Netilat Yadayim
Aravah Berman-Mirkin
About Aravah Berman-Mirkin
About Netilat Yadayim
Netilat Yadayim hand-washing bowl and cup set is to be used during the Shmita year with greater intention.
Prompt: Fill cup with water, take the handle of your non-dominant hand and pour water three times over your dominant hand, switch hands and repeat. Remain silent during this ritual. While emptying out each pour, consider the importance of water to you and how water connects you to the living creatures and beings in your neighborhood. Think about how water flows after rain or snow melt, what creek, river, pond, lake it ends up in, and ultimately which ocean it drains towards. Imagine how that ocean has no borders and that they are all one. Consider how water is reabsorbed into the atmosphere, and then reintroduces itself back into this very same cycle via rain and snow. Feel how this water is connecting you to your ancestors, that they did the same rituals with the same water – that there is no new water on the Earth, but a constant recycling of water that has been here since the beginning of time.
Close this practice with the Netilat Yadayim blessing:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הָ׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל נְטִילַת יָדַיִם
Baruch Atah Ado-nai Elo-heinu Melech Ha’Olam Asher Kidshanu B’mitzvotav Vitzivanu al Netilat Yadayim
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe who has sanctified us with divine commandments, and commanded us concerning the washing of the hands.
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I produce my Judaica in a nearby ceramics studio, and if asked to be reproduced, I would be able to make them there. Given that I create one-of-a-kind pieces, they would each be unique (not mass produced or exactly uniform), but still have the same overall shape/size/form, and the inscription of “Netilat Yadayim” in Hebrew on the bowl, along with glazes resembling the flow of water.