The mikveh is an essential fixture in a Jewish community. As a rule, the mikveh is located near a synagogue, as it was in Halberstadt. The literal translation of mikveh from the Hebrew is “water collection”. It is a ritual immersion bath that transforms a person’s condition from the cultic impure to ritually pure. This requires a full body immersion. The use of the mikveh is regulated in the Talmud in the Mishna Tractate Mikva’ot. There it states that the entire body should be immersed in natural “living” water, such as the sea, flowing bodies of water or springs.In the 17th century, the western side of the Judenstrasse street was filled with half-timbered town houses. Some of these houses are known to have had Jewish owners or were owned or used by the Jewish community, including No. 26, whose main gate passage served as the main entrance to the Baroque Synagogue until 1879. The Jewish community had purchased the building in 1766 and the first mention of its use as a community mikveh were found in the community’s records from the early 19th century. The “living” water in the Judenstrasse No. 26 is a spring. As according to the Halacha the water is not allowed to flow through pipes, the spring water flows directly into the immersion pool through a hole in one of the tiles.The current condition of the immersion pool dates back to modernization work done at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century by he architect Paul Ferdinand Groth (1859 – 1955).