Mayim Rabim

I think you know how I feel.

Well, actually, this case is a little different. Here we're not talking about something the mikvah lady would have to do an investigation to find out about. It's understandably harder for her to pronounce "kosher" on a tevilah when she can see a chatzitzah with her own eyes. But I think the same principle applies.

First of all, a mikvah lady should not be paskening. Even if she has already been instructed on the paskening rabbi's position, I think it's a mistake to have her be the gatekeeper for it. Whenever there's a conflict - for instance, a woman comes and says "your rabbi may not allow this, but mine does" - I think the mikvah lady should call the posek and ask him what to do. For all she knows, in this individual case he might rule differently. But at the very least no one, not the mikvah lady or the woman asking, will walk away with a misimpression as to her authority.

Second, I can understand the position many take that a mikvah (and the posek behind it) has every right to hold standards and enforce them. But I don't see why it has to be that way. I think the mikvah should make the halacha fully available to all who come. But if the woman in question understands that the posek in charge would not consider this tevilah kosher, and the woman can live with that, I don't see why the mikvah lady should stand in her way. It can't harm the mikvah, it doesn't make the rabbi or the mikvah lady accountable for that woman's actions, and it seems to me that it might lead to more harm to turn the woman away.

What I think the mikvah lady in this case might have defensibly done was to say, "You can use the mikvah, and I'll be happy to watch and tell you that your hair went underwater. But I hope you understand that I can't pronounce "kosher" on your tevilah, based on the halacha as I understand it."

I agree wholeheartedly with Eden that

"What I think the mikvah lady in this case might have defensibly done was to say, "You can use the mikvah, and I'll be happy to watch and tell you that your hair went underwater. But I hope you understand that I can't pronounce "kosher" on your tevilah, based on the halacha as I understand it.""

I think that the woman should be allowed to toivel as long as it it not something that would "taint" the mikvah, but that the mikvah lady should not be forced to call "kosher" something that she knows/believes not to be so.

Eden, I like your "solution:"

What I think the mikvah lady in this case might have defensibly done was to say, "You can use the mikvah, and I'll be happy to watch and tell you that your hair went underwater. But I hope you understand that I can't pronounce "kosher" on your tevilah, based on the halacha as I understand it."

The problem is, if the mikvah lady isn't briefed on the possibility of this situation occurring, and given this answer ahead of time, she might not think of it herself under pressure. So how do we fix that?

Here is my glitter story- modified from the dovbear post:
I once tried out glitter nail polish with my daughters. A few days later (after having removed it or so I thought!) I went to the mikva. When the mikva lady checked my hands she found a few stray glitter flakes and sent me back to try again. No matter what I did a few tiny flecks of glitter seemed to repear on my nails here and there. I really did not care but the mikva lady sent me back a dozen times to scrub my cuticles until they were literally bleeding. I was really ticked off but determined to get into the mikva somehow.

I will never wear glitter nail polish again but that was unacceptable. That happened years ago but if that happened now I would have a Rav on the phone before the lady could even look at my hands a second time.

I give the mikva ladies a lot of credit for doing their jobs but when a woman is scrubbing to the point of bleeding, causing tears in her cuticles (another chatitza) as well as in her eyes it is too much.

small tears in cuticles are part of your body and not a problem the way glitter is. glitter is the sort of thing that you can't get a clear psak on, and she was right to make you try (the alternative *can* be that you should come back another night. it is NOT always true that if you can't remove something without it hurting or causing bleeding that the t'vila is ok).

a splinter *under* skin is different than eg one sticking out of skin. for glitter, if she'd remove it if she wasn't going to bleed, it's a problem even if she would bleed.

U'm not saying that it might not have been OK b'dieved, just that it's a murkier problem than one might think. Ironically, unchipped nail polish and nail tips are a more clear-cut issue.

