Hayom Yom: Tackling Life's Tasks - 4 Kislev

To Fill In the Background

The Talmud3 teaches that in addition to washing the hands before a meal, we should wash our fingertips afterwards in order to remove Sodomitesalt (a particularly harsh form of salt), lest contact with it harm the eyes.

The AriZal explains a mystical dimension to this practice. Eating is one of the ways in which man carries out the task of sifting and refining the material world and bringing out its G‑dly nature.4 Every morsel of food has two dimensions, its material substance and its inner G‑dly life-force. When a person eats food with the intent of harnessing its energy to a spiritual purpose, he focuses on the G‑dly source of that energy and invites its expression. Nevertheless, no matter how refined his intent, since inherently the nature of this world encourages the self-centered pursuit of physical satisfaction, eating for a spiritual purpose involves a struggle — and that struggle leaves vestiges of spiritual impurity on one’s hands, as it were. To remove this impurity, the AriZal explains, we wash our fingertips after eating.5

Moreover,6 eating without a spiritual purpose could conceivably give the sitra achra (i.e., the forces of evil) an excuse to raise accusations in the Heavenly Court. Hence, in order to silence that voice, we allot the sitra achra a limited and peripheral participation in the meal — namely, the mayim acharonim — rather than allowing it to be an unwanted partner in our avodah of eating the actual meal with the intention of elevating the Divine sparks submerged in it.

Accordingly, as noted above, before we wash the fingertips with mayim acharonim we recite the verse that begins, Zeh chelek adam rasha — “This is the portion of a wicked man from G‑d, and the heritage assigned to him by G‑d.”7

As the AriZal points out, the humble portion assigned to the sitra achra is hinted at by the initial letters of three words from the above-quoted verse (חלק אדם רשע). These letters, when transposed, combine to spell the word אחר — “other,” in allusion to the sitra achra, which literally means “the Other Side,” the “side” of the universe that is opposite and opposed to the holy “side.”