{"id":1651,"date":"2017-11-07T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/2017\/11\/07\/why-do-we-wash-our-hands-before-eating-bread"},"modified":"2018-06-12T09:24:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T06:24:46","slug":"why-do-we-wash-our-hands-before-eating-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/2017\/11\/07\/why-do-we-wash-our-hands-before-eating-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Wash Our Hands Before Eating Bread?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This short post<\/a> explains the biblical origins behind the ritual hand-washing before bread, which is based on the ancient purity rituals of the Kohanim (Priests) in the Temple. This explanation was written by Orthodox Chabad\u00a0Rabbi Naftali Silberberg<\/a>\u00a0as an answer to a question posted on AskMoses.com<\/a>, a website dedicated to answering questions about Judaism.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Why Do We Wash Our Hands Before Eating Bread?<\/h2>\n

There is a\u00a0Torah<\/span>\u00a0commandment that when one has a harvest of wheat, wine or olive oil, a small percentage is given as\u00a0Terumah<\/span>\u00a0(a “separation”) to the Kohen.<\/p>\n

Terumah must be kept pure, and the Kohen who eats it must be pure. Since a person’s hands are active and might have come in contact with something unclean or impure, a Kohen must wash his\/her\u00a0hands before consuming terumah.<\/p>\n

This applies only to bread, for olive oil and wine are not generally eaten directly with the hands.<\/p>\n

In order to keep us ready for the time when we will once again be eating terumah – with the coming of our righteous Messiah, our rabbis instituted the\u00a0washing\u00a0of hands before eating any bread.<\/p>\n

In order to ensure that the\u00a0Kohanim<\/span>\u00a0wash, the Sages applied this rule to all Jews, kohanim and ordinary\u00a0Israelites alike.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This short post explains the biblical origins behind the ritual hand-washing before bread, which is based on the ancient purity rituals of the Kohanim (Priests) in the Temple. This explanation was written by Orthodox Chabad\u00a0Rabbi Naftali Silberberg\u00a0as an answer to a question posted on AskMoses.com, a website dedicated to answering questions about Judaism.\u00a0 Why Do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[241],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1653\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}