Five years ago, I attended a Shabbat service where, during the moments between Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv, those in attendance participated in an icebreaker. The question this week: Where do you see yourself in five years? When it was my turn, out of my mouth came: “Married.”

Ha! This from a girl who, five years before, didn’t consider marriage. Not didn’t consider marriage a priority – just didn’t consider it. And, who, at that very moment, had no prospective husband in sight.

Funny thing… The man who is now my husband was in that room of 50. Perhaps G-d was there, too, listening to me break the ice with a little prayer.

So when it came time to actually get married, after spending almost a year planning a wedding, I realized that G-d might want to be invited into my marriage (as surely G-d had received the save-the-date). A friend mentioned bride (kallah) classes, and I, always the eager student, was in.

I came with a notebook, left over from one of my classes for one of my two master’s degrees, and was ready to find out: What’s on the syllabus?

Well, sex, of course.

Marriage within Judaism is tied to sex, and sex (within marriage) is tied to holiness. The sexual act, as it facilitates conception, is one of the holiest acts in Jewish life. Just like everything else in Jewish life, there is preparation. It’s more than lighting candles before sundown on Shabbat and holidays. It’s checking menstrual flow with pieces of white material called bedikah cloths, counting days between periods with a special women’s calendar, being separate in certain ways from your husband during your period and for some time afterward, and timing your manicures so as not to coincide with mikveh days. Mikveh, immersion in a ritual pool after a woman has completed her period, is so central to the sexual life of a couple that there have been videos produced to promote it across denominations. In traditional Jewish life, it is women who are obligated to go to the mikveh. Even though no one wants to say it, it’s hard to ignore that someone somewhere might possibly believe that it is women who are seen as needing some kind of purification or separation so that the sex between husband and wife can be considered holy.

Having grown up in an egalitarian Jewish family, the idea that I have a specific role within Judaism because of my gender, a role that is markedly different from that of my husband, is jarring. So thinking about being impure – even though that’s not exactly the language used in discussing niddah, the period during which women are not permitted to touch or have sex with their husbands – was, well, disheartening.

At kallah class number one, I was still thinking, “Well, maybe it won’t be so bad.” By class number two, I was pretty sure that “so bad” was exactly the way it was going to be. But, by the last class, I was okay with what it was. The point for me of taking the classes was understanding – what is this role that Judaism has proscribed for me? And, like everything else in my Jewish life, is it one that I think will work for me?

One thing I knew I wanted to do was go to the mikveh before the wedding. Mikveh can be a tradition used by both women and men at times of life transition – it is used in conversions, and has been used by people who have recovered from illness. After the class was over, I knew I wanted to immerse in the mikveh at least once, if not once a month indefinitely.

The Thursday before I was married, my parents drove me to a mikveh in a nearby community. We had spent the better part of the day arguing about the wedding (let’s face it, we had spent the better part of the last year arguing about the wedding). As we headed to the mikveh, I had no idea if I would be able to focus on the immersion and on the significance that in just a few days, I would be a married Jewish woman. In so many ways, this immersion in the mikveh would be different from any I might do as a married woman.

The way mikveh preparation is structured facilitates deep thought. At least a half hour, but probably closer to an hour, is consumed by detailed, but surprisingly relaxing, teeth-flossing, nail-filing, foot-pumicing, and hair washing. Because these are things I do often enough, I found that my brain could focus on other things. Real things, like, “What will it be like to have a different name?” “What will it be like to be introduced as his wife?” “What will it all be like?”

I recalled other brides’ horror stories of mikveh. At the very least, they didn’t know they couldn’t wear nail polish, so the manicure they had done for their wedding had to be re-done. But, the weeks of preparation, through my kallah class, had made me feel okay with what was to be done in the mikveh. I viewed the mikveh as transformative. Each little dive under and each rising up was taking a chance. Going under, not knowing what it will be like, and hoping that when you come up someone says “It’s okay” is just like all life transitions.

Just as before everything really great I had done in my life (going off to college, moving halfway across the country, starting my first real job), there was a point before the really great thing when it was still something I had never done before. In the mikveh, taking a breath before going under the water, I thought, “I have no idea what marriage is going to be like.” I came up with a little sputter and a splash to hear the mikveh attendant say, “Kosher.” My first immersion was complete. A little out of it and a lot wet, I went under again, thinking, “Whoa! What is it going to be like???” I came up a little less splashy and heard, “Kosher.” When I went under the third time, I just thought, “It will be whatever it is.” And when I came up, she said, “Kosher.”