Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Benny and Naomi Prager* moved to Phoenix, Arizona in August 1975. Benny had been offered a
teaching position in the Jewish day school there and after much deliberation with his wife and encouragement
from the principal in Phoenix, Rabbi Marcus, they decided to make the move from Atlanta.
One of their main concerns was the fact that there was no mikveh in Phoenix and the closest one was in
Tucson, about two and a half hours away by car. Rabbi Marcus had assured Benny that a mikveh would be built
in Phoenix in the near future. And Benny and Naomi had decided between themselves that if the mikveh was
not completed within two years, they would leave Phoenix.
After settling in Phoenix, they learned that the drive to the mikveh in Tucson was not always a simple
matter. Although it was straight highway driving, the frequent dust storms in the area made the trip difficult
and, at times, even hazardous. If the mikveh was going to be built by their private deadline of two years, they
realized, they would have to get actively involved themselves.
Building a mikveh is a major undertaking for any community; a site has to be found and money has to be
raised to cover the costs of construction. The Phoenix mikveh project got underway in earnest when Benny
decided to team up with Rabbi Marcus to jointly spearhead the campaign.
The two wives also assumed leadership roles. Naomi and Mrs. Marcus co‐chaired a ladies’ tea and raffle
night which raised over two thousand dollars. Benny and Rabbi Marcus organized appeals in both of the frum
shuls in Phoenix and conducted a direct mail solicitation campaign. By the end of the Pragers’ first year in
Phoenix, almost two‐thirds of the money had been raised.
The board of directors of the day school agreed to donate a substantial area of the school grounds for
the new mikveh, and construction commenced.
The fund‐raising and the filing for zoning and building permits were complicated, but not nearly as
challenging as satisfying the halachic requirements. According to Halacha, a natural body of running water,
such as a river, spring, or ocean, constitutes a kosher mikveh; but only rainwater may be used for a man‐made
mikveh. Moreover, the rainwater may not be transported through pipes or metal containers.
In most cities, a mikveh can be built using rainwater gathered from the roof of the building in which the
mikveh is located. But in Phoenix, it almost never rains! And when it does rain, the shower is so brief that it
would never fill up the amount of water halachically required to complete a mikveh. (The minimum amount of
water required is 40 se’ah, appx. 24 cubic feet.)
In order to find a halachic solution to this problem, Rabbi Marcus contacted Rav Moshe k"mz. Rav Moshe
ruled that, in order to be able to build a mikveh in Phoenix, snow could be brought instead of rainwater.
However, since it never snows in Phoenix either, the snow would have to be brought in by truck from the
Rocky Mountains! In order not to be tnyn the snow, a special wooden frame would have to be constructed and
inserted into the back of the truck to shield the snow from touching the metal walls and floor of the truck.
Benny contacted many trucking companies until he found one willing to satisfy all the necessary
requirements. “When do you want us to pick up and deliver this snow?” the trucking foreman asked.
“The construction of our ritualarium is not yet completed,” Benny replied. “As soon as it is, we’ll be in
touch with you again. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
Later that day, Benny met his principal in the hallway of the school. “I found a trucking firm willing to
take the job,” Benny informed Rabbi Marcus, “but I’m not sure whether the guy really believed I was serious
when I explained what we needed!”
*
(Names have been changed)
Rabbi Marcus smiled. “It won’t be long now, Ben,” he said. “The walls are completely finished and the
mikveh pool itself is completed. Now all we need is the roof, and the contractor told me he plans to start
working on that next week.”
The following day, Benny walked excitedly into Rabbi Marcus’ office. “Have you heard the weather
forecast for tomorrow?”
“No. What are they saying?”
“They’re predicting rain for tomorrow!”
“So what? That’s not exactly a front‐page story.”
“I was just thinking that perhaps we should remove the tarpaulin covering the mikveh pool today ‐‐
since there’s no roof on the extension yet, we’d be able to catch some of the rainwater in the mikveh!”
“Benny, how long has it been since you moved to Phoenix? Almost two years already ‐‐ you should know
by now that the rain in Phoenix never lasts long enough to wet a stamp!”
“I know, I know....but however little we collect means transporting that much less snow. And frankly,
I’m still not convinced that the whole wooden lining idea is really going to work.”
“Okay, if it will make you feel better, I’ll be glad to help you remove the tarp. What a principal won’t do
to accommodate his faculty!” he joked.
The next day, as predicted, it started raining in the middle of the afternoon. Benny was sitting in the
lunchroom with his class when the rain began. At first it was a light drizzle, just as was forecast. But soon it
changed to a heavy rain and then a heavier, soaking rain. Ten minutes later, all the children were out of their
seats with their noses pressed against the windows watching a sight they had never seen before: a driving,
pelting rain.
Benny jumped out of his seat as well, but he wasn’t running to the window ‐‐ he was running out the
door. With neither a raincoat nor a hat, he rushed out to check on the mikveh.
When he got there, Rabbi Marcus was already standing inside the roofless enclosure. “I’ve never seen
anything like it before in my life!” Rabbi Marcus shouted to Benny over the thunder of the heavy downpour.
“Look, there must be close to an inch collected already. This is unbelievable!”
Both men stood at the side of the mikveh and speechlessly watched as the precious droplets shot down
from the sky, splashing into the shallow pool already collected at the bottom of the mikveh.
Benny broke the silence. “We’d better get inside before we get soaked to the skin.”
By the end of the school day, it was still raining. The streets were already flooded and car‐pooling
became a small nightmare. Since it almost never rains in Phoenix, the streets of the city are not even
constructed with drains; therefore the unusually heavy rain flooded roads everywhere in town.
Eventually, all of the children and faculty got home safely. Only Benny and Rabbi Marcus stayed behind.
They stood glued to the roofless building housing their new mikveh, watching in awe as the pure, holy
rainwater miraculously poured down from the sky. By then, close to a foot of water had collected at the
bottom of the pool. And the rains kept coming, with no letup in sight.
For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, it just rained and rained. None of the old‐timers in
Phoenix could remember ever seeing it rain so hard for so long. By the time the rain stopped, the mikveh was
completely full, with more than the required amount of rainwater.
Now, over thirty years later, the mikveh is still being used as a result of that one, astonishing rainfall.
(When being kcuy in a mikveh, you aren’t kcuy directly in the rainwater but in replaceable tap water which is
halachically connected to the adjacent pool of rainwater.)
The day the mikveh was filled with rainwater was April 12, 1976. And it went down in the record books as
the heaviest rainfall in the history of Phoenix. Until that date and since that date, nothing has come close.