The Kiyor

The sound that started the Temple day

The Mishnah (the core text of the Oral Torah, edited around the year 200) describes how a Temple morning began. The kohanim (priests) checked the courtyard by torchlight. Then one kohen went on toward the altar alone. No lamp. Only the light of the altar fire. The others could not see or hear him. Then they heard the wooden machine that had been built for the basin, and said: "The time has come." He washed his hands and feet, and the day's service began.

Why the siddur starts here

This passage is not about an offering. So why does it open the Temple readings? The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) records the custom: say the passage of the basin, then the clearing of the ashes, then the daily offering, then the incense. That is the order of a kohen's morning, and the siddur follows it. Washing came first. In the Mishnah, the other kohanim warn the one on duty: be careful not to touch the vessel until you have washed your hands and feet at the basin.

Hands on feet

How do you wash hands and feet at the same time? The Gemara describes it. The kohen put his right hand on his right foot and his left hand on his left foot, and washed them together. He did it standing, because Temple service is done standing. One rabbi said both hands went on top of both feet, stacked. The others told him: "You have gone too far. That cannot be done." The Gemara's answer: a friend holds him up.

The Torah says wash. The Aramaic says make holy.

Onkelos (the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah) does something unusual here. Where the verses say "wash," he writes "make holy." The Mishnah talks the same way: a kohen "makes his hands and feet holy." The Ramban (Nachmanides, Spain, 1200s) points to that translation and says the washing was for holiness. He adds that the mitzvah is the washing, not the basin. On Yom Kippur the Kohen Gadol (the High Priest) washed from a golden jug made in his honor.

Not on the furniture list

The Torah describes the vessels of the Mishkan (the desert sanctuary) chapters before this: the ark, the table, the menorah, the altar. The basin is not there. It appears later, by itself. Sforno (Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, Italy, 1500s) explains why. The other vessels were there to bring God's presence to rest in the sanctuary. The basin had a different purpose: to get the kohanim ready for their service.

No measurements

The Torah gives exact sizes for the ark, the table and the altar. For the basin it gives none. Ibn Ezra (a Spanish-born Bible commentator of the 1100s) noticed, and gave a reason: it was simply made out of all the mirrors that were brought. Rashi (the classic commentator, France, died 1105) pictures a large pot with spouts. The Mishnah says a man named Ben Katin later gave it twelve spouts in place of two. The Gemara explains: so the twelve kohanim working on the daily offering could wash at once.

"A law forever"

The passage ends by calling this a law forever, for all generations. There is no basin now. But the Gemara rules that a kohen who has not washed his hands may not raise them to bless the people. The Rambam (Maimonides, who died in 1204) adds that he washes up to the wrist, "the way they make holy for the Temple service." So when the kohanim step out to wash before Birkat Kohanim (the priestly blessing), that washing is modeled on this one.

The basin was made of mirrors

The copper came from mirrors. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonne, a student of the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Chassidut), explains why. A person can be clean in his own eyes and see no need to wash. So he brings a teaching he heard in his teacher's name (the Hareini Mekabel prayer has it too): when you see a flaw in someone else, you are looking in a mirror. A trace of it is in you too. That, he writes, is why the basin was made of mirrors. You look, see yourself, and know you need to wash. He notes he later found this in another rabbi's name.

שיסתכל במראה שרואה חיסרון זולתו, אז ירגיש שחסרון זולתו יש בו בעצמו ג"כ, ואז ידע שצריך לרחצה

Nobody says this about a sukkah

The note in the siddur before this passage quotes the Gemara (Menachot 110a): whoever studies the law of an offering is as if he brought it. The Maharal (Rabbi Yehudah Loew of Prague, who died in 1609) asks why nobody says that studying the laws of a sukkah is like building one. His answer: study does not stand in for the act. An offering is only about one thing, he writes, which is coming close to God. Sin is distance, and the offering closes it. Someone who studies the offering gets that same closeness.

כי אין ענין הקרבן רק ההתדבקות בו וההתקרבות אליו יתברך... וכאשר עוסק בתורת חטאת, יש לו אותו התקרבות עצמו אשר קונה על ידי החטאת

Between the mind and the will

The basin stands at an exact spot: between the Tent of Meeting and the altar. Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) reads the two as two sources. The Tent is founded on God's speech, which he calls the source of the mind's light. The altar is where the will is lifted up. Being pure, he writes, has to come from both, the mind and the will. Then the water reaches the hands, which act as the mind directs, and the feet, which move where the will pushes them.

