When you wash your hands, are you cleaning them or
purifying them, and what’s the difference? And who said, “Cleanliness is next
to godliness?” Paul F. Boller terms it a “pseudo-Scriptural” quote originating
with the 18th century founder of Methodism, John Wesley. In a sermon entitled, “On Dress,” Wesley said: “…slovenliness
is no part of religion; that neither this nor any text of Scripture condemns
neatness of apparel…Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness.”[1] Curiously, although Wesley clearly had physical
cleanliness in mind, Boller believes that Wesley was quoting not the Bible, but
R. Pinchas b. Yair in the Talmud![2]
Our Rabbis taught: The words, Be
on guard against any evil thing (Deuteronomy 23:10), meaning that you
should not think [of forbidden things] by day and become impure by night. From
here, Pinchas b. Yair said: Torah
[study] instills diligence, diligence leads to cleanliness, cleanliness
leads to self-denial, self-denial leads to purity, purity leads to piety, piety
leads to humility, humility leads to fear of sin, fear of sin leads to
holiness, holiness leads to divine inspiration, divine inspiration leads to
resurrection of the dead.[3]
R. Pinchas ben Yair uses the term “cleanliness” (nikiyut),
which may have connoted physical hygiene, but given the context—the other
attributes in the cluster are diligence, self-denial, purity, piety, humility,
fear of sin, holiness, divine inspiration—it is far more likely and logical
that he intended nikiyut to connote a character attribute: ethical
cleanliness or, as Rashi tells us, being free from sin.[4]
Perhaps the confusion arose because Bible
translations use “clean” and “pure” interchangeably. Living after the Destruction of the Second
Temple, R. Pinchas is translating ritual purity and purification into a program
for spiritual purity and purification for people who can no longer bring
sacrifices to the Temple.
R. Pinchas b. Yair is not the only one to “update” the
washing ritual. But first, let’s take a look at what Torah tells us about
ritual of washing. In parshat Ki Tissa, God instructs Moses to make a
copper laver, a basin for the priests to wash their hands and feet prior to
their service in the Mishkan (Tabernacle).
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: make
a laver of copper and stand of copper for it, for washing; and place it between
the Tent of Meeting and the altar. Put water in it, and let Aaron and his sons
wash their hands and feet in it. When they enter the Tent of Meeting they shall
wash with water, that they may no die; or when they approach the altar to
serve, to turn into smoke an offering by fire to the Lord; they shall wash
their hands and feet, that they may not die… (Exodus 30:17-21)
The warning that the priests might die if they don’t
wash when entering the Tent of Meeting and prior to offering sacrifices makes
no sense if we’re talking about physical hygiene. This is about ritual purity,
not physical cleanliness.
Just as R. Pinchas b. Yair reinterpreted ritual
purity practices to speak to spiritual purity for his post-Temple generation,
the hasidic Ishbitzer rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner (1801-1854), in Mei
ha-Shiloach, connects the priests’ hand-washing in the Tabernacle with one’s
spiritual state of mind. His sincere concern with the “cleanliness” or “purity”
of the soul in connection with performance of ritual has something valuable to
offer us.
The act of the priests washing from
the laver signifies the removal of affliction, for washing teaches of this, as
mentioned in the passage of the eglah arufah (the heifer whose neck is
broken), and the elders of the city shall wash their hands over the heifer
whose neck was broken in the wadi (Deuteronomy 21:6). With this they are
saying that they have no affliction [in connection with the incident] and are
clean regarding it.
The Ishbitzer’s point of departure is a bizarre
ceremony of expiation described in Torah, which is to be undertaken if a body
is discovered in a field far from any town and the murderer cannot be discerned
(Deuteronomy 21:1-9). Priests and elders from the nearest town assemble and
break the neck of a heifer as expiation to atone for the murder committed. The
priests recite a blessing and the elders wash their hands over a heifer. The
Ishbitzer rebbe understands the elders’ hand-washing to be a ritual of
spiritual cleansing from guilt associated with the murder and their inability
to either have prevented it or after-the-fact find the culprit: nothing that
happened in the wadi was the elders’ will; hence it must be God’s will (please
see addendum below).
So too, the priest who serves needs
to wash, meaning that he removes any affliction, nullifying his own mind and
will before the will of the blessed God. This means that all his service is
only what the blessed God desires.
