Yadayim, Chapter 1, Mishnah 5. This chapter has been occupied throughout with the water used for netilas yadayim: how much is needed, what kind of vessel it must come from, and what renders water unfit. Our mishnah, the last in the chapter, closes the subject with one more case of water spoiled by prior use, and then turns to a new question altogether: who, or what, may do the pouring.
Water a baker used
"Hamayim shehanachtom matbil bahen es haglusekaos, pesulin." A baker who dips his rolls into a container of water has thereby used that water for his work, and it may no longer serve for netilas yadayim.
"U'k'shehu madiach es yadav bahen, kesheirin." But if the baker only puts his hands into the water to moisten them, and then goes back to working the dough, the water in the container remains fit.
Why should one case ruin the water while the other leaves it untouched? The Bartenura directs our attention to where the melachah actually occurred. In the second instance nothing whatsoever was accomplished with the water that remained inside the vessel; the moistening was done with the little bit he had scooped up in his palms. Since the body of water sitting in the container was never put to any use at all, its status is unchanged, and netilas yadayim may be performed with it.
Who may pour
"Hakol kesheirim liten la'yadayim." Every person is qualified to pour the water onto another's hands, and the mishnah goes on to name precisely those one might have assumed to be excluded: "afilu cheresh, shoteh v'katan." A child qualifies; so does one who is not of sound mind; so does a cheresh, who neither hears nor speaks. What the one washing requires is simply that water reach his hands, and the mishnah lays down no condition that the person doing the pouring be himself bound by this mitzvah.
The mishnah then presents three arrangements in which no one is holding the vessel in the usual way.
- "Maniach chavis bein birkav v'notel." A barrel may be gripped and held steady between the knees and then tipped, so that its water spills down over the hands.
- "Mateh chavis al tzida v'notel." The barrel may be laid over onto its side, and one washes from the water running out of it.
- "V'hakof notel la'yadayim." The pouring may even be done by a monkey.
"Rabbi Yose posel bishnei eilu." Of the three arrangements just listed, the final two are, in his opinion, invalid.
Koach gavra
Underlying the whole discussion is a basic rule: the water of netilas yadayim must arrive on the hands through human effort, what the Bartenura calls koach gavra. For this reason one cannot fulfill the mitzvah by holding his hands out in the rain or sticking them under a waterfall. The water has to be given, not merely encountered.
With the barrel held between the knees, that condition is plainly met. His knees are what press the vessel over and cause the water to pour, and that is human effort as surely as if he had held the barrel in his hands. This is precisely why Rabbi Yose voices no objection to this case.
The barrel tilted onto its side is subtler. Here the man sets the barrel down on its side and may then walk off and sit himself down, while the barrel goes on emptying itself all day long. The Tanna Kamma holds that the flow is still traceable to his act of tilting the barrel, and that is enough to call it koach gavra.
As for the monkey, the Bartenura notes that a monkey has hands much like a person's and is capable of doing the physical work of pouring. And what the halachah requires, according to the Tanna Kamma, is koach nosen, the force of some agent applying the water to the hands. It was never stipulated that the agent be a human being.
Rabbi Yose disagrees on both counts. He disqualifies the monkey because in his view koach adam is required, the power of a person specifically, and here that is missing. And he disqualifies the barrel resting on its side because once the man has walked away and the water flows on by itself, Rabbi Yose does not regard that flow as human power at all.
With this the first chapter of Yadayim comes to a close, having carried us from the measure of water and the vessel that holds it all the way to the hand, or the knee, or even the paw, that tips it.