"Raising Hands" Before Eating

For I, God, am your God, therefore you shall sanctify yourselves, thus shall you become holy for I am holy …

                                                           Leviticus 11:44

Our Sages taught: “You shall sanctify yourselves” refers to “the first water.”       Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 53b

Our verse supports the Rabbinic practice of washing one’s hands before eating bread at a meal (n’tilat yadayim). As Keren Orah (Rabbi Yitzḥak Minkovski, mid 19^th century) explains, the underlying message of n’tilat yadayim is that one must purify his hands, and raise them (the literal meaning of “n’tila” is “to raise”) toward heaven, to show that he does not raise his hands except with the will of his Creator, that he does not eat merely for his own pleasure, but eats with the intention of strengthening himself to do God’s will.

Therefore, n’tilat yadayim serves to stress that the physical act of eating is not an end in itself, rather it ultimately serves a spiritual purpose. Likewise, to emphasize the spiritual aspect of a task as mundane as eating, Hayye Adam (Rabbi Avraham Danzig 1748-1820) writes, “men of great deeds” preface their meals with the statement: “My intention is to eat in order to have the strength and health to serve the Creator.”

If one eats a meal and does not walk four cubits, the food rots and causes foul breath.

                                  Babylonian Talmud  Shabbat 41a

In his brilliant analysis of this rather curious Talmudic comment, Rabbi Kook notes that like all animals, man must eat to survive. However, man, uniquely within God’s creation, has both physical and spiritual dimensions. In the ideal, man eats to be able to live and devote himself to improving his spiritual side. “Four cubits,” for our Sages, represents one’s personal space, hence walking four cubits represents advancement.

The message the Talmud conveys is that if one eats only for the sake of eating and does not take advantage of his meal to further himself spiritually, he has accomplished nothing, and the food will rot. Further, it is man’s mouth, his power of speech, which elevates him from the rest of the animal world. Thus, not only will the food rot if it has not been used to further oneself spiritually, but it will cause foul breath, that is, it damages the one thing which makes man superior to other animals.