Taharas Mishpocha
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
The Jewish Women’s League for Taharath Hamishpocho was created to establish and manage a community-wide mikvah (ritual bath) for Jewish woman in Pittsburgh.
The Jewish community of Pittsburgh and Jewish communities in many of the neighboring small towns presumably maintained these mikvaot (ritual baths) in the 19th and early 20th centuries, although few details have emerged in the historic record. Efforts to expand and encourage the practice date to the mid-1920s, when Rabbi Sol B. Friedman of Congregation Poale Zedeck convened a community meeting to discuss the issue. Subsequent reports show that Rabbi Wolf Leiter was also involved in these efforts.
Mollie Butler, Ruth Milch, and Ethel Weiss established the Jewish Women’s League for Taharath Hamishpocho in the early 1940s. The organization had a mission to build a new community mikvah in Oakland, which was centrally located among the large Jewish populations living in the Hill District, the East End, and Squirrel Hill. The league opened a mikvah, described in reports at the time as a “ritualarium,” at 358 Oakland Ave. in November 1942 with Lena Speevack serving as the “matron” of the new institution.
With the Jewish population increasingly migrating to the east after World War II, the Jewish Women’s League worked to relocate the mikvah to Squirrel Hill. Despite some neighborhood opposition, the group obtained city approval in late 1969. The new mikvah opened at 2336 Shady Ave. in early 1971. The building was extensively damaged in a fire three weeks later, forcing local women to use the mikvah in nearby White Oak until the Squirrel Hill facility reopened in December 1971. The Squirrel Hill mikvah was designed by engineer Nick Weiner, who had worked on pipelines in the Negev desert.
By the late 2000s, the Squirrel Hill mikvah needed repairs. A fundraising campaign began in 2009, leading to the dedication of a new building at 1722 Denniston in 2016.
