now I want to explain. This is very relevant to a Chabad mikveh, and it’s worth paying close attention—very close attention. In non-Chabad mikvaos, as we’ve already learned, the water enters the zeriya pit from the side, mixes with the rainwater, and flows from there into the immersion pool. In non-Chabad mikvaos, they empty out all the water before replacing it. When they empty the water,

24:38 Speaker 2 they give themselves the opportunity to go in with all the cleaning products and all kinds of brushes—not just a squeegee and a rag, but brushes—to scrub and scour. Emptying the water isn’t enough. You always have to scour and scrub the walls and the floor with brushes or Scotch-Brite, or whatever each person sees fit to use. In non-Chabad mikvaos, they scrub, scour, and dry everything thoroughly—completely—because for them, the water that comes in is the mikveh water. The water mixes with rainwater in the zeriya pit at the side and flows into the immersion pool. That water is kosher for immersion, and it has to enter a pool whose floor and walls are dry, so there’s no concern about three log of drawn water—a little less than a liter. We’ve already learned about this before: it’s essential to be very, very careful that everything is dry, dry, dry when filling the pool. The way they work, it’s very simple; it isn’t complicated. Have you emptied the water? Scoured? Cleaned? Polished? Wait until it’s thoroughly dry, and then bring the rabbi or whoever is responsible. Fill the zeriya pit with tap water and refill the pool. Not so in a Chabad mikveh. In a Chabad mikveh, according to the instructions of the Rebbe Rashab and the instructions of the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, there are two ways to empty and fill the water. First, the Rebbe Rashab says that when you fill the lower pit with rainwater for the first time, you lift the slab above it—in the floor of a Chabad mikveh, there is a slab above the lower pit. You lift it and pour rainwater into the mikveh. The rainwater must fill not only the lower pit up to the height of the floor separating the upper pool from the lower pit; the rainwater must rise above the floor of the upper pool of

26:54 Speaker 2 The immersion pool. They fill it until there is a shallow layer of water above the floor, and then stop filling it with rainwater. This is so that when you later bring in the municipal water, the tap water, and fill the mikveh, that water will fall onto rainwater on the floor. This is called zeri’ah, “sowing”—pouring in and mixing together. The moment you pour municipal water into the rainwater standing above the floor, you have poured and mixed the municipal water into the kosher mikveh water, the rainwater itself, and it all becomes one body of rainwater. That is called zeri’ah. For many years, until recently, most Chabad mikvehs would leave a thin layer of water at the bottom of the mikveh when they drained it before refilling it. This is a hiddur, which we’ll discuss shortly. Some made sure that water was warm, and others didn’t. It isn’t necessarily important for it to be warm. They would leave a thin layer of mikveh water, of rainwater, even when draining it. Let me explain. They would drain the mikveh—that is, the immersion pool, the upper pool where people immerse and which contains municipal water—but not completely. They would leave a thin layer of water. Why? Because the Rebbe Rashab, in the notes Rabbi Landau wrote about mikvehs, tells us that the incoming municipal water must fall onto rainwater. So they leave some from the previous filling. As we said, when it was first filled, we put a layer of rainwater on the floor and poured the municipal water into it. Now we drain the municipal water and leave a thin layer at the bottom. When the new water comes in, it will fall onto the water left from the previous filling. This time, the water left from the previous filling is considered rainwater. It has come into contact and mixed

29:10 Speaker 2 with the rainwater. Once again, the tap water, the municipal water, will undergo zeri’ah into rainwater, and we will have gained zeri’ah. That is why, over the years, cleaning Chabad mikvehs became very complicated. Why? We said earlier that you have to scrub the walls and the floor. But how do you scrub the floor? And second, dirt often sinks to the bottom—at least some of it does most of the time. Some floats and some sinks. We’ll soon see how to make it sink altogether. When you scrub the walls after draining the mikveh and leaving a thin layer of water—again, I mean a thin layer above the floor of the immersion pool—where does the soap and all the dirt go? Into that thin layer. Well, however much water we add now, all that dirt will get mixed in. So what do we do? That was the problem. In other words, besides the problem I mentioned earlier, the black line we have to clean, even without that line, all the dirt and oils would sink into that thin layer. So how do you clean it now? Bring something special to fish the dirt out? First, I don’t know whether you’ll succeed. Second, you might snag and accidentally damage the opening that connects the water to the rainwater below. Some clever people have already accidentally pumped out the rainwater. So what do you do? There are two options. One is what they used to do: fill it with water, drain it, add a little more water, drain it again. They would refill that bottom layer several times until the water looked normal. That was one method, and it was very involved and complicated. Another method was to take aluminum sulfate, an aluminum-based substance which, when you put it in the water,

31:22 Speaker 2 causes the dirt to settle. Then you take a pump with a very thin hose and pump out the dirt. A layer of water remains, and you pump out the dirt. Once you get used to it, it works. I haven’t seen people in Israel use this method, even though it leaves the water very clean. You mix an aluminum-based substance with another substance, creating a solution that gives you the desired result. In practice, it wasn’t done much in Israel. I saw one mikveh that does use this method. So what people were left to do was fill it again, clean it again and clean it again, or add a lot of water on top and get some sort of result. In recent years, most Chabad mikvehs have adopted the method the Rebbe discussed in a letter. In that letter, the Rebbe described a new approach that achieves what the Rebbe Rashab spoke about. The Rebbe calls it “zeri’ah in the more effective manner,” zeri’ah in the best way. The Rebbe is speaking about someone who fills the lower reservoir with rainwater and then adds municipal water. Here is what the Rebbe says. We know that Reb Azler [unclear], a"h, truly devoted himself to this. I also know that my father-in-law, Rabbi Hagelstock [unclear], did so abroad even earlier; and today, too, from what he taught me, from what I heard from Rabbi Ashkenazi’s son, and from the way Rabbi Ashkenazi built in Kfar Chabad, they used the method the Rebbe calls “zeri’ah in the more effective manner.” What does that mean? They positioned the pipe that brings in the municipal water so that, when the tap is opened and the water starts flowing into the immersion pool, it flows directly, precisely onto the opening for hashakah. We know that a Chabad immersion pool has two openings at the bottom, each a tefach by a tefach. The two openings are generally at opposite ends. They position the water tap near one of them,

33:39 Speaker 2 so that the water falls directly onto the opening for hashakah. What does that accomplish? At least the first amount of tap water is absorbed into, sown into, and joined or united with the rainwater. It undergoes zeri’ah and is then considered rainwater. After that, when a layer of water accumulates, all the water that falls onto it undergoes zeri’ah into it, and you have zeri’ah of the water in the more effective manner. So when the Rebbe speaks about tap water pouring and flowing directly onto the opening, that gives us a new ability to clean the mikveh, one we didn’t have in earlier years. I’m talking about twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Why? It’s very simple. Now, in Chabad mikvehs too, we can drain the mikveh completely, while taking care not to drain the water from the lower pool. I’ve seen Chabad mikvehs where the pump—after all, the pump has to draw water, and they generally make a recess for it below floor level. Let’s say the floor is at a certain level, a meter above some reference point. They make a recess in the floor and lower the pump into it, because the pump always has to sit lower than the floor to draw out the water from below. They wanted a pump there, so they put it into the opening for hashakah. As a result, every time they pumped out the water, they also pumped out some of the rainwater below. The Rebbe insists that the rainwater below contain twice forty se’ah, that none of the water be missing, and here they were simply reducing it by mistake. Unfortunately, I came across one mikveh with a charedi attendant. We would warn him not to touch the rainwater in the Chabad mikveh. Every time he removed the water, he would also make sure

35:53 Speaker 2 To take some of the rainwater from the bottom so it would be easier to clean. He would tell everyone not to say anything. With Hashem’s help, I don’t mean, G-d forbid, to cast aspersions: he was a truly G-d-fearing Jew and did it out of his fear of Heaven, but it was against our customs. I’m telling this only so people know to be careful. Of course, G-d forbid, I don’t mean to speak negatively about a fellow Jew. I personally have great respect for him. He looked after our mikveh for many years, but this did happen. So I’ll say it again: you pump out the water completely, leaving the rainwater at floor level. Now we can wipe, scrub thoroughly, scrape and scour. Once all the water has drained away, I can refill it with city water, making sure it falls directly onto that opening, the opening that connects the waters. That gives me the added stringency that the Rebbe told Rabbi—the Rebbe Rashab told Rabbi Yaakov Landau—that the rainwater must always remain above the floor for the next filling. Each time, for the next filling, there has to be water on the floor, at the bottom. The Rebbe offered another solution: have the city water, the tap water, fall opposite the opening, and then we can clean. So some mikvaos do have that setup, with the tap opposite the opening. They empty out all the water and scrub thoroughly, but they still encounter the first problem we discussed: that black line at the waterline. If the mikveh is, say, a meter and a half deep, the water usually reaches a height of about a meter thirty-five, perhaps even less—a meter twenty-five or so. And at that height there’s always that black line. What do you do? Some attendants go in wearing shorts

