My hands are not dirty. Why wash them the minute I wake up?
You showered last night. Then you slept. Now you are supposed to wash your hands before almost anything else, and say a blessing on it. The classic sources give three reasons, and they are three different kinds of reason.
The first is practical. The Rosh, writing around 1300, says hands are busy. All night they move around without you, and they will have touched parts of your body that are not clean. Before Shema and prayer they need to be clean.
The second has nothing to do with dirt. The Rashba, the leading rabbi of Spain in those years, was asked why the morning washing gets a blessing at all, and he admits he could not find a clear source that requires a formal washing in the morning. For prayer, he says, any way of cleaning your hands would be enough. His answer: each morning we become like a new creation, as the verse says, "They are new every morning" (Eichah 3:23). Someone starting the day new, in God's service, prepares the way a kohen did: washing from a vessel before going in to serve.
The third comes from the Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah): during sleep a spirit of impurity settles on the body, and in the morning it stays on the hands until they are washed. The Gemara, as Rashi (the classic commentator, who lived in France in the 1000s) explains it, also speaks of a spirit that rests on the hands until they are washed three times. So the Shulchan Aruch says to pour water over them three times.
Which reason is the real one? The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, published 1884 to 1907) says that in practice we follow both the Rosh and the Rashba, keeping the stricter side of each. He adds that the spirit alone would not have earned a blessing. The blessing is there for the first two reasons: clean hands for prayer, and a new person starting the day's service.
Rosh, Berakhot 9:23,Rashba, Responsa, quoted in Beit Yosef, Orach Chaim 4,Zohar, Parashat Vayeshev 184b,Shabbat 109a with Rashi,Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 4:2,Mishnah Berurah 4:1 and 4:8It says God commanded us to wash our hands. Where does the Torah say that?
It does not. Read the whole Torah and you will not find a command to wash your hands in the morning or before bread. This washing is a mitzvah from the Sages. So how can the blessing say that God "commanded us"?
The Gemara asks this itself. The case there is Chanukah candles, another mitzvah from the Sages with the same blessing formula: "Where did He command us?" It gives two answers. Rav Avya points to the verse "Do not turn aside from what they tell you" (Devarim 17:11). Rav Nechemiah points to "Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say it to you" (Devarim 32:7). The Torah itself tells us to listen to the Sages, so keeping their rule is keeping that command.
The Rambam (Maimonides, who wrote his code of Jewish law about 850 years ago) says this about hand-washing by name. We say "commanded us," he writes, because this is a mitzvah of the Sages, and the Torah commanded us to listen to them.
How much weight did the Sages give it? The Gemara tells of Rabbi Akiva in prison. Rabbi Yehoshua HaGarsi looked after him and brought a measured amount of water each day. One day the guard poured out half. Rabbi Akiva asked for what was left so he could wash his hands before eating. Rabbi Yehoshua said: there is not enough to drink, and you want to wash with it? Rabbi Akiva answered that he would rather die than go against the ruling of his colleagues. He ate nothing until he had washed.
That story is about washing before bread, which has this same blessing. The Gemara then adds that when King Shlomo established hand-washing, a voice came from Heaven: "My son, if your heart is wise, My heart will be glad too" (Mishlei 23:15). Elsewhere the Gemara explains that his rule was for sacrificial food, and later Sages widened it.
Shabbat 23a,Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Blessings 6:2 and 11:3,Eruvin 21b,Shabbat 15aHow can I bless God? What could He need from me?
"Blessed are You." Almost every blessing opens with these words. They raise a real question. When you bless someone, you wish them something they do not have yet. What could God be missing?
Abudarham, the classic commentary on the prayers, takes this up on this blessing. First he says baruch is not something done to God. It describes Him, like "merciful" or "gracious": He is the source of all blessing and receives it from no one. Then he asks straight out: "What good do our blessings do for God?" His answer: we bless only to earn His blessings. As the Sages say, whoever blesses is blessed.
Rabbeinu Bachya (a Torah commentator in Spain around 1300) starts in the same place. Blessings, he writes, are not for God's need but for ours. If every creature blessed Him all day and all night, what would that add? The gain is ours: a person who says a blessing is testifying that what he has comes from God.
Then he gives a second reading, from Kabbalah. A blessing, he says, is not only thanks. The word means adding and increasing, like a pool that flows from its source. When we bless God, that becomes a cause for all His creatures to be blessed by Him.
Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (who died in 1821, the leading student of the Vilna Gaon) takes that reading further in his book, Nefesh HaChaim. "Baruch is not a word of praise, as most people assume," he writes. His proof is a story in the Gemara. Rabbi Yishmael once entered the innermost part of the Temple and heard: "Yishmael, My son, bless Me." He did not answer with praise. He answered with a prayer: may Your mercy overcome Your anger. Rabbi Chaim adds a warning. None of this touches God Himself, who is above every blessing. It is about how much blessing flows from Him into the world.
So there are two ways to mean that first word. "You are the source of every blessing." Or: "May Your blessing grow in the world." The sources make room for both.
Abudarham, Morning Blessings,Rabbeinu Bachya on Devarim 8:10,Nefesh HaChaim, Gate 2, chapters 2 and 4,Berakhot 7a