On erev Pesach 2016, a year and a half after we had purchased our building in Vacaville California, I was preparing for our community seder. The tables were beautifully set, but the condition of the room was really upsetting to me. We had purchased our building over a year prior and plans constantly were stalled for one reason or another. Things were just not moving forward, and the building- although large and spacious-served as a warehouse previously and it was in dire need of renovation.
At that moment, I did something I never remember doing before- I stopped what I was doing and said, âHashem, what do you want for this building, maybe we are getting in the way. Can You just tell us what you want this building to be?â I finished setting up and we had our seder all the while thinking to myself, âI wonder what it is Hashem wants?â
After the first few days of yom tov my husband got a message from a woman in the community suggesting the inclusion of a keilim mikvah in our building. She and her husband had kashered their kitchen for Pesach and it was very difficult for them to toivel everything because the only body of water in our area is down a steep hill, itâs also in a part of town thatâs not especially safe. I never considered the inconvenience before because my husband always handled the toiveling. I immediately made the connection and I said to myself this is the answer I was looking for- we need to have a mikvah in our building. Although we thought a mikvah would be a part of our long term plan, it was nowhere in our immediate purview and certainly not in our drawings for renovation.
Immediately we jumped on the inspiration to build a keilim mikvah. My husband called Rabbi Grossbaum, a mivkah expert, on a Thursday. After some back and forth he said, âI'll be there tomorrow and I'll leave Sunday morningâ. He happened to have been traveling overseas the following Monday morning and was able to squeeze in a visit to Vacaville right away- another level of Divine guidance towards our mikvah. He took an interest in what we were doing and asked us about plans for the entire building. We were debating whether to have a lounge area- we thought it might create noise outside the sanctuary, and Rabbi Grossbaum said, âOf course you need couches, you're a chabad house, you need a living room.â As soon as he said that I thought, âOh, make a home that feels like it is everyone's home. I've already done that with my own home. I can simply duplicate what I've done on a larger scale.â At that point the process of building and designing our Chabad felt much more natural and fluid to me.
When we were planning the building, there were requests for traditional Kosher food. Every year at our Menorah lighting the mayor joked with us that he wanted to see a kosher deli on Main Street. And I was passionate about having kosher meat available to the community because I was raised with the importance of the campaign for Kosher. My grandfather was a schochet (ritual slaughterer) and my mother spearheaded the Spice and Spirit Cookbook in order to spread awareness about kosher. So we included a deli with a storefront in our plans.
When we showed Rabbi Grossbaum the drawing for where the deli would be he looked at us and said, â you don't look like business peopleâ- and it felt like this huge weight was lifted off our shoulders- his advice was really from Hashem. Rabbi Grossbaum reconfigured our whole chabad house on Motzei Shabbat- he stayed up with us the whole night- until his flight the next morning. At that point it was so clear to us that we needed to include a mikvah in our center, it was right in front of our eyes but we didn't see it. So the space we initially designated for the deli ultimately became our mikvah. (We actually did have a deli but we did it in a pop up format which was far more efficient, we thought it needed to be a storefront but Hashem showed us a different way of providing nostalgic Kosher food to the Northern California area.)
It never occurred to us to build a mikvah for people because there were so few people who would use it. The woman who initially asked for the Keilim mikvah- never mentioned anything about a mikvah for people- she was already using a mikvah in Sacramento. Rabbi Grossbaum pushed us to build a mikvah for people, yet even after his encouragement we still had doubts and could not justify allocating a huge amount of resources which we didnât have to a mikvah we weren't even sure who would use. My husband had kept his phone off during our Motzei Shabbat meeting with Rabbi Grossbaum to be respectful and stay focused. When he turned it on afterwards someone had posted on a whatsapp group a handwritten letter from the Rebbe talking about mikvah, it said, âeven if one person uses the mikvah the effects will last for generations.â The letter brought us deep certainty that building a mikvah for people is the direction we needed to go in.
