Hand Washing, How to Do The Jewish Spiritual Practice of Netilat Yadayim

"Wash your hands!" This is a basic message which our inner child recognizes instantly. Increasing the moments of significance in life is a major function of spiritual practice. At times this leads life to resound with the beauty of pure awareness of the simple importance of a single movement.

Suppose you were to see yourself as a High Priest(ess) of being alive, to view your every movement as having supreme significance. A physician lifts her hands after washing and this act symbolizes our paradigm of hygiene and safety. Wash your hands and lift them up, imagine there is a fabric to all of creation, your hands are under it like cosmic bedcovers. Lift up your hands, with them everything every where is shifting a bit because of your consciousness in doing the lifting.

The Jewish ritual of hand washing contains a reminder of this power you have with your hands. Barry and I treat hand washing as a time for conscious holiness. Dinner table rituals replaced the altar of Temple times in the spiritual repertoire of the Jewish people. We are the high priests of our lives. Before blessing the Source of Life for the bread used to initiate a meal, a Jewish person doesn't just dive in. We wash. We lift our hands and the level of our intentions for the meal-time: UP.

I look forward to meeting Barry, friends or guests at the sink for our washing ritual. We treat each other as holy vessels. I remove my wedding ring and give it to Barry. He fills a decorative two-handled washing cup with warm water and drizzles it over my hands. I pause in the sensuous sweetness and some of the day's difficulties get more distant. He dries my hands personally, one then the other. This feels so loving and intimate. (The first time I saw hand washing done in this kind of way was at the home of Rabbi Arthur Waskow and his partner, Phyllis Berman.) Then, looking into my eyes, Barry silently recommits to our couplehood and places my ring back onto its finger. Then I do the same for him. I can hear the words we spoke as our wedding vows, a composite of the traditional lines for the bride and groom (from the book of the prophet Hosea, the words are also part of the ritual for putting on tephillin):

"With this ring I make you holy unto me, with a love full of justice, truth, compassion, and faithfulness, so that you will know God."

This is a good example of reclaiming a prayer practice which had fallen fairly dormant in the liberal part of the spectrum, and may at times be done even by very traditional Jews without the mystical richness. All of us, no matter where we fit in the spectrum of Jewish practice, have some practices safely in storage for when their message is vital again. Upon physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual evaluation, most of our practices have much to offer in some way. Some, perhaps all, even help us unconsciously.

A stunning example would be:

The elevator-like door opened and we were standing in a vault that seems to be built into the Jerusalem mountainside. The professor puts a manuscript into my hands. "Original, written by Rashi." We walk through aisles of manuscripts. "Ah, here we are." he says and reaches up high for another work. "Never has been translated, you could do it as a thesis or something, I know you would like this one." Was this a dream? I still wonder, although I did do the translation of the introduction to a medieval textbook on medicine by Rabbi Doctor Yitzhak Tzahalon.

In 1386 in Ferrara, Italy the plague was rampaging across all human lives. A representative was sent to find out why the Jews were reported to be surviving better. The Jewish community was to be indicted for practicing witch craft, which many thought was the reason for their superior fate.

Two findings were reported which might prove relevant explanations. One was obviously witch craft, the authorities reported. Just before eating the Jews would wash their hands, lift them into the air and recite an incantation.

Also, as soon as it became apparent that someone was infected with the plague, they would be moved to a "beyt merkhak", a house of distance, on the edge of the community for forty days or until they died, whichever came first.

This was all before germ theory was proven. The incantation was the traditional blessing for washing the hands: Barukh atah Adonai Eloheynu Melech ha olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al n'teelat yadayim. Blessed are You, Adonai (root word is "adan - threshold"), our God, King (I like to think of King as equally "organizing principle") of the universe, that makes us holy through sacred acts of consciousness (mitzvot) and instructions regarding the lifting up of hands.

It is a tradition to lift your hands up like a surgeon does as you finish the washing and say the blessing. Can you feel the fabric of the universe lifting up with your intentions to infuse holiness, healthy caring living into the world through the way you use those hands? Little did we realize this simple gesture would carry healing of mind, spirit and also safety for the body.

And the "house of distance" for forty days? The forty days is drawn from Leviticus, when someone who was ill would be put outside the camp for that amount of time. This is the origin of the sanitorium and practices to prevent the spread of illness. What is the Italian word for forty? You got it. Quaranta. The agent who reported back to the Vatican this curious practice of the Jews went on to transform it into a practice known as quarantine. Retaining the practice didn't just save us, it impacts unto this very day upon most of humanity.