It’s a universal practice among Jewish people to wash their hands before eating bread. But if you’ve ever paid close attention, you might have noticed that some pour water twice on each hand, while many others, including Chabad, do it three times. So, what’s the difference?

To understand this, let’s first take a look at why we wash our hands in the first place.

Why Do We Wash Before Eating Bread?

Back in the time of King Solomon, the Sages established a rule that everyone must wash their hands before eating bread, even if their hands look clean. Why? Because unless you are consciously maintaining their purity, hands are considered to have (second-degree1) impurity. This impurity could transfer to terumah—a special kind of food given to the priests—and make it unfit to eat.

To make sure people took this law seriously, the Sages extended the practice of handwashing to all Jews, not just those eating terumah. Today, no one eats terumah (since we are all considered ritually impure), but the law remains. This way, when the Holy Temple is rebuilt, people will already be used to eating in a state of purity. Since most terumah was in the form of bread, the law applies specifically to eating bread.

Why Wash More Than Once?

Jewish law says that the minimum amount of water needed for washing is a revi’it (about 2.9 fluid ounces2 or 86 ml.). If you pour that entire amount over each hand in one go, some say that’s enough to purify them.3

However, if you’re using less than that, you need to pour at least twice. Here’s why: A small amount of water isn’t enough to fully purify your hands. On the contrary, your impure hands will render the water impure! So, the second pour is necessary to purify both your hands and the water already on them.4

Some follow the opinion that even if you use a full revi’it of water, the water that stays on your hands is still impure. To be extra sure, they pour again to purify both their hands and the leftover water.5

Because of this, the widespread custom is to pour at least twice on each hand, using a full revi’it each time (unless there’s a water shortage).6

Why a Third Pour?

So far, we’ve talked about washing twice. But why do some people wash three times?

Well, if your hands are physically dirty, like if they have mud or grime on them, the first pour would remove the dirt, and then two more pours would be needed to make the hands spiritually pure.7

Some people mistakenly believe that’s why many people have the custom to wash three times.8 But that’s not actually the reason—in fact, the custom is to do so even if the hands are perfectly clean.

The Fifth Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Sholom Dovber,9 mentions an old source, Hagahot Asheri on Tractate Chullin,10 as the reason for this custom. But what exactly does that mean? Rabbi Moshe Dovber Rivkin, a student of the Fifth Rebbe, offers three possible explanations:

  1. A Practical Reason – The custom is based on the explanation of the Riva (the Tosafist, Rabbi Yitzchak ben R. Eliezer), who is quoted in the Hagahot Asheri. In earlier times, water wasn’t always easy to get, so people often used less than a revi’it per wash. Because of this, they needed a third pour to ensure their hands were pure. Even though today we use plenty of water, the custom of three pours stuck.
  1. Consistency With Morning Washing – In an unrelated work with a somewhat similar name, Hagahot Shiltei Giborim, which is by a different author, Rabbi Yehoshua Boaz (a 16th-century Italian scholar), it is suggested that we should wash three times before meals just like we do in the morning upon waking so that we have a uniform number of washings (even though we wash our hands in a different manner in the morning and for bread. In the morning, we alternate pouring on our right and left hands, while before bread, we pour 3 times on the right hand and then the left).11
  2. A Connection to Temple Rituals –A more careful reading of the wording of the Hagahot Oshrei would seem to indicate that his intention is similar to the teaching of Rabbi Avraham ben David, the Raavad.12 He says that there is precedent for the three washes in the lamb that was offered as the daily sacrifice, which would be washed three times, and meat, which is rinsed three times in the process of cleansing it from blood with salt.

The Kabbalistic Perspective

These connections are not just to create uniformity. According to the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (the Arizal), there’s a deeper, mystical meaning to washing three times.

In fact, the Arizal says we should have in mind the same Kabbalistic meditations when doing both washings.13

Now, most of us don’t necessarily know or focus on those deep Kabbalistic meditations when washing. But even without them, there are plenty of practical and traditional reasons to follow the custom of washing three times, as we discussed.