Q&A: Washing Hands
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Washing Hands
Question
What should one do when there is no vessel available and one wants to wash hands for a meal? For example, on an airplane, is it permitted to wash hands from the sink faucet in the restroom? And if not, how am I supposed to eat my meal?
Answer
You can open the faucet and close it. The water that comes out immediately after opening is considered direct human force. If you have no way to wash, eat while holding the bread with a napkin.
Maimonides holds that the permission for a person to wrap his hands in a cloth is valid even ab initio. The Raavad disagreed with him and wrote that wrapping in a cloth was only permitted for those eating foods in a state of ritual purity, because they are careful, and all the more so we should not permit it for those eating ordinary non-sacred food, who are not careful.
The commentators on Maimonides drew various distinctions and tried to explain his words, and Rabbi Kapach wondered at them, since Maimonides’ view here is stated explicitly in the Laws of Primary Sources of Impurity (8:9): that this a fortiori argument is correct regarding those eating ordinary food in purity, but not regarding those eating ordinary food in impurity. For what do we care if they touch the bread and render it impure, seeing as it is impure from the outset—for example, a woman kneading dough while in the state of niddah, and so on.
If so, in a case where such care is not really needed, and it is required only because of the rabbinic decree made as an extension of the laws of terumah, the Sages permitted a person to wrap his hands in a cloth. But Maran, in Kesef Mishneh, distinguished in accordance with the Raavad. And therefore he also ruled in the Shulchan Aruch that wrapping in a cloth is permitted only in a situation where he has no water nearby.