The phenomenon of the "mikveh water" actually began 13 years ago with Rabbi Yisrael Halperin, the Habad rabbi of the Tel Aviv suburb Herzliya. Rabbi Halperin, who is childless, was in Crown Heights visiting the Rebbe, when he was told by the son of Rabbi Leibel Groner, the Rebbe's secretary, that dipping in the mikveh after the Rebbe could bring down a blessing for children. (Chasidic men immerse in a mikveh every day.) The Rebbe had apparently once alluded to Rabbi Leibel Groner that one who immerses after him will have a blessing of fertility. The Rebbe always used the privacy of the women's mikveh in Crown Heights for his morning immersion instead of the crowded men's mikveh, but when Rabbi Halperin wanted to follow, his plans were spoiled by the mikveh's zealous caretaker, who admonished him that his immersion would spoil the blessing of fertility for the first woman in the evening to immerse. Rabbi Halperin followed orders and left without immersing, but not before taking a bottle of water from the mikveh that the Rebbe had just used.
Back in Herzliya, the bottle of water rested on a shelf next to Rabbi Halperin's tallit and tefillin as a special treasure to be prized but without specific intentions for its use. Then last year, a congregant approached him with dire news about a niece suffering from incurable paralysis. The family was desperate. Perhaps the rabbi had some segula (treasured item or ritual) that could help? And then it occurred to Rabbi Halperin: why not try the Rebbe's waters?
The woman, to the shock of her physician, was cured. After the word got out about this seeming miracle, friends of the congregant began to lineup at Rabbi Halperin's door - perhaps they could get some of the magic water as well.
Rabbi Halperin diluted the water in a particular way to retain its spiritual impact (the amount poured in at one time never exceeds the original amount) and distributed vials to Habad emissaries around the country. Today,every one seems to know someone who has a story about the mikveh water.
Within Habad, the reaction to the water has been varied. Some Lubavitch leaders feel that the fact that the water's power was discovered just now indicates that the Rebbe, although no longer alive in flesh and blood, is still close to his flock and has left the water as a conduit for his blessings. Others are more skeptical. The Rebbe, they say, never held from amulets or charms. And while he was living, he never encouraged people to take his post-immersion water as a segula.
Still, the stories seem to speak for themselves.
Vered Shteinfeld, whose husband was killed in Lebanon in 1982, suffered for years from a skin disorder which caused open sores all over her arms and legs and was accompanied by acute pain in her joints. Although Vered is not a Lubavticher, she occasionally attends Habad functions near her home in Herzliah. At the end of one such event, little vials of the mikveh water were distributed. When she got home, she had second thoughts about drinking the water. After all, it was mikveh water, and was standing in Rabbi Halperin's closet for 13 years. "Okay", she said to herself, "I'll just rub some on the sores instead." The next morning, to her shock, all the sores had either disappeared or were in the process of drying out. She was elated, yet the pain in her joints still persisted. After several weeks, Vered obtained another vial of water. This time, she closed her eyes, concentrated, and drank. The next day, she says, the pain disappeared as well.
The purifying and healing powers of water are an intrinsic part of Jewish ritual, say the mikveh water proponents, and there are also traditions regarding water that tzadikim used for immersion. The mikveh that was used by the Ari Hakadosh (Rabbi Yitzchok Luria) three hundred years ago, a natural spring located in the middle of the ancient cemetery in Tzfat, is considered a place of great importance for immersion, and many people draw water from there to put into other mikvaot. And in one of the villages that he visited, the Baal Shem Tov purified a contaminated well my immersing in it, rendering the water not only fit for drinking but for healing as well.
"Even though we no longer see him, the water is one indication that the Rebbe is closer to us than he ever was. With the water, he's telling us he's here beside us," says Rabbi Zimroni Chik of Bat Yam, editor of the controversial messianic-oriented "Sichat HaGeula" newsletter which makes sure to publicize a water miracle in every issue.
Eti Berkowitz, whose husband Shlomo Zalman Berkowitz runs the Habad House in the Galilee town of Rosh Pina, shared the following story. Their nine-year-old son Mendy had been wearing glasses since he was one year old to correct a rare condition, and had been monitored over the years by Professor Ben Ezra of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, one of the country's vision experts.
"Last year Mendy decided to take off his glasses. He said he could see the same with or without them," relates Mrs. Berkowitz. "I didn't want to argue with him, so I took him to a local doctor for an examination. It turned out that he really didn't need the glasses, for although his right eye saw almost perfectly, his left eye was practically blind, and glasses couldn't help. Dr. Ben Ezra was abroad at the time, and would only be able to see him in another two months. During those weeks,we went for another consultation which indicated the same diagnosis, and I also constantly tested him to see if indeed he couldn't see. I would stand a few feet away from him and have his right eye covered. His left eye couldn't see me as anything but a fuzzy dark shape. Someone sent my husband a vial of the Rebbe's mikveh water during that time, but we never really paid attention to it. It just seemed like one of those fringe things. Still, the morning my son went to Jerusalem for his appointment, I decided to give him a few drops. That afternoon, my husband called from Hadassah, in total shock. Both eyes, the professor said, could see perfectly. What was all the fuss about?"
Sarah Farkash teaches seventh-grade girls in the town of Yavniel, where her husband Aryeh is a sofer (ritual scribe) and lecturer. One day, she decided to give the water to all of her students. "The change was remarkable," she says. "Most of my girls come from traditional, but not necessarily religious homes, and at that age, all they're concerned about is clothes and boys. In one day, I saw a complete turnaround. Suddenly they were talking about Torah and G-d."
Sarah has taken the water several times herself and says she feels its essence is to calm - physically or mentally. She took it during her last labor and said it was her easiest, most painless birth (she has eight children).
"I think it is more a spiritual segula than a physical one," Sarah comments. "Chasidut teaches that your elevated level of spirituality helps your physicality, your gashmiut. That's why it calms - or heals -the physical aspects of your being."
Sarah first heard about the water through another other-worldly occurrence. Her friend, Suzie, a 36-year-old single woman who was just becoming religious, discovered that she had a cyst attached to the wall of her uterus, and doctors saw no alternative but to do a hysterectomy. Sarah came to visit her in the hospital on the morning she was to be prepped for surgery, and tried to convince her to perhaps seek a second opinion or to try alternative healing before succumbing to an operation which would render her childless forever.
"Sarah," Suzie said to her, "I had a dream last night. It had to do with the Lubavitcher rebbe and with water. Do you know what it could mean?" At the time, Sarah had only vaguely heard of the mikveh water. In fact, in that morning's mail, her husband, as a Habad emissary, received a letter about it. The coincidence was too big to overlook, so she immediately sent for some water and Suzie willingly drank it - every single day (diluted with regular water), until the cyst shrank and surgery was no longer required.
"I'm not a fan of hocus-pocus," says Rabbi Gershon Avzton, a Jerusalem Lubavitcher whose students are mostly Litvaks and misnagdim, some of whom have their own water stories in spite of antipathy to Habad. "If you ask, have miracles happened? Yes, they've happened. But, does the Rebbe become any bigger or holier by me because of it? No, I'm not a chassid because of miracles."
"Today,", Rabbi Avzton continues, "People become chassidim because they hear of magical stories. That makes the Rebbe bigger for them and gives them something to connect with. It used to be that people would see the Rebbe and run away. They would be afraid to show their face in front of him. That's how we were brought up. but today's generation needs something different. They need a personal Rebbe who interacts with them. The Rebbe understood this and made himself available like no one else in the world. I think the water is an extension of this.
"The water is something that can cure - it's happened. I