הטהרה מוכרחת להיות באה מתוך ההשפעה של השכל ושל הרצון

Do not quit the world

Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, one of the early Chassidic masters, hears a hint in the word for copper, nechoshet. It sounds like nachash, the serpent. He takes it to mean the physical side of life, eating and drinking and everything like them. All of it, he says, has to be brought into holiness. Then he heads off a mistake. A person might say: that is impossible to keep up, so I will cut myself off from the physical world and not eat or drink at all. Do not say that, he writes. Work at it little by little.

אל יאמר כן, אלא צריך האדם להתאמץ במעט מעט

Proud and broken at once

This is the first of the Temple passages, and Rav Kook opens his commentary on them with an admission. After the destruction, he writes, we cannot even picture how great and how pure that life was. And still, our whole life of prayer draws on what was left to us from it. So he describes how we stand at this point in the siddur: full of pride and full of brokenness, full of joy and full of bitterness, full of grief and full of comfort and hope.

והננו עומדים מלאי גאון ומלאי שברון, מלאי חדוה, ומלאי מרירות, מלאי יגון ומלאי נחמה ותקוה

My friend's siddur skips this. Is that a mistake?

No. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) records it as a custom: "Some have the custom to say the passage of the basin," then the ash removal, the daily offering and the incense. Siddur Sefard and Siddur Ashkenaz print it. The Chabad siddur starts at the ash removal. Siddur Edot HaMizrach, a Sephardic siddur, starts at the daily offering. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) rules that saying the daily offering became an obligation. The others are good to say.

Can I say the Temple passages while it is still dark?

This passage, yes. The Shulchan Aruch rules that the passages about the offerings are said only by day. The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, from around 1900) explains: offerings were brought only by day. But the basin and the ash removal, he writes, may be said before daybreak. The Aruch HaShulchan (a code of law from the same years) gives the reason. The ashes were mainly cleared off the altar at night, and the kohanim (the priests) had to wash at the basin first.

Do I stand for the Temple passages?

The sources disagree. The Magen Avraham (a 1600s commentary on the Shulchan Aruch) says to stand, the way the offerings were brought. The first Chabad Rebbe required it in the first edition of his code of law. In the second he wrote there is no need: you are not the kohen doing the service. The Aruch HaShulchan: many disagree, but in his view a kohen should stand. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s): most authorities say there is no need, and he quotes that this is the common practice.

Do girls say the Temple passages?

Most do not, and they are not required to. Peninei Halakhah, in its volume on women's prayer, brings the views. Some say women should say the daily-offering passage, because prayer was set up to match that offering and women are obligated in prayer. Some add the whole order of offerings. But the widespread custom is that women do not say them, and most authorities agree. Men are not strictly obligated either. A woman who chooses to say the daily offering and the incense verses: "may blessing come upon her."

Is this passage only for the morning?

Some say it in the afternoon too. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice to the Shulchan Aruch) records a custom to say the daily-offering passage before Mincha, the afternoon prayer, to match the afternoon offering. He calls it a fine one. The Sefard prayer book for Rosh Hashanah notes: "Some have the custom to say the passage of the basin before the daily-offering passage at Mincha." Printings differ. The Siddur Sefard used here has it before Mincha on Friday and Shabbat, not on weekdays.

The kohanim washed before serving. Do I wash before I daven?

If there is water, yes. The Ramban (Nachmanides, Spain, 1200s) writes that from this washing the Sages set up hand washing before prayer. The Shulchan Aruch rules: even if you washed when you woke up, once your mind has left your hands you wash again for prayer, with no blessing, even with no dirt you know of. The same goes for Mincha. If no water is at hand, you need not go looking. The Mishnah Berurah adds: still wipe them on something, and if you touched something dirty or used the bathroom, you do go looking.

Who pours the water when the kohanim wash in shul?

A Levi. Before the kohanim bless the congregation, the Shulchan Aruch rules, they wash again, even though they washed in the morning: up to the wrist, with a Levi pouring. The Mishnah Berurah explains the wrist: "like a kohen making his hands holy for the service," the washing this passage commands. It must be water. Wiping them clean, the backup before prayer, does not work here. With no Levi there, he writes, a firstborn pours. With no firstborn either, it is better that the kohen pour for himself.