Tevilat Keilim: A Mitzvah of Ethical Consumption

Toveling (immersing) dishes is one of the stranger things I find myself doing as a late-in-life observant Jew. This was made painfully clear last week as I stood on the banks of the Charles River in Boston, feet bare and pants rolled up to my knees, dunking flatware and stem glasses into the murky water while passersby stared in confusion, and picnickers, annoyed by the sounds, glared.

“I don’t know if the Charles is the right place to wash your dishes, son,” said an older man as he walked past with his dog.

“I’m actually not washing them,” I responded. “It’s a Jewish thing. Before we use a new dish, we sort of … baptize it.”

He shrugged, gave me a thumbs up, and hurried on his way.

The commandment of tevilat keilim (immersion of dishes) comes from the Book of Numbers in the Torah. After a bloody battle with the Midianites, the Israelites collect their vessels as spoils of war. Moses then commands the Israelites to pass the vessels through fire to make them kosher, and then to submerge them in waters of purification.

From this, we learn that kosher is not quite enough for dishes acquired from an outside nation. An added ritual of sanctification must be performed. Today, this can be done either at a community mikveh (an indoor pool of water used for this purpose) or in a natural mikveh (certain rivers and lakes, as well as oceans).

The idea that one must ritually cleanse dishes acquired from non-Jews was deeply troubling to me when I first encountered it. This was back when I was completing my halachic conversion to Judaism in Israel. My teacher was a friendly and soft-spoken rabbi from the liberal end of the Orthodox spectrum, but he was sick that day. His substitute was brusque and insulting, and took pleasure in shocking us with the most unpleasant aspects of Kashrut (kosher laws). If we took issue with any of it, he would kindly remind us that conversion to Judaism was not mandatory. In other words, if you don’t like it, get out.

While explaining Tevilat Keilim, he said that the issue was “Tumat Goy” (the impurity of the non-Jew). He spat out the words like a slur and I wondered how I would accept a law that seemed to imply something so ugly about the non-Jewish world.

This preoccupied me for days, but there was something else he said that stuck with me just as much. He told us that the dishes in our homes would not need to be toveled after we converted, despite the fact that we had used them when we were not yet halachically Jewish. Our dishes, he said, would convert with us. As we submerged in the mikveh (a full-body dunk in a mikveh is the final step of the conversion process), our dishes would undergo a parallel spiritual transformation, as if they were indeed connected to us by some invisible thread—an extension of our physical presence in the world.

When the time came for my mikveh, I stripped naked and dunked while three yeshiva students looked on disinterestedly from above. When I returned home, I took stock of the dishes in the sink. Like me, they looked the same as they ever had. But they were different. And so was I.

In my years as a practicing Jew, there have been moments when I have felt supremely in touch with my own religious practice, as if, to paraphrase Moses, it was very close to me, in my mouth and in my heart.

In my years as a practicing Jew, there have been moments when I have felt supremely in touch with my own religious practice, as if, to paraphrase Moses, it was very close to me, in my mouth and in my heart.

Then there have been other moments when Judaism has felt too demanding, too irrational, and too out-of-step with the modern world to be sustainable. Lugging a cast-iron pot to the shores of Walden Pond falls in the latter category.

That said, not all transformations are as instantaneous as the transformation of that which is submerged in waters of purification. It took time to get used to this commandment, and even more time to understand what it might mean in a world devoid of Midianites.

Despite what our substitute said that day, I do not think that this commandment’s purpose is to cleanse away the so-called impurity of non-Jews. In fact, since that day, I have never once heard the term “Tumat Goy.” A google search yields nothing but an article on how non-Jews are not susceptible to ritual impurity at all.

So, then, why do we tovel?

Two possibilities have been offered by the sages. The first is that tevilat keilim is a chok, a commandment without clear purpose.

The second possibility is that the purpose of tevilat keilim is to sanctify a vessel that may have been used by those known to classical Jewish literature as “worshippers of stars.” In other words, idolators.

There is no doubt in my mind as to the most dangerous idols of our day and age. They are not the stars or the moon, nor are they statues of gold or silver. Rather, they are profit, consumption, greed and waste. It is this kind of idol-worship that has contaminated so many of the vessels we take into our homes.

The delivery of a package to one’s front door is the last step of what is all-too-often a long and devastating supply chain of exploitation and extraction. The attempt to be an ethical consumer, in our economy, is not altogether possible. In the parts of the world where so many of our household products are manufactured, conditions akin to slavery are regularly practiced. This is to say nothing of the environmental impact of satisfying our society’s unending craving for more and cheaper stuff.

To tovel one’s dishes, then, is to ritually break this chain. It is to confront all that we know and all that we don’t know about the origins of the things in our lives, and then to release it to the waters, readying the vessels for a new life of sanctity.

This is not to absolve us of our participation in these unjust consumer systems. No ritual can exempt a person from the obligations of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world). But this mitzvah creates space to confront the problem mindfully, and to redeem the spark of holiness contained in an object whose material history may have been wasteful or exploitative.

But this mitzvah creates space to confront the problem mindfully, and to redeem the spark of holiness contained in an object whose material history may have been wasteful or exploitative.

Rituals slow us down. They generate mindfulness. To tovel one’s dishes is to create a speedbump in the process of acquisition. To tovel all the kitchenware needed for my new apartment, for instance, took a solid five hours. The boxes had to be loaded into my car, transferred to the beach, and then unloaded. One by one, the items had to be submerged, then let to dry, and then repacked. At home, I unpacked them again and washed them.

One-click purchasing might seem easy and convenient, but for those who tovel, it is just the beginning of a longer and more intensive process. This, in and of itself, is a reminder to purchase carefully, purchase infrequently, and purchase to keep.

I don’t believe that my interpretation of this mitzvah is necessarily a 21st-century interpolation. I would make the case that this is the true meaning of the commandment. Cooking and eating are sacred activities in Judaism, with the table likened to an altar. What Moses feared, I believe, was placing vessels on this altar that had once been used to serve wicked causes.

When I shop and when I bring new items into my home, I share in this fear. The truth is that the story of our things is often an unseemly one, and this is what makes this mitzvah more vital today than ever. Until the idols have been smashed, and the wicked practices of modern manufacturing reformed, it is truly the least we can do.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.