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Handwashing and Public Health
Contributed by Noraa Kaplan

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Jewish tradition has long seen handwashing as vital to physical and spiritual health. Though the Torah never explicitly commands us to wash our hands, the rabbis of the Talmud considered it a duty sacred enough to be incorporated into Jewish law. They found an asmachta, a biblical ‘hint’ that implies its importance. The verse (Leviticus 15:11) doesn’t describe handwashing as a way of cleansing oneself, but as a way of preventing the spread of ritual impurity from one person to another. Anyone a person deemed ‘impure’ touches becomes impure themselves, unless the first person rinses their hands before contact occurs. This implies that handwashing is not an act of individual cleanliness, but a practice of mutual protection.

The pandemic has made it clearer than ever that our personal wellbeing is inextricably tied to the health of our communities. Measures like wearing masks and social distancing do more than benefit our individual health. These practices help prevent COVID from spreading, and minimize the chance we will pass the virus onto others in our community. 

The concept of public health is still unfamiliar to many living in the United States’ highly individualistic society, and it is anathema to the capitalists and politicians trying to find a way to profit off the pandemic. American society emphasizes independence, the liberty of each person to do what they please, without any obligations to anyone else. Sadly, many Americans’ reactions to the virus have been informed by their perception of the dangers to their health, and their health alone. 

Too many people say, “I’m healthy, the virus won’t hurt me, why should I wear a mask?” They sound like the ‘wicked son’ mentioned in the Four Children section of the traditional haggadah: “What does this ritual mean to you?” To you, and not to him. Like the wicked son, people who refuse to wear a mask because they don’t see the personal benefit cut themselves off from the collective and remove themselves from their com- munities. They fail to see their responsibility to their fellow human beings.

Many Americans, especially white people, fail to see why they should care about abolition. They say, “I have never been to prison. The police don’t harass me. I am not a ‘criminal.’ Why should I care about abolishing police and prisons?” They fail to understand that no one can be free until everyone is, that the carceral state oppresses us all. The Exodus that we commemorate tonight wasn’t an individual departure from slavery. It was a collective liberation of an entire people. Tonight, let us remember that our health, our happiness, and our liberation are in each other’s hands.
 
haggadah Section: Urchatz

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