“Mikva Dreams” expressed my love of the Jewish tradition—used by women, men, and people undergoing conversion to become Jews—throughout our history, for immersion in specially designed sacred pools for periodic transformation, utter renewal, and rebirth.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, In Her Own Words.
Ukeles’s artist bio is now about ten pages long. “Manifesto” and “Touch Sanitation Performance” are cited often, but I wondered if she’d like to choose a less frequently noted piece to comment on for Lilith readers. I received the following from her in an email:
“Somehow, in 1975 or 1976, I got invited to join the Heresies Collective to help create the ‘Great Goddess’ issue. Heresies was a journal of art and politics, from a feminist perspective, that began in the 1970s in New York City—sort of a literary cousin of Lilith. There was a Mother Collective, made up of socialists, Marxists, lesbian feminists, anarchists, etc. They decided the themes of each issue, which would then be edited by a smaller group who were particularly interested in the subject matter.
We, the special editorial group, were a highly mixed bunch—from spiritual seekers plumbing the depths of ancient sacred traditions, including witches, to more ‘contemporary’ members trying to widen and reinvent religion to include feminists. We were extremely respectful of each other and excited to discover each other. We were proceeding with our highly energetic work—then suddenly, a halt from the Mother Collective. What? These mostly secular Marxists were very concerned that we, who were so willing to delve into ancient sacred traditions, would drag Second Wave feminism backward into the Dark Ages. Finally, a few of the more open-minded members of the Mother Collective mightily pried our work away from the scaredy-cat members—and let us get back to work until publication in Spring, 1978. I heard it was one of their most sought-after issues ever.
I wrote a performance text called ‘Mikva Dreams.’ I was sure it would be laughed out of the meeting and was genuinely shocked that it was accepted by everyone! It expressed my love of the Jewish tradition—used by women, men, and people undergoing conversion to become Jews—throughout our history, for immersion in specially designed sacred pools for periodic transformation, utter renewal, and rebirth.
I wrote from a very personal perspective, lucky in my own deep experiences that rang true to me and to Jack. I was very aware that the concept of mikva had a very bad reputation among many of my peers, who wouldn’t be caught dead going to the mikva. It was certainly off the table among hard-core feminists, allergic to such ‘contaminating patriarchal rituals.’ I ended the text—after calculating roughly two hundred and ten times of going to the mikva in my baby-making fertile span—like this:
‘Two hundred and ten times to immerse, to go down into, be swallowed by the people’s womb of living waters, to come back to life just as her people’s women have done for so many thousands of years. In all the maintenance of continuing love, her own specific particular kind of moon blood body in nature dies in these waters and is born again. And immerse again.’
‘Immerse again’ is repeated visually 210 times in the printed Heresies. I had performed this text orally, covered in a sheet for privacy, at Franklin Furnace in NYC, in January of 1977.”