I doubt *calling* a rabbi is a great route since with something like this it's unlikely that he would know what's being described on the phone, and odds are that the mikva lady has HAD this shayla before.

But the one thing that is clear from Shira's story is that she would not have felt any need to remove the remaining glitter. She couldn't even see it herself. Even when the mikvah lady pointed it out, it didn't appear to bother her.

I fully agree that something on top of the skin is different than something under the skin. What I'm suggesting is that something so embedded that the skin comes off with it is an in-between case. I think it was not obvious which category it belonged in. Once the mikvah lady saw that she and Shira did not agree it would have been wise to call a posek. Power struggles at the mikvah are unfortunate and unnecessary.

...with something like this it's unlikely that he would know what's being described on the phone, and odds are that the mikva lady has HAD this shayla before.

Adderabah, I think you are probably the same person who used this argument on DovBear's blog, and I'm afraid it makes very little sense.

Any time a posek is asked a shaylah about mikvah preparation, it's over the phone. It is his responsibility to know whether he can tell what the shaylah is, not the mikvah lady's. The posek is fully capable of saying "I'm not familiar with glitter and I can't tell for sure what it looks like over the phone, so lechatchila it's best if you go the extra mile to remove it." You can't ask a shaylah at all if you don't trust the posek to know whether he can answer it!

Furthermore, even if the mikvah lady has had this shaylah before, if your premise is correct and it cannot be answered over the phone, how would she know what the halacha is from last time, either? Do you think she duplicates every shaylah on herself and goes over to the rabbi's house so he can see what it looks like?

I don't think that was your real point; I think you were saying that glitter is the kind of thing that can't be paskened without looking at it. What I'm saying is that, if we place halachic authority in the rabbi's hands, we have to have a basic faith in that authority. Leave it to the rabbi to tell her that since it's a safek, she must remove it.

That's exactly why a mikvah has a posek on call: to answer questions over the phone. For the mikvah lady to be the one to do that, if you ask me, that's a bedieved. She hasn't had the training to do anything except be machmir whenever she's unsure.

Oops! I forgot the "f." That was supposed to be Shifra, not Shira.

Eden, I'm not sure what you're trying to convey. I suspect that say, the first time, the glitter was really problematic, and possibly after a bit it was questionable or even ok. Maybe at the point shifra was bleeding it was ok b'dieved - but shifra didn't actually write that she requested to call a rabbi, in retrospect she may have wished she'd asked for that. I don't think the mikva lady has to treat her own assumptions and the person who uses the mikva's assumptions as equal and always call a rabbi when there's any dispute; she'd be calling rabbis all night.

"Furthermore, even if the mikvah lady has had this shaylah before, if your premise is correct and it cannot be answered over the phone, how would she know what the halacha is from last time, either?"

The last time(s), the rabbi may have said to get as much as it off as possible, regardless.

The mikva lady generally has better training in these types of things than people who show up at the mikva. The halachic point is that if part of shifra's not caring is because that removing it would make her bleed, or it sounds like that way, that isn't a legitimate reason to say it's ok. It also isn't legitimate to say, "I don't care because I'm bleeding" and then switch to "I don't care" which the mikva lady may have been concerned would happen in a phone call, even inadvertantly. Or maybe the mikva lady was just being horrid, and once it was probably good enough, became very machmir and made Shifra suffer, to drive home that she was unhappy with the glitter - I don't know, I wasn't there.

My larger point is that there's a difference between questions that come up in advance, and for which there is a clearcut heter, that some rabbis agree to and some prefer not to use, and questions that come up at the mikva proper. For the former, a mikva might turn people away who won't go to another mikva and may never go to the mikva again. For the latter, I think it makes sense for a mikva lady to use her judgement and decide that the religious women she sees in front of her, is under the misimpression that something is OK that isn't, and tell her so. If you disagree, we disagree.

Just to clarify something. It sure doesn't sound as though the mikva lady Shifra had was doing a great job; she doesn't seem to have communicated very well. She could have, for example, explained to Shifra why the glitter was in her opinion problematic even though Shifra was bleeding and why she thought it was different than other cases Shifra may have had in the past. She could have offered to help Shifra remove the glitter (I'm not convinced the only way to remove glitter involves tearing off skin, but I've not tried recently. Anyway, it's always easier if someone calm gives it a try.). And so on. I'm sure she could have done a lot to make the experience less memorably unpleasant and not to have left Shifra with such a bad taste. An apology or commiseration for putting her through such grief probably would not have been out of place either.

But I still think that, unless the person asks for a rabbi (and maybe not even then if it's black and white), the mikva lady has to be able to tell people what is ok and what isn't. I think the mikva lady is the final word on preparations, not the person wanting to use the mikva, unless the mikva's rabbi overrules her.

What gives the mikvah lady any authority?? Halachically she is there to make sure your hair goes under. That's it. If you want her to be more for you, that's fine, but she may not impose this on everyone. I personally would not have a problem with a mikvah lady saying-- I think this glitter may be problematic. But if the person says she doesn't care, then it is not the role of the mikvah lady to prevent her from toveling. And any chatzitah that you don't care about will not make your tevilah unkosher, so the mikvah lady need not worry about personal responsibility.

"And any chatzitah that you don't care about will not make your tevilah unkosher, so the mikvah lady need not worry about personal responsibility."

M'darabbonon it can, depending on why you don't care, or whether indeed it's subjectively determined/determinable.

The barometer I've heard usually used is whether or not you would be comfortable if you appeared with it at a wedding. Most annoying chatzitzot would fall into this category. Furthermore, we only care about removing these chatzitot based on minhag. As for chatzitot m'drabbanan, what are we afraid of???? Since a small speck of glitter certainly could not be a chatzitza d'oraita, which would invalidate the tevila and cause the couple to have karet-warranted sex, the only thing to say is that it is the role of the mikvah lady to ensure that a woman does not breach a gezeirah. That is absurd. As for "depending on why you don't care" I have never heard of this distinction-- only makpid and eino makpid, so maybe you can elucidate or point me to sources so I can better educate myself.

One last point-- Why do you have such a great distrust in women who are bothering to go to the mikvah in the first place??? Chazal trusted women more than you do, so I am really curious what the basis for all of this is.

Why do you have such a great distrust in women who are bothering to go to the mikvah in the first place??? Chazal trusted women more than you do

Thank you, Avigayil. Adderabah, THAT'S what I was trying to convey.

if part of shifra's not caring is because that removing it would make her bleed, or it sounds like that way, that isn't a legitimate reason to say it's ok.

I heard nothing in Shifra's story to make me question her motives for "not caring." She plainly said she couldn't see it when she checked her hands herself. Unless it was something on my back, that's exactly the standard I would use.

It also isn't legitimate to say, "I don't care because I'm bleeding" and then switch to "I don't care" which the mikva lady may have been concerned would happen in a phone call, even inadvertantly.

This would be totally unwarranted distrust on the part of the mikvah lady, too. She's not the conscience police for Shifra, and she's not the go-between to make sure the rabbi knows how to ask the right questions. But if she doesn't trust the two of them to conduct this conversation alone, she's welcome to get on the phone with the rabbi too.

The approach you're taking to Shifra's story, and the one you're suggesting the mikvah lady took, is totally unlike the approach of any rabbi I have ever encountered. They don't second guess women who ask them shaylahs; they trust that if someone is committed enough to ask, she will ask honestly.

Which goes back to my original point, in the post I linked to above: taharat hamishpacha is the responsibility of the woman who's keeping it, and halachically, at the most basic level, she IS TRUSTED. No one follows her around to make sure she's doing her bedikot or any other part of this correctly, and it's absurd to suddenly stop trusting her to be honest when she shows up at the mikvah.

When I called my rabbi to ask if I had to remove something, he said to me "Are you makpid about it?" I said, "I'm not sure." He said "If you're not sure, you're obviously not makpid."

Compare that to your approach here.

This has nothing to do with the woman's religiousity or honesty(goodness! who called anyone dishonest?). If someone thinks that something is by definition not a chatzitza or not something she's makpid on because removing it make her bleed or be painful, she's wrong. If she decides she wants to go tovel because she doesn't care about potential chatzitza, that is one thing; if, she thinks she does care, but is knowledgeable enough to determine if the situation she's in is not problematic, and she's just demonstrated that she is not knowledgeable enough to make that determination, that's different.
I don't know if the mikva lady's judgement was right in the end; I do know that Shifra's halachic assumptions, in the string of comments on DovBear's blog, were definitely incorrect.

"if part of shifra's not caring is because that removing it would make her bleed, or it sounds like that way, that isn't a legitimate reason to say it's ok."

that's what she assumed on DB - that she didn't need to remove anything that would make her bleed.
Also that she couldn't see *some* of the glitter that was pointed out at some point during the course of this. I wasn't questioning her motives, just her definitions.

It's a social reality that many women are taught ground rules, but not a lot of the conceptual underpinning of the halacha. Mikva ladies are also not great at conceptual underpinning (they're the ones who spread the "toveling is a mitzva, and mitzvos don't cause pain, so if you bleed, that's a sign it's not chatzitzah" business as though that was a halachic rationale), but they still do tend to have lots of experience with a variety of situations and people. They tend to help fill in people's knowledge base over time, and that after a while, most women have enough experience to figure it out MOST of the time. But not all the time. This sort of thing is apparent even on this forum, even on this thread - e.g. Eden writes about how the mikva lady checks splinters under the skin. The process doesn't always work; that's why there are people writing in (on DovBear's blog) that they know that nail polish is obviously, definitely a chatzitza, because mikvas always ask women to remove polish. Given this state of affairs, the mikva needs to have someone who is more than a "Bathroom attendants," as DovBear put it.

I did not read DovBear's blog, nor the comments, so I was unaware that that was who you were responding to. But by looking at your commmets on this blog (outside of the other context) you make some statements which I feel take the role of the mikvah lady a bit too far. I agree that mikvah ladies should be knowledgeable, I don't believe that it should be a matter of policy that they enforce their knowledge on others.

I was not saying Shifra was correct about the halacha. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. I was saying she would have been completely justified in calling a rabbi, and in my opinion, that's what should have been done. My point about her honest motivations was in response to your belief that calling a rabbi was risky, because Shifra might not represent the appearance of the glitter or her own thought process about it accurately.

"Given this state of affairs, the mikva needs to have someone who is more than a "Bathroom attendants," as DovBear put it."

It does. A rabbi.

And I completely disagree with you that a mikvah attendant shouldn't have to call the rabbi whenever there's a disagreement, or she'd be calling him all night. So what? It's 100% worth it, if it results in women going home with a better understanding of the halacha and a good experience at the mikvah. Not to mention the real possibility that the rabbi would feel it's worthwhile to be meikil, in a case which is at most derabbanan and the woman is significantly upset and/or hurt.

If the mikvah attendant finds this annoying, a waste of time, or taking away from her personal authority, she's probably not in the right line of work.

Given the fact that on many issues there is a range of "halachic opinions", differing minhagim and perhaps some individual variation (e.g. different women makpid on different things), how could a mikvah lady possibly pasken for everyone? It would seem to me that the best she can do is to treat others in the way she would for herself, unless she is aware of some machlokes, in which case she could inform the woman of this. Otherwise, shouldn't the burden be on the woman toiveling to request that a Rav be called if she is dissatisfied or questioning of the approach being taken? Needless to say, the mikvah lady must then allow the woman's Rav to be consulted and the woman to follow whatever advice she received (though not necessarily to proclaim the teviloh "kosher" if she is thus advised by HER Rav).

