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To: A.J.Armitage
I should have tried googling Mikva, you are right.

If you had read the entire page you quoted, http://www.interfaithfamily.com/article/issue21/mgeller.html you would have found this sentence: "Conservative Judaism has largely ignored this practice in the past, but recently has begun to reevaluate its silence in this area and to consider the spiritual implications of mikvah immersion for human sexuality and for women."

IE, the mikvah ritual has not been followed by mainstream Judaism for a while. I grew up in a Conservative Jewish house. I went to Hebrew school, practiced ritual kosher dietary law, studied for and performed my Bar Mitzvah ceremony including reading a passage for a Soviet Refusenik who could not have one in the USSR, helped my sister prepare for her Bat Mitzvah, and guess what?

Not one of my female relatives, who are all religious and ritually observant, went to the mikvah.

Curious though that *i* didn't mention mikvah, you did.

I didn't claim to be an expert on mikvah, you did.

Apparently I prefer my herring pickled with onions, and you prefer yours red. :)

257 posted on 08/28/2003 12:52:51 PM PDT by adam_az
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To: adam_az
If you had read the entire page you quoted, http://www.interfaithfamily.com/article/issue21/mgeller.html you would have found this sentence: "Conservative Judaism has largely ignored this practice in the past, but recently has begun to reevaluate its silence in this area and to consider the spiritual implications of mikvah immersion for human sexuality and for women." IE, the mikvah ritual has not been followed by mainstream Judaism for a while.

So what? Christianity was around a long time before Liberal, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism split. Like over a thousand years before.

Curious though that *i* didn't mention mikvah, you did. I didn't claim to be an expert on mikvah, you did. Apparently I prefer my herring pickled with onions, and you prefer yours red. :)

That's a stawman. I never claimed to be an "expert" on the mikva. You made a specific claim -- that baptism derives from pagan practices. I countered that claim by pointing out the Jewish practice it actually derives from. All I ever claimed to know is the background of the ordinance of baptism, and I do know it.

276 posted on 08/28/2003 6:09:10 PM PDT by A.J.Armitage
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