Nancy Haught writes in Monday’s RNS report on the practice of keeping mikvah, in which Jewish women immerse themselves in a ritual bath: For many Jewish women, keeping mikvah-immersing themselves in natural, flowing water-is a private matter. Their husbands probably know when they leave home to visit a mikvah. Attendants may know if a woman immersed herself so completely that not a strand of her hair floated to the surface. But only God knows, quite literally, the sincerity of a woman’s prayer. Water flows through many religions in rituals that symbolize transformation, from death to life, rebirth and renewal. The mikvah is an ancient Jewish tradition still practiced in the modern world both because it is required by Jewish law and for a handful of other more contemporary reasons.

Jeff Diamant reports on a New Jersey Orthodox Jewish community’s ban on the Internet for kids: Like so many Americans, Mesh Gelman relies on the Internet for work. But in a move that’s likely to complicate his business in international trade, the Lakewood, N.J., man plans to unplug his home computer from the wired world, shutting out all that’s good-and bad-about the Web. Gelman’s reasoning is simple: His religious leaders have told him to do so. The father of four is a member of Lakewood’s tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community, whose leaders have declared that Internet access should be removed from homes with school-age children to better protect them from the bounty of sexual images online. It is more than a suggestion. The community’s policy-formed with the principals of the area’s 43 yeshivas, or Jewish private schools, and unveiled in late September-decrees that any student with home access faces suspension or expulsion on the grounds that even one Internet-corrupted student could sway others.