"My point about her honest motivations was in response to your belief that calling a rabbi was risky, because Shifra might not represent the appearance of the glitter or her own thought process about it accurately."

It has nothing to do with honesty, and everything to do with understanding - that's why reading the comments on DB and the summary here gives a different picture.

"And I completely disagree with you that a mikvah attendant shouldn't have to call the rabbi whenever there's a disagreement, or she'd be calling him all night."
Shifra didn't ask for a rabbi. It probably would have been sufficient for the mikva lady to explain, as she apparently did not do that.

There is a world of difference between deciding something is OK after the fact and before the fact. I suspect that the mikva she was in would not have a rabbi that would have told shifra to go in with glitter on, if the mikva lady thought it could be removed, and the mikva lady knew this.

Mikvaot are communally funded. This was not an out of town mikva which needs to cater to all comers; in-town, if the mikva policy is too stringent for someone, they can choose a different mikva. An exception might - I think should - be made for someone from a different community who walks in with no understanding of the setup. I don't think Shifra is that person. The woman with nail tips is. I disagree with those who think that a mikva is not entitled to set policy. I only think they need to be concerned with not turning people off from taharat hamishpacha and not giving those who come an unnecessarily bad experience (the mikva lady failed at this last, but I think it was her attitude that was problematic, not that she was machmir).

FYI, this is where it all started.

Adderabah, you're responding to things I'm saying, and yet I feel you're going around in circles. I'm going to make one more stab at clarifying what I believe each of us is saying.

The issue is not whether Shifra or the mikvah lady was right about the halacha. The issue is also not whether Shifra asked for a rabbi when it happened. I agree with you that she might have been wrong. It's a given that she did not ask at the time.

The point is that Shifra said the next time she had such a disagreement with the mikvah lady, she would call a rabbi. And you've been raising one objection after another as to why she shouldn't do that.

I don't think any of your objections stand up.

You do not have to understand every principle behind the halacha in order to ask a shaylah. If that were so, there would be many, many shaylahs none of us could ask. Even if Shifra was mistaken about bleeding being a decisive halachic factor, it's the rabbi's training AND responsibility to catch just that.

It's not the mikvah lady's (or your) place to stop her from calling out of fear that she will ask the question wrong, and the rabbi won't realize. And as I said, if a mikvah lady is really concerned about that, she can get on the phone too.

All this is true even if Shifra was wrong, and even if the mikvah lady KNEW she was wrong. There could not possibly be any harm in Shifra calling to hear that from the rabbi herself.

I agree with you that the mikvah lady could probably have done a better job explaining, and that might have helped a lot. But it doesn't answer why you have such a problem with Shifra talking to a rabbi. What in the world are you afraid of, and what right do you or anyone else have to stand in the way of someone asking a shaylah?

The mikvah lady cannot be coming up with the mikvah standards herself; no matter how much experience she has, she has no authority to do so. She can only be an executive for the rabbi who set the standards. That being the case, a woman who has a problem with those standards has every right to demand to hear them, so to speak, from the horse's mouth.

The issue that I think has fallen by the wayside in all this is that Shifra wanted to call her own rabbi, not necessarily the rabbi of that mikvah. There might very well have been a conflict between the two. What happens if someone has a heter from her own rabbi that is not allowed by the rabbi of another mikvah? Even in New York City it's not nearly as easy as you suggest to find another mikvah. Especially if you only realize the conflict last minute.

Personally, as I said at the top of the thread, I think the mikvah should allow someone to tovel even if she's not following any psak, as long as she understands the mikvah does not consider it kosher. But I think it's an interesting dilemma. In most other areas, as far as I can tell, rabbis are very careful to emphasize "elu ve'elu divrei elokim chayim": in other words, as long as you're following the psak of your own qualified rabbi, no one has any argument with you.