37:55 Speaker 2 or a robe. They get into the water, lower it a little, pump some out, leaving it at, say, half its height, and thoroughly scrub that black line, which forms over two or three months. Every mikveh develops a line like that, and the dirt from it goes into the water. Again, say the water is a meter thirty-five high. They lower it to eighty centimeters or a meter; it doesn’t matter. They get in wearing shorts or a robe and scrub it. The dirt goes into the water, and afterward they empty the water either completely or partially, using one of the two methods we mentioned earlier: emptying it completely if they have a tap opposite the opening, or lowering the water and leaving a layer at the bottom. That was one solution. Incidentally, for those who don’t have the setup I mentioned, it’s always better to lower the water level a little and scrub the line first, so that the grease and dirt from it mix into a larger quantity of water. Then, when you pump out the water and leave a layer at the bottom, that layer won’t be so dirty. That’s the simplest method for most mikveh attendants. I want to suggest something else that, in my experience, is simpler. When you have that line and dirt in a Chabad mikveh, whether or not you leave a little water at the bottom isn’t the point. If you lower the water level and scrub the line with a brush, the brush gets full of dirt. It turns muddy, and then the dirt hardens. You have to keep stopping to clean the brush under a tap or in a bucket of water. So it’s better to add chlorine to the water to make the job easier. Say the chlorine level is at a certain level.

39:55 Speaker 2 With chlorine, as we said, if the level is one, bring it up to two. Half won’t do much. Go from one to two, or from three hundred parts per million, using another measure, to four hundred. Yes? Raise it by a hundred. There are parts-per-million measurements for chlorine; bring it to four hundred. The water will become more chlorinated. Now raise the water above its usual level, and get in wearing a swimsuit or whatever works. Get into the water, and the scrubbing will go quickly. The water is full of chlorine and reaches above the line. Give it a quick scrub, then empty out as much water as you want. Even if you empty it while leaving a thin layer, there won’t be much dirt left. And if some dirt does remain, then, as we said earlier, add aluminum sulfate. The dirt will sink to the bottom, and you can pump it out—or empty the mikveh completely, if you have the other setup. That’s how you get a clean mikveh. I’ve simply shared some methods people have tried over the years, here and abroad, and what they’ve told me about cleaning our mikveh. What I tell our people is that, boruch Hashem, we’re now finishing another mikveh—the construction of a third mikveh in Neve Geulah, in the new neighborhood—and we have a men’s mikveh here. So we’ve already put in all the infrastructure for the pump and the drainage, so we’ll always be able to clean without any obstacles, and do it quickly. There are rabbis in Eretz Yisroel who still don’t permit a filter. They argue that the water inside the filters enters with the other water and then goes into a vessel. I don’t know. Some say it makes the water flowing water.

42:06 Speaker 2 Some say it makes it katapres, water flowing down an incline. I could understand those who say it makes the water flow if the filter were outside the water. But with a filter inside the water, there’s no halachic issue, no question. Those who raise questions about this also raise questions about steps—things our Rebbeim never even considered a question. So I see no problem with putting filters inside the water. Still, if someone wants to install them without giving people too much to talk about, he can arrange for the underwater filters not to run when people come for a Torah-mandated immersion. There are Torah-mandated immersions, such as moving from one level of purity to another for terumah, and the purification of a woman after childbirth or menstruation. Fine. But with men’s immersions, even if the filter is running during the immersion, I don’t see a halachic problem. Still, there are rabbis in Eretz Yisroel who prohibit it, so we have mikvaos without filters. We also have mikvaos in Eretz Yisroel with filters that run only outside immersion hours. It creates a great deal of complication: you need a timer, and sometimes the timer is off or there’s suddenly a power outage. In any case, the idea is that the filters don’t run around the clock or throughout the immersion hours. So, as I said, with filters, the first thing is to clarify their halachic status with the rabbis who issue rulings in that city. If the rabbi responsible for the mikvaos on behalf of the religious council or rabbinate, who is also directly or indirectly responsible for your mikveh, doesn’t approve them, there’s no point arguing. Don’t install them. Clean the water more often; replace it more often. On the contrary, you’ll have clean, fresh water each time. If you’re given permission to install filters, they do a good job. Here in Eretz Yisroel, filters cost—there’s one, there’s one

44:04 Speaker 2 Or two who have special permits to import them, and who have the seal of approval from the Ministry of Religious Affairs or from the rabbis. It costs over ten thousand shekels. Abroad, I’ve seen devices—filters—that cost less, much less, a few hundred dollars. But they need a device alongside them that supplies the power they need to operate, and here in Israel that’s a little harder to obtain. These filters definitely filter the water: they remove the oils, and especially the hair and dirt, leaving the water cleaner. Yes, replacing the water is a serious issue, because of the cost. People don’t want to replace it every time. If there are mikvaos where, without a filter, you replace the water every day or two, or even every week, and with a filter you can extend the life of the water to three or four weeks, then why not? That’s why filters have become very, very popular in mikvaos in recent years. Despite the high price of the system, and despite the need to take out the filters, clean them, and maintain them, in a mikveh where it can be done and the rabbinate approves, it is recommended and desirable to install a filter. Having a mikveh attendant who oversees the level of hygiene and cleanliness still does not establish that the water is kosher. Mikveh maintenance, as we said, includes replacing the water. Replacing the water—especially the rainwater—is something that in some places is always done by a rabbi. This is particularly true in Chabad, where we need the water to fill directly over the opening. And especially when it comes to filling with rainwater, there must be continuous halachic supervision—truly continuous. People don’t always know the halachos; they don’t always know the rules. How often is the rainwater replaced? That is part of water maintenance. It is

46:14 Speaker 2 also a halachic matter. I deliberately didn’t speak about it at the beginning because it isn’t routine maintenance, but now I want to devote some time to it. Ladies and gentlemen, some people ask why the water needs to be replaced. I came across a mikveh in one country—it doesn’t matter where. I was there not long ago and found a beautiful, kosher Chabad mikveh built by a brilliant, G-d-fearing rabbi. He knew that this was a remote place—it was remote at the time—and that no one would touch the water there. He built it to stay that way for seventy years. For seventy years, the water wasn’t replaced. Of course, there are questions here about the non-Jew who replaces the water. He arranged everything properly from every halachic angle and also appointed a rabbi to supervise the non-Jew. The way he did it was a work of genius. Is that the most meticulous standard? No. Why? In the Rebbe Rashab’s instructions to Rabbi Yaakov Landau, which the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach included at the end of the Shulchan Aruch, it says that a Chabad mikveh needs a reserve reservoir. You don’t build a Chabad mikveh without a water reservoir. The Rebbe Rashab wanted that reservoir for several purposes. First, to replace the rainwater in the lower pool. We know from testimony—it isn’t written down—that in Rostov, the Rebbe Rashab replaced it once every two years. He replaced the water in the lower pool, meaning he filled it with fresh rainwater. From where? From the reservoir. Second—and this takes me back to the first point, so listen carefully—the Rebbe Rashab had no problem when he cleaned the mikveh. Why didn’t he have a problem? For a very simple reason. He emptied all the water completely and cleaned the floor and the walls. We said that the Rebbe Rashab wanted a layer of rainwater