So, too, he tells us, the priest in the Temple
preparing to offer a sacrifice washes his hands in order to “cleanse” his soul
of all desires that don’t align with God’s will, and thereby culpability for
wrongdoing he cannot prevent. The priest is an agent or implement of God, doing
only God’s will when he offers the sacrifice. After the Temple was destroyed,
the Rabbis ordained that the hand-washing ritual be incorporated into people’s
homes and daily lives, to be performed upon awaking and prior to eating bread
(bread being an acknowledged substitute for sacrifices in the Temple).
So it is with how we are commanded to
wash in the morning and before a meal, for before one begins to fulfill the
needs of the body he must pray to the blessed God. As his dealings in the world
may result in his doing something contrary to the will of the blessed God, here
he asks the blessed God to remove any desire he has from this action, even from
something permitted to us that contains both good and its opposite. For if one
were to eat in a way permitted to him and then go on and use the energy from
this to transgress the Torah, then it is made clear that this person received
no good energy from this action…
When we perform the ritual hand washing, the
Ishbitzer tells us, we can understand it as a mechanism for emptying ourselves
of our unreliable will and problematic desires so that our lives proceed
according to the will of God. It would appear that our hands symbolize our
deeds and power, influence in and effect on the world.
From this, two insights emerge. First, the
Ishbitzer's comments reveal a keen insight into the human psyche. Sometimes
there is a disconnect between our ritual actions and our ethical behavior. We do
what is ritually required or expected, but our inner desires and intentions
do not align with what we know to be the proper path: we wash our hands but then
use them in ways that cause others harm. We eat kosher food and allow it to
fuel inappropriate and hurtful behavior. The first insight is the connectedness
of all things in our lives: physical, emotional, and spiritual. The Ishbitzer
encourages us to keep them closely connected, lest our lives become fractured
reflections of hypocrisy.
The second insight concerns rituals, in general.
When we perform them for their own sake—an act in response to “commandment” rather
than a meaningful ritual, we nullifying our own will—including the will to do
good. The ritual of hand washing permits us a tangible, physical ritual to
remind ourselves and push ourselves to be God’s agents in the world in a way
that is not mindless or amoral, but quite the opposite. For us, mindfulness and
morality are paramount. Imagine washing your hands and saying the berakhah, Barukh
Ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam (or: makor ha-chaim) asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav
v’tzivu al netilat yadayim / “Blessed are You, Lord our God, sovereign of
the universe (or: source of life) who makes us holy with mitzvot and has given
us the mitzvah of washing our hands” — and then you stop and think: now what,
exactly, am I going to do with these hands, and what can I do with them, and
what difference will I make?
Maybe cleanliness is next to godliness.
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
Addendum:
I don’t often quote the Ishbitzer rebbe, because I
find his orthodox determinism deeply problematic. He was a proponent of hashgachat
pratit, the doctrine that all events and actions, including sins, are
committed in accordance with God’s will. Viewing the Ishbitzer’s commentary
from our perch in the 21st century, there may be several points of discomfort.
The first concerns the notion of “doing the will of God” in the context of “nullifying
our own mind and will before the will of the blessed God.” We live in a world
inhabited by people who kill viciously and maim brutally, claiming their deeds
are the will of God. How do we know the will of God? Even within the Jewish community,
there is fierce disagreement concerning what God wants us to do; the struggles
between liberal Jews and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and between Israel and the
extremist settlers (especially the “Hilltop Youth”) are prime examples. This
conundrum leads to a second problem. If “nullifying his own mind and will
before the will of the blessed God” doesn’t evoke images of dangerous
brainwashing, then it suggests a failure or refusal to accept responsibility
for one’s actions: “This was God’s will, not mine; I was just following orders.”
Here is another possibility: The Ishbitzer is a hasidic rebbe, and hence his
thinking is built on a foundation of Kabbalistic mystical thinking anchored in
pantheism, according to which everything is contained within God because God is
the totally of everything there is and existence itself. Given that, when the
Ishbitzer says that all actions are under God’s control and occur in accord
with God’s will, one can understand this to mean that everything happens within
God—by definition. Yet moral accountability still hangs in the air.
[1] Paul F. Boller, They
Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quote, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions.
[2] It seems doubtful
that Boller is correct that Wesley had in mind R. Pinchas b. Yair’s teaching,
both because Boller quotes the Talmud entirely incorrectly and because it seems
illogical that Wesley would zero in on one of the lower rungs of R. Pinchas ben
Yair’s ladder of spirituality.
[3] BT Avodah Zarah 20b.
[4] R. Pinchas
understands the verse from Deuteronomy to be talking about ritual impurity from
nocturnal emissions (hint: read the verses that follow it); it’s unlikely that
in this context he has physical hygiene in mind.
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