Member Spotlight: The Soul Center

by Sarah Panzer, Rising Tide Intern

The Soul Center is a home for Jewish spirituality located in Pikesville, Maryland. Founded in 2015, the center was built around the existing mikveh at Beth El Congregation of Baltimore. Today, The Soul Center and mikveh together, as part of the Alvin and Lois Lapidus Center for Healing and Spirituality, serve as a model of progressive mikveh and co-occurring community programming in the Baltimore Jewish community and beyond.

Naomi Malka is the Managing Director for The Soul Center. She describes the center as an exciting home for Jewish spirituality with a mikveh embedded within. She feels that The Soul Center is modeling a partnership between community programming and mikveh that other places can replicate. Additionally, she says that the nature of the organization includes a partnership between the mikveh and The Soul Center, and that programming can naturally flow between the two institutions in a way that feels new and exciting. For example, The Soul Center runs a program series called Embracing Imperfection, based on the book The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. Naomi explains that this programming connects beautifully with a body-positive ethic. This is just one of many examples of how programming at The Soul Center and the mikveh gracefully share the same space and inform one another. The Soul Center also offers plenty of water-based programs, including stand-up paddling on the Baltimore Bay and inner-tubing, which Naomi notes can naturally open up conversations about mikveh. 

The Soul Center mikveh is unique as the only progressive mikveh between Philadelphia and Washington DC. Although there are many orthodox mikva’ot in Baltimore, The Soul Center is the only one that is open to anyone who is Jewish. Naomi also notes that aesthetics were a huge consideration in constructing and maintaining the mikveh, and that it is a uniquely beautiful space. This is important because it elevates the immersion experience, helping to mark it as uniquely beautiful and holy. 

Naomi holds the value of body positivity at the center of her work. She hopes that all mikva’ot will be body-positive spaces, and that an ethic of the Rising Tide Movement should be that every body is holy. There are many ways to express this value, from the use of mikveh ceremonies for body positivity (check out the link below!), to being a healing ritual for body image disorders and eating disorders, to mikveh guides themselves representing a diversity of bodies. At The Soul Center and elsewhere, the mikveh is a great space to model body positivity in Jewish spaces. 

Naomi says that the Rising Tide Network has supported her as a mikveh-maker and The Soul Center as an organization in several ways. During her 15 years as the director of the Adas Israel Community Mikvah in Washington, DC she became a founding member of the Rising Tide network. Her introduction to The Soul Center came through the Rising Tide Network and when she was ready to make a change, it felt like a natural step. She’s excited to be a part of a resource-sharing network that facilitates the flow of information, questions, tips and conversations, among mikveh-makers across the world. Because of her participation in the Rising Tide community, she has been able to connect with mikvehs in Israel, Madison, WI, Portland, OR, Tucson, AZ, Raleigh, NC, and elsewhere who are all engaged in the same work that she is: creating a different mikveh for the future. She shares that these connections have allowed her to see that she is part of a larger community, and that none of us are doing this work alone. To learn more about the Soul Center, visit: https://soulcenterbaltimore.org/