Later that Sunday evening, after Rabbi Grossbaum caught his flight, I was driving to a womenâs farbrengen (chassidic gathering) with a friend and was telling her about Rabbi Grossbaumâs visit, and she said âif youâre already going through all the effort to make a Keilim mikvah why wouldn't you make a mikvah for people?.â This comment planted a seed in my mind which would be reinforced a short while later. The shlucha, who hosted the farbrengen in honor of her fatherâs yahrzeit, was talking about how her father was so meticulous about going to mikvah. Another moment of hashgacha protis- Hashem directing us. It was so deep in my subconscious that no women would use the mikvah that I thought, âok- having a mikvah for men also has valueâ
We called Rabbi Grossbaum back right away and in a short amount of time he was able to guide us virtually on how to adjust the building and mikvah plans to accommodate people. He really was the inspiration behind building a mikvah for people. By divine providence, we had been using a very small mikvah in Berkeley and we used their mikvah as a template for ours and were able to fit in a prep room and waiting area in the plans.
I wanted our mikvah to be built with very high standards because mikvah is so entwined with blessing for children. It is known that meticulousness with mikvah leads to blessing for children. We reached out to another mikvah organization to see if they would partner with us. We found two or three Jewish women who were potential candidates for using a mikvah in our community; they presented in front of the representatives from the organization who came out to meet us and learn about our community. They were very supportive of our plans and it didnât matter to them that our mikvah would service a very small population. They asked us for drawings of the mikvah with a bor on the side as well. I found myself being hesitant about this because while it is completely acceptable to build a mikvah with both bor al gabai bor and a bor on the side to meet halachic requirements for different communities, it was our goal was to adhere as closely as possible to the way the Rebbe Rashabâs mikvah was built which is only bor al gabai bor.
At that point I wrote to the Rebbe and asked what to do. I opened a letter about mikvah, I got tremendous clarity. I decided before we go any further we need to choose a Rav. So I turned to Hashem just like I had done when I wanted our building to move forward several months before. I said âwhich Rav do You want us to consult with for this mikvah?â That very day I got a phone call from a woman building a mikvah who had some questions for me. I almost fell off my chair, no one knew we were building a mikvah. When my husband and I decided to build the mikvah we agreed to keep it very quiet because we had all these plans previously and still nothing was finished. So how did this woman from across the country know that we were building a mikvah? Itâs still a mystery to me. I don't even remember what her questions were, I just knew that she was sent to me so I could know which Rav to use. She and her husband were working with the guidance of Rabbi Feigelstock and intuitively I knew he would be our Rav. I asked my husband what he thought about using Rabbi Feigelstock and he said, âwow he wrote a sefer on how it's most preferable to build a mikvah using only bor al gabbai bor and he is regarded as a foremost authority on mikvah.â With my husband in agreement, we were able to bring Rabbi Feigelstock on as our Rav for everything mikvah related.
We were very deliberate in our correspondence with the mikvah organization , and did not want to leave them unanswered because they had been so kind and supportive of what we were doing even before we had built up our own confidence in the importance of including a mikvah in our building. We respectfully stated our reasoning, that we wanted a mikvah built only in the bor al gabai bor method. They were very understanding and we mutually agreed not to partner. While we felt that this was absolutely the right decision we were left wondering how we were going to come up with the money needed to complete the project.
Before we even purchased our building, and certainly before any thoughts of any kind of mikvah, my husbandâs friend from yeshiva named Mendy, called my husband and said he wanted to partner with in the building of our mikvah- which wasnât yet in our purview- in merit of being blessed with another child. At the time he and his wife had two girls and they wanted to be blessed with a son. My husband had learned not to say no when someone wants to invest resources in positive projects that will benefit many. He and Mendy agreed that the money would be put aside in a special account designated for our future mikvah. About a year later, he had a baby boy- an answer to their prayer. That gesture of support several years prior was the planting of seed for our mivkah. Shortly thereafter, Chabad was able to purchase a 8,000 square foot building which was a significant milestone for the growth of our community.