48:22 Speaker 2 above the floor of the lower pool. He had a reservoir of rainwater. He would open the plug and, after cleaning the mikveh, let in a thin layer of rainwater. Then he would close the plug and fill the pool with municipal water on top of it. That way, he always had clean water. Earlier we spoke about the difficulty of cleaning a Chabad mikveh. The Rebbe Rashab had a solution. I didn’t mention this solution earlier simply because, in most Chabad mikvaos, the plugs make things complicated. You have to open and close the wooden plug, and it breaks in your hands and causes such a mess that people prefer not to deal with it. But the Rebbe Rashab’s solution was very simple. He wrote to Rabbi Yaakov Landau: Set up a reserve reservoir. In other words, a Chabad mikveh needs an additional reservoir that stores rainwater—more rainwater than the lower pool needs, more than the amount of water that fits in the lower pool. The Rebbe says twice forty se’ah, so you certainly need at least fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred liters. The Rebbe Rashab had more than that. Besides knowing from testimony that he replaced the water in the lower pool once every two years, we can also describe what he writes: he would drain the municipal water, the tap water, completely from the pool. They would clean it, and once it was dry, they would open the plug—the tap, as he calls it. Inside the wooden ring was a wooden tap. They would open it, and the rainwater stored and waiting in the reserve reservoir would flow into the channel, pass through the hamshachah channel, and descend into the pool, covering the floor. He would close it, and now, how wonderful: he would fill it with fresh tap water on top. So, as we discussed earlier, many Chabad mikvaos—until we learned from Igros Kodesh of this instruction from

50:26 Speaker 2 the Rebbe that the tap water should flow onto the opening, until we discovered that letter of the Rebbe and it was put into practice in all the mikvaos—had a lot of difficulty with cleaning. That’s true, because they would indeed leave a layer from the previous filling: tap water that had been brought into contact with the rainwater the previous time. But for someone who does as the Rebbe Rashab did—and I’ll say again, in most of the mikvaos I’ve seen in Israel, the plugs are set into the concrete, and it’s hard to take them out, let alone put them back. Unfortunately, they also make them with a very narrow diameter, so they break, or they make them from wood that isn’t strong enough or isn’t water-resistant. When plugs are made from beechwood or similar woods available on the market—and, of course, as part of mikveh maintenance you have to remember to obtain the right plugs—I’ve seen wooden tap plugs that some rabbis approve. But while they may be kosher at first, sometimes they wear away inside and then become like a vessel. You have to be careful. Most of the wooden plugs currently on the market for Chabad mikvaos are set into concrete, and it’s very hard to insert and remove them there. Their diameter is also very small—very, very narrow—so they’re very hard to handle. They break. So this idea of the Rebbe Rashab’s—that every time you drain the immersion water from the pool, you should open the reserve water reservoir and let water flow from it until it covers the floor, close it with the wooden tap, as he calls it, and then fill it with municipal water on top—I didn’t address it, simply because you almost never see a rabbi come and do that. No one will touch it. No

52:35 Speaker 2 They would let the mikvah attendant touch the rainwater. You need to know how to open it, and make sure there’s no cloth that could absorb water. You need to know how to do it, which is why I didn’t include it. If you don’t have the options for cleaning the water that I mentioned earlier, and you can’t have the municipal water—the tap water—flow directly onto the opening, but you do have good access to the reserve rainwater reservoir, and its plug is, say, five inches, with a good plug that fits and can be pulled out easily, then it’s always best to arrange it so the plug doesn’t go directly into the concrete, but into an opening set in the concrete, where you can insert and remove it. That way you’ll get the desired result: even when you empty the immersion water, the municipal water, from the upper pool, you can always go to the wooden tap—the wooden plug—pull it out, and let the rainwater flow in and cover the floor of the immersion pool with a layer of water. To sum up, what did we learn today? We learned that in maintaining mikvaos, we need to pay attention to the halachic aspects: the roof must always be in order, and the channels must always be in order and clean—with no utensils, bags, other objects, or dirt in them. We learned how important it is for the water to be clean and for the surroundings to be hygienic, clean, and sanitary, so that people first of all feel welcomed and that the place is inviting. Above all, let’s not forget that cleanliness leads to purity, and purity leads to Eliyahu Hanavi and the resurrection of the dead. Today we also learned a great deal about maintaining the water—how we work with it. We didn’t go into every detail, but we presented the simplest method, the one we use here in Haifa. Beyond that, we also spoke, of course, about everything that follows from it. How do you clean

54:55 Speaker 2 a mikvah after emptying the water? How do you clean a Chabad mikvah, where you have to clean it while also preserving the connection between the tap water and the rainwater below? We discussed two methods commonly used today, as well as another method that the Rebbe Rashab used, which we mentioned at the end, though it isn’t very common today. Thank you very much to all our listeners. If we manage to help improve even one mikvah and make it run more effectively, then all of us Chabad chassidim can see that as a step. What kind of step? A step that brings closer the revelation of the Rebbe. Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu V’Rabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach L’olam Va’ed.