"The point is that Shifra said the next time she had such a disagreement with the mikvah lady, she would call a rabbi. And you've been raising one objection after another as to why she shouldn't do that."

Ummm, no I haven't. I just that in the event , she was not justified in her reaction. And I've been getting post after post that seems basically motivated by the sense that it's rude of me to point out that Shifra analysis of the situation makes clear why the mikva lady might not have been gone along with her "p'sak".

"But it doesn't answer why you have such a problem with Shifra talking to a rabbi."

I *don't* have a problem with this. I have a problem with her assuming that she was right the last time, based on the level of understanding halacha that she's demonstrated. A religious woman with the education Shifra has (I.e. religious seminary background) should know when she needs a rav. Shifra didn't think she *needed* one, she thought it was obvious that the mikva woman was toasted. End of my complaint.

What I did say was that the mikva lady may have had good reason not to *suggest* calling a rabbi, namely that she knew what the rabbi's answer would be.

"The issue that I think has fallen by the wayside in all this is that Shifra wanted to call her own rabbi, not necessarily the rabbi of that mikvah. "

I agree that this is the only issue remaining, and as I've alluded, I think a mikva in an area like Brooklyn has a right to insist on calling its own rabbis. What if someone wants to call a Reform rabbi, should that be OK too? If the mikva is too machmir, people have the option in areas like that to go elsewhere. What actually happens is that many women want to go to mikvaos that are run by rabbis that are more strict, because they are convinced the mikvas itself meets higher standards, but do not want to ask their other sha'alos to the same rabbis. I think that's having it both ways; the mikva has the right, and probably the halachic obligation, to make sure that the women using the mikva are following halacha as they understand it.

"Even in New York City it's not nearly as easy as you suggest to find another mikvah. Especially if you only realize the conflict last minute."

In other words, for your convenience, you can use any mikva you like, but the mikva can't have its own policies? If the mikva's standards upset someone, they can plan to use a different one.

"In most other areas, as far as I can tell, rabbis are very careful to emphasize "elu ve'elu divrei elokim chayim": in other words, as long as you're following the psak of your own qualified rabbi, no one has any argument with you."

I don't think the mikva is any place to get into a dispute about whether any particular person is a qualified rabbi. If someone has a quesiton on the spot about chatzitza, I think they are stuck with the mikva's rabbi. If the mikva's rabbi wants to be meykil, and the woman wants to be machmir (and say, tovel again for some reason) maybe there's some reason to honor another rabbi's p'sak or the woman's understanding/feeling, but that is not what we are discussing. We are discussing being willing to work a little harder at removing something, for goodness sake. This is an awful lot of heat for a simple request that people bear in mind that a fair proportion of the time, the woman using the mikva is not competent to rule on her own and that this is the reason that mikva ladies function as more than bathroom attendants.

Which is ALL I said.

Obviously there are two sides to see this story :-) It brings you back to what you can find in pretty much all Jewish communities... do I follow MY Rav, or the Rav of the community -- or in this case, mikvah.

Let's put the other Shifra's (askShifra, the one with the glitter post, not me)story in the context of a Jew visiting a shul. This Jew might have specific customs in the way that he davens, He might daven Sephardic for example, and he has traveled to a town with only an Askanazic shul. Halacha states that while visiting the shul he should daven the nusach of the shul...outwardly. That is to say when leading services or praying with the congregation he should daven the Askanazic order, HOWEVER, when he davens to himself during the service, or if he does extra prayers before or after the regular service he can daven Sephardic then. The halacha is to protect the minhagim of the shuls and not have things changing at the will of who is davening that day.

If we bring this into the mikvah it can be seen two ways. Acording to Adderabah askShifra should accept the minhagim of the mikvah she is visiting because she has chosen to attend the mikvah like one might choose a shul. According to Eden, the mikvah should be treated like personal prayer service, equivalent to davening silently to yourself, so askShifra should not take on the mikvah minhagim and go by her own(this is to say that the mikvah lady was acting under the minhagim of the mikvah, not her own personal beliefs).

Who is right? You both are. askShifra should respect the rules of the mikvah she is attending, but also not compromise her personal teachings on the areas that belong solely to her (like her bedikot for example). She respected the mikvah and the mikvah lady enough to agree that she should go back and try and fix what looked like a legitimate chatzitza, but perhaps after the third time of trying (before she was really raw) she should have asked the mikvah lady if it were OK to call the Rav of the mikvah (someone the mikvah lady would trust and agree with) to ask for a pardon on this specific situation. This would not have undermined the mikvah lady because she would be agreeing that there is a potential for chatzitza, but stating that there might also be an allowance by the mikvah lady's own Rav to toivel if after three washings the glitter was still a part of her body.

"Shifra didn't think she *needed* one, she thought it was obvious that the mikva woman was toasted."

Yes, but so what?? This is where you lose me every time. If you're as right as you think you are, then Shifra's rabbi will tell her exactly what you did.

I gather that you're concerned Shifra doesn't respect the mikvah lady's knowledge or authority enough, and also that Shifra is walking around with a misconception about the halacha. I can sympathize with that to some extent; certainly the mikvah lady doesn't deserve disrespect for doing what she's been trained for and believes is right.

The reason you're getting a little heat back from me is that I don't think you're respecting Shifra enough, either. I don't think this needs to be about taking her down a peg, and some of the tone of your responses to her - particularly on DovBear's blog, assuming that's you - certainly sounds like that to me.

First of all, I think Shifra was justifiably annoyed by being made to scrub to the point of bleeding, even though after each time she personally couldn't see any more glitter. I would have been upset too, not just by ending up in pain, but by the implication that I couldn't rely on my own eyes, which I have always been taught is the basic rule of thumb. I certainly would have done some follow-up investigation with my own rabbi after I got home.

Shifra might be mistaken about bleeding being a halachic factor, but that *was* her understanding prior to this event. I think we've all been to enough mikvaot to encounter attendants who ask us to do something we were taught is unnecessary. It's NOT always the case that the mikvah lady knows more than we do, and if we have a clear memory of having learned otherwise, I don't agree that we always have to assume she's right.

Questioning is never a bad thing, and no one needs to feel threatened by it. The truth will always out.

Moreover, in this case, it sounds like Shifra thought the mikvah attendant might be making her end up with a WORSE chatzitzah due to tears in her cuticles. In this detail, my guess, like yours, is that she was mistaken; your own skin, even torn or peeling, is less of a chatzitzah than something foreign to your skin. But if she was at all worried, that was a VERY legitimate reason to ask a shaylah.

Situations where I think it's fine for the mikvah lady to rely on her own judgment: (1) When there is no significant conflict. (2) When there is, but the rabbi on call can't be reached.

Having said that, although it's not what I would prefer as an ideal, I can definitely live with the other Shifra's solution to the problem. :)

What we're missing here is the fact that, like a Sefer Torah, mikvaot "lo m'kabel tumah." You can't treif a mikvah. Period. The onus of t'h is on the woman, not the mikvah lady. If the woman immersing was satisfied that she had fulfilled the mitzvah, end of story.

At our mikvah, the practice is that if you have had your acrylics on for more than thirty days, they are considered a part of your body and therefore not chatzitzot.

If you want to toivel with artie tips, there is a way. I have firends who teach kallahs all over the world, and they teach the ones that they know won't toivel again what to do. It's pretty bidieved, but if it's allowed, it's allowed, right?

In kallah class, 20 years ago, when I was single, we learned that during the white days, it’s important to stay as clean as possible. Even if it’s erev Pesach. I don’t think this helps the lady with the glitter problem now, but she should know for the future…at some point, after day 2 or day 5 or whatever cutoff she makes, she shouldn’t be fooling around with paint or whatever could be problematic.