Additionally, a woman named Shifra, had read about our mikvah being built, and emailed my husband and said, âI want to contribute towards the mikvahâ. She and her husband were having fertility issues, and she said, I don't have a lot of money, but I'm going to give a portion of it towards your mikvah. And so it was, it was, that she would send us small amounts every few weeks. This went on for the entire duration of our building of the mikvah.
About two weeks after Rabbi Grossbaumâs visit, my husband received a call from Nadav, an Israeli man living in northern California whom we had met before. He asked âRabbi, are you building a mikvah? Because I want to partner with someone building a mikvahâ. He had been using a mikvah in another town that was very old and in need of updating. He offered to partner with them on renovationsrennovations but they declined. His next call was to Chabad and he became instrumental to the mikvah project, especially for the final push to complete the mikvah.
To mark our daughter Menuchaâs third birthday in 2015 , who was born happy and healthy on 19 Kislev after a complicated pregnancy- we brought out Rabbi Manis Friedman for a community celebration. After that event one of our biggest supporters approached us and told us he wanted to donate all the furniture for the shul. We were so grateful and excited. We ordered custom furniture from Israel that takes many months to come, and even once it arrives in the US by boat the shipment then gets packed on a freight train which only departs once the train is full. At that point our building was still very raw- its usability was very limited. Our goal was to have the sanctuary ready before we made any announcements about the mikvah- especially since, as I had mentioned, the plans were continuously delayed. We anticipated and planned a grand opening for the shul on September 25 2016- the Shabbat before selichot.
It was starting to get close to the date for our grand dedication and still no word about the furniture- including the Aron Kodesh and Bima. The supporter who sponsored the furniture asked us why we just wonât wait until the furniture comes to plan the event. We knew it was a bit risky, but we definitely did not want to postpone our event. We told him that we were âconfidentâ everything would work out. On Motzei Shabbat, with just about a week to go before our big dedication my sister called me. She told me she was reading a letter from the Rebbe on Shabbat and felt that it was applicable to me. The letter said, âyou write to me about the problems with your shul but what about the mikvah?â So we decided to announce the ground breaking of the mikvah to make it more real and commit to it on a broader level.
My mother had gone to the ohel and had written a letter informing the Rebbe that we had planned a groundbreaking for the mikvah. Immediately after that we were notified that the freight train with our furniture took off and would be arriving in a few days! After all that waiting time! The company sent representatives from Israel to assemble everything- two Israelis and two arabs. It took the team five or six days to build everything and they finished right before Shabbat. We were sweeping up saw dust on Motzei Shabbat and just a short while later we held the first tefilah in our shul- Selichot. It felt truly miraculous and magical. The next day we hosted our grand opening. The community was so excited and couldnât believe the transformation from raw and unfinished to a gleaming and beautiful space for prayer and connection. The demo for the shul area started on Tisha Bâav and was completed shortly before Rosh Hashana- so the timing felt full circle in harmony with the seven haftorahs of comfort read during this time that describe the repair of the relationship between Hashem and the Jewish people and hope for the future.
We felt that all the success of the building and completion of the shul was from the decision to make the mikvah. Every bracha that we experienced through the journey of building the shul we felt was linked back to the commitment to build the mikvah.
A week and a half after our shul dedication, during Aseret Yemi Teshiva, we had a groundbreaking for the mikvah. We wanted to hold this event on Rebbetzin Chanaâs Yahrzeit- because the Rebbe often pointed out that the name of his mother is an acronym for the three special mitzvot that were given to women Challah, Nidah, and Hadlakat Neirot. Her Yahrzeit was on Shabbat that year so we held the event on Friday afternoon followed by a Friday night Shabbat meal. A speaker at that event shared that a city that does not have a mikvah is not considered a true city. When the people of the city build a mikvah, Hashem rests his shechinah in that city and all the residents are blessed. From her talk, a woman in our community who did not yet have a Jewish name decided to take on the name Chana.
That year I was in New York for 22 Shevat. I was at the Union Street mikvah and noticed the preparation room that housed the Rebbeâs chair was dedicated to my grandmother. It was then that I decided to dedicate our mikvah to my grandmother who was very passionate about beautifying mikvaot and helping to create a special mikvah experience for women. After we dedicated the mikvah we realized that Mendy, the initial person who gave us money for the mikvah before we had any thoughts of building one, was a distant relative of my grandmother.
The construction of the mikvah was coming along, however, we needed a few more components to come together to get it finished. One person in the community worked in a concrete business and they donated some of the concrete. Then we had the main expense of the stone. Nadav, who had approached my husband a while before with a desire to contribute to mikvah was dating a non Jew seriously. My husband invited him as a guest to the Kinus that year in the hopes that he would end his relationship with his girlfriend and marry a Jew, which is exactly what happened. He was so inspired that a short while after the trip he left his girlfriend and provided all the stone for our mikvah- the final element for the mikvah. He did indeed marry a Jew and now has two beautiful Jewish children. Mendy also stepped in with a donation towards the conclusion of the mikvah and with everyoneâs help- and Hashemâs help we got it done.
A year and a half after the groundbreaking, around Pesach time, the mikvah was finally ready. The first person used the mikvah. As it happened, completion of the mikvahâs building was just around the same time that Shifra completed her last donation of a predetermined amount contributed in installments, over the course of about two and half years. We informed her that thank G-d the mikvah was completed and that the first person had used it and to express our gratitude for her partnership.. She called my husband back a few weeks later, and asked if he could tell her when was the actual date that the mikveh was used. My husband was a little bit apprehensive to share since mikvah is private. But, he told her approximately when. It turns out that she and her husband were about to start fertility treatment, which they avoided because it was around that same time that she conceived naturally which she attributed to her partnership with the building of our mikvah.
We never knew who would actually use the mikvah. But shortly after it was finished I had a baby and had family visiting for the birth over Pesach needed the mikvah. And many other guests have needed the mikvah as well. Additionally, our social hall is very spacious and can accommodate many people, so it often serves as a wedding hall. Every time weâve hosted a wedding, there have been people who needed the mikvah.
Another function of our mikvah is to serve as a mikvah for people in the surrounding area to use if they need the mikvah on Shabbat. Once when I needed the mikvah on Shabbat I had to drive to Los Angeles-six hours away- for Shabbat in order to be within walking distance of a mikvah then I realized that that was another functionality for mikvah. Instead of having to travel far away they could stay with us for Shabbat be closer to home.
Continuous Reverberations
Although our community is on the smaller side, having a mikvah available locally has made the women using it much more engaged with their Judaism. And it has affected every other area their influence in family and home life- wanting to bring children into the world, wanting to have more children, the bris that comes along after a boy is born, ensuring the child has a Jewish education, bringing Shabbos into their home in a much more special way, initiating kosher into their home- and overall increasing the warmth of Yiddishkeit within the family. These are just some examples of the effect of our mikvah on our community.
We started our preschool right after the war in Israel began. We realized that all the kids in the school were born to couples who had used our mikvah. In just a few short years we are seeing the effects of mikvah on the next generation. We thought that a mikvah would be a project for further down the line once our community was established in a deeper way. What happened was the exact opposite-the building of the mikvah was the catalyst for our community to grow
Post Script:
Rabbi Feigelstock's daughter moved out to northern California and is so happy that there is a mikvah near her that was built with the guidance of her father. When he first moved to Argentina there was a mikvah but there was something not fully correct about it but he didn't want to make a big deal in the community. So he built a mikvah in his house for his wife and himself. Someone happened to have used his mikvah who hadn't had a baby for many years and then they got pregnant shortly afterwards. Suddenly everyone was using the mikvah in his house and eventually the community approached him to renovate the mikvah.