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NEWS
Tremendous Demand for Mikvo'os in Outlying Communities
Around the World
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
Remote Diaspora communities are creating a tremendous demand
for mikvo'os in their respective communities. Recently
there has been a large rise in the number of requests by
Jewish communities around the world, notes Rav Gedaliah
Olstein, who heads the Congress of European Rabbis' (CER)
mikveh department. He says the increase stems from the wave
of young Jews returning to their roots and accepting the yoke
of Torah and mitzvas.
These young people are forming and renewing kehillos
where they live and seeking to live in full accordance with
halacha. The CER mikveh department is currently working to
renovate and build mikvo'os, some of which are in
their final stages of construction, including places like
Lisbon, Tbilisi, Lorrach and Dortmund in Germany, Berno and
Pilsen in the Czech Republic, Warsaw and Lublin in Poland,
and Tabor and Tula in Russia.
CER Chairman Rabbi Abba Dunner repeated his commitment made
during the conference in London to mark the 50 year
anniversary of the CER that every community requesting a
mikveh would receive assistance on condition the community
had a rabbinical authority and a building where the mikveh
could be housed. Rabbi Dunner said the CER was taking on this
pledge because a kehilloh built on religious
foundations has no permanence without a mikveh.
In Lisbon the mikveh pit and the water storage apparatus are
soon to be completed. A joint committee made up of the local
rov and the CER is supervising the construction. Rav
Gedaliah Olstein first visited the Lisbon kehilloh
four years ago when he was asked to come see the new mikveh
being built as part of renovations sponsored by the
municipality at the city's ancient synagogue. Unfortunately
the plan drawn up by a local architect did not meet halachic
requirements. The pit had to be totally destroyed and re-
laid, and funding raised for the project.
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