Heard of Holy Water? It's Time for Kosher Water.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome recently banned bottled water from all city offices and functions (Yishar Koa’ch!). A recent documentary film and book, Thirst, by Deborah Kaufman (founder of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) and Alan Snitow asks whether water is a public resource or a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. From political debates over pollution, to controversies over public control vs. privatization, to the very personal dilemmas of whether you should carry bottled water, there is truly “water, water, everywhere.”

How should the Jewish community respond to these global and local water crises?

The Jewish tradition recognizes that water is not a parochial issue. If you go to any Jewish celebration that involves dancing you’ll circle and stomp with a rowdy crowd singing “Mayim, mayim, mayim, mayim” at the top of their lungs. Not too many people know that there is a whole festival behind that dance called Simchat Beit HaSho’evah: The Rejoicing at the Well (or the Rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing). It falls on the second day of Sukkot and bridges between the celebration of the fall harvest of fruits and the beginning of the grain season, which requires bountiful rain.

The festival, which might be seen as a kind of extended “rain dance,” was evidently one of the most raucous in the days of the Temple; a kind of Jewish “Burning Man” meets all-night rave. Rabbi Joshua ben Hannaniah said: “When we used to celebrate at Simchat Beit HaSho’evah, we never had a wink of sleep.” There were near riots of rejoicing, shofar blowing, water fights, and mixing of men and women. “He who has not seen the rejoicing at Simchat Beit HaSho’evah has never in his life seen true rejoicing.”

The festival included a strange ritual held in the Women’s Court (ezrat nashim) in which huge golden lamps were set up with four golden bowls on top of them. Novice priests went up ladders attached to the lampstands, filled the bowls with oil and lit the wicks which had been made out of the priests’ “worn out underwear and sashes!” After igniting these lamps, “men of piety and good deeds” would dance in front of the people holding burning torches.”

There were other shenanigans (what else would you expect with “pious men of good deeds” in the Women’s Court) including dancing, drinking, playing with fire, and feats of strength: “It is reported of Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel: When he celebrated during Simchat Beit haSho’evah he used to take eight burning torches in one hand and throw them into the air; as he threw one, he caught another and not one torch touched the other. When he prostrated himself, he used to fix his thumbs firmly on the ground, lower himself, kiss the ground and draw himself up again; a feat no other man could perform. And this is what is meant by the genuflexion called kiddah. (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah: 53a).

This festival may seem rather alien, a carnivalesque memory of our agrarian past with little relevance to contemporary urban life and decorous synagogue practice.

But we should not forget that behind the raucous party of Simchat Beit HaSho’evah stands the prophetic idea connecting water with justice. Perhaps it’s time to delve into the well of tradition and bring back this festival.

I think we can go even further. Water is one of the only ingestibles that is always kosher, but perhaps we need to start thinking about “water kashrut” in a broader way. Here is my suggested list of kosher vs. treif water. I would like to see us institute it across our agencies, schools, and synagogues and at all Jewish simchas.

                   KOSHER WATER               TREIF WATER

Comes from your tap	Comes in a disposable plastic bottle
Provided by a municipal agency	Sold by a private for-profit company
Pumped by well-paid workers	Pumped by the lowest bidder
Affordable for all	Priced to make some rich and others poor
Purified by green processes	Purified with harmful chemicals
Flushed from a low-flow tank as needed	Flushed with a full tank every time

Kosher water quenches your thirst; treif water should stoke your guilt.

According to one midrash, the universal blessing of ample water trumps even the giving of the Torah: “The flowing of rain is greater than the giving of the Torah, for the giving of the Torah is a joy for Israel, while rain is a joy for all people.” Water is a universal issue on which we can unite with all other peoples, even--as in the Middle East--with those with whom we have other conflicts. In the words of the prophet Amos: “Let justice flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”