This Ritual Life Archive
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Here you will find out about ways to enhance your holiday experience, to celebrate or mark a meaningful life cycle event, and to deepen your experience of the everyday.
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Washing Our Hands (Nitilat Yada’im)
Life as we know it is based on water; without water, nothing can survive. As different as humans are from one another or from other forms of life, we all have this in common: we depend on water for our life. As we purify ourselves with water, pouring a small amount over each hand, may the cool wet feel of it remind us of our link to every living creature, for its purifying power is bound up in its essence: it is mayim chayim, living water, the water of life.
Meditation
Source of Blessings, may the washing of my hands in mayim chayim, make me aware that I am connected to all that lives, and that all that lives, is connected to me.
Ritual
The most familiar time for the ritual washing of hands is before meals, but there are other traditional times for special hand washing rituals. These include waking up in the morning and returning home from a cemetery. In newer rituals, such as healing services, Rosh Chodesh celebrations and covenant ceremonies for baby girls, hand washing is also ritualized. In rituals old and new, hand washing separates us from what came before and prepares us for what’s to come; it symbolizes our becoming conscious of what we do and who we are.
Blessing
Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav,
v’tzivanu al nitilat yada’im.
Blessed are you Lord our God, whose mitzvot make our lives holy and who gives us the
mitzvah of washing our hands.
Teaching
Washing of hands in a ceremonial fashion is used as a way of easing transitions from
one state of consciousness to another, generally helping to elevate one after having been
near death (e.g., when returning from a funeral), rising from sleep which is seen as 1/60
of death (B. Berachot 57b, B. Berachot 60b), before prayer (B. Berachot 15a) or eating
bread (B. Hullin 105a) before saying Grace (B. Hullin 105a), before eating parsley on
Pesach (B. Pesachim 115a-b) the Levites wash the hands of the Kohanim (priests) before the
latter offer the priestly blessing in the synagogue (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 128:6).
(Judith Abrams, Maqom)
Immersion in water softens our form, making us malleable, dissolving some of the
rigidity of who we are. This allows us to decide who we wish to be when we come out of the
water. The water changes us neither by washing away something nor by letting something
soak into us, but simply by softening us so that we can choose to remold ourselves into a
different image.
(CLAL faculty)
Tradition specifies that, for ritual washing, the water be poured over the hands by human
agency, not my machine or faucet. The point is that awakening consciousness cannot be
accomplished by mechanical means. Usually you pour water on your own hands (on the right
hand first), but pouring can also be done by someone else as a mark of love or friendship.
It is also customary to be silent from the moment of washing until the challah is broken
and eaten. The mind is concentrated, and consciousness focuses on the bread and the meal
to follow.
(Yitz Greenberg, The Jewish Way)
Al nitilat yadaim
Upon washing our hands
(CLAL faculty)
CLAL's National Jewish Resource Center develops and publishes rituals that
help to bridge the gap between our contemporary lives and the ancient wisdom of the Jewish
tradition. We invite you to become a partner with us in thinking about the place of ritual
in our lives and in developing new ritual resources for our time. If you are interested in
being part of this exciting endeavor, visit with us in the Ritual Resource Area
of the CLAL website by clicking here.
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