This Yom Kippur, many Jews washed their hands of a certain injunction
Those that cleansed themselves of sins thusly did so with a rabbinic stamp of kosher approval.
With record time before Yom Kippur, Religion News Service published my article “This Yom Kippur, many Jews will wash their hands of a certain injunction.” (Washington Post republished it.) The story addresses the collision between the rabbinic mandate restricting much hand washing on the High Holiday and public health guidance during a pandemic.
This tension existed last Yom Kippur too, but this year—with more people vaccinated and a lot more known about the virus—many rabbis saw less room for leniency. Many other rabbis still advised their communities to prioritize what they saw as sufficiently life-and-death behavior to override laws of even the holiest Jewish day of the year.
It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that there have been differences of opinion among rabbis. It does, I think, shed light on an important, timely and practical religious question. And I am thankful that my editor gave me the space to get into what exactly the Yom Kippur issue is with hand washing.
I am particularly fond of how Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post religion reporter, put it on Twitter: