The question today is: if somebody doesn’t have a keli for Netilat yadayim (ritual handwashing), can he use the faucet to do Netilat yadayim, yes or no? There are two points we have to think about when it comes to this halakha (Jewish law). First, we spoke about koach gavra: somebody pouring the water. Is that considered somebody pouring the water or not? Apparently, if you don’t do this—if you don’t open the faucet—the water is not coming down. So it seems that maybe it falls under the category of koach gavra.
Then we have another question. We read it this morning in the parasha: mayim chayim el keli (living water into a vessel). We said that we need to have a keli when it comes to making tahara (purification) on the hands—not when it comes inside a body of water, but when it comes as a netila (pouring). You need a keli. Is this faucet considered a keli or not? There’s no kibbul; it’s not holding anything, it’s just a conduit. Is that considered a keli or not?
On the first question, is it considered koach gavra? It seems that it’s not considered koach gavra. Why is that? When you have a person taking a keli and pouring on somebody else’s hand, the person is the one pouring on the hand, either to himself or to someone else. When you open the faucet, it’s the opposite action: the water comes flowing into the person. When the person closes the faucet, then it stops pouring. But the pouring itself doesn’t come from the person. What did you do for it to pour down? Did you pour it on the person? Did you do an active act of having the water reach that person’s hand? It’s the opposite. When you open the faucet, you’re letting some other koach (force) get to the person’s hand. It’s not your koach; you’re not doing it. Actually, it works the opposite way. What happens is that the water should be flowing all the time because there are machines pushing the flow of the water. What you do is that you have the ability to close it, and that’s what happens when you close the faucet. When you open the faucet, you’re really being passively involved in the pouring on the person’s hand. But let’s leave this as a safek (uncertainty). Perhaps the fact that you are involved could be considered koach gavra. That’s one element.
The second element is the keli. Is a tzinor, or pipe, considered a keli or not? A keli normally, by definition, has to be able to hold something. It’s called keli kibbul, like a bowl, like a cup, something that holds the water. In a pipe, you cannot hold anything. A pipe is not a keli. A pipe is an extension of a keli.
And here comes Chacham Ovadia. He says, “I could only find one case where perhaps it would work.” Back then, maybe in Israel they still have them. Sometimes you see big plastic containers of water on top of a roof. It would depend on that. Chacham Ovadia says, “You have a big container of water, so then the pipe would be an extension of that keli. That’s an extension of a keli; I have a keli.” But today, at least in America, most places do not have that. You don’t have a container of water; you have the pressure that comes straight from the pump. That’s too far to be considered a keli. Therefore, Chacham Ovadia says that, depending on that, it will work or not.
The good news, though, is that for many people who have a boiler in the house for hot water, if you were to use the hot water for Netilat yadayim, in that case you do have a keli, because that is considered a keli, and then your pipe would be considered an extension of that keli. Maybe you could use the hot water to do Netilat yadayim. It doesn’t have to be hot. When you start opening the hot water, it comes straight from this connection to the boiler, and that would be a keli. So, depending on whether you have a boiler or not, you could make the trick of doing Netilat yadayim or not. And that is the final psak (halakhic ruling) of Chacham Ovadia: if there is a keli and you do it by extension, with the abad, you don’t have a cup, you could do the Netilat yadayim like that. If you do not have a keli, you don’t have a container, you don’t have a boiler, then you couldn’t do Netilat yadayim, because that’s not considered a keli.