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  • Tevilah—Ritual Bath
  • Sarah N. Cross (bio)

Deeper in Brooklynthan where I was born,in the Brooklyn of the black hats,the eruvin, the long-skirted women,I went to the mikvah, became nakedbefore G-d. It had to be that Brooklyn—

my protestant mother insistingno Jew would call her daughters shiksa.Collected pool of rainwater. I wascheckered in blue and green,probably from the 50s, nothingancient. Like a jetless Jacuzzi

with its precarious chair liftfor those who decided laterin life and had to wash awaytransgression, childbirth, encounters with death.After my sister removed every Band-Aid-covering,all five and four years of uswere submerged once, twice, and again

like we could return to the womb, nowtogether, now more naked thanbirth. You could almost drownfor faith in forty seah of water,enough to hold five thousand eggs,even those who know how to swim,even children. The Barukh [End Page 135]

started from behind the door, our fatherand Rabbi, and we were cleanedin words we did not understand.All the flesh of our white bodies.We were witnessed by the thick womenwho seemed to understand neither Englishnor Hebrew. Just ritual.

Fifteen years later in a hospitalwaiting room, where was G-dwhen the woman told my sistershe could not pray for our motherwho wasn't a Jew? Ritual. Nothingancient. That gesture and solemn rite. [End Page 136]

Sarah N. Cross

Sarah N. Cross's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ars Medica, The Healing Muse, Journal of Medical Humanities, New Physician, Pharos, and YEW. Her prizes include the William Carlos Williams Poetry Prize and the Legible Script Creative Arts Award. She is a physician in Obstetrics and Gynecology, specializing in Maternal Fetal Medicine, at Yale University.

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