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The life-changing magic of washing your hands (on Passover)
(JTA) — At the height of the pandemic, I remember maddeningly washing, scrubbing and antibacterial-spritzing my hands in a bathroom along the New Jersey Turnpike. I then Olympic speed-walked to my car and rubbed my hands down again with a disinfecting wipe.
In those days of social distancing, the basic Jewish ritual of handwashing before meals — tossing water three times over each hand from a communal pitcher — felt to me like an extremely low standard of cleanliness.
You may know the ritual, even if you don’t do it regularly: It’s the second step at the Passover seder, right after the blessing of the wine and just before you dip the parsley in salt water, when guests line up at the sink or someone passes a bowl of water and a towel around the table.
The rest of the year, the Jewish hand-washing ritual is usually associated with substantial meals (at minimum, a meal that includes bread). During the height of the pandemic, I was rarely sitting down for meals — at least not breakfast or lunch — because most of my daylight hours were in Zoom-land and most of what I was consuming was microwaved leftovers. This left me feeling disconnected on multiple levels. Me and millions of other people.
I needed to find ways to reconnect. I started taking more meetings on the phone and I decided that I would try to slow down and eat lunch with a little more mindfulness — even if I was just making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that is when I reluctantly rediscovered ritual handwashing.
At first, I stood at our kitchen sink and tried to reconnect to the simplicity of the act — just slowing down and breathing as I poured water over my hands from a vessel. I knew that the ancient origins of ritual washing take us back to the practice of one kohen (priest) washing the feet and hands of another kohen before engaging in the work of the sacrifices. I started to think of this act as some form of sacred self-care where my left hand was caring for my right and vice versa. I started to make a habit of washing my hands with a vessel and I started to read more about the ritual.
One element of the washing is called “shifshuf yadayim,” which literally means “rubbing the hands,” and is initially described in the Tosefta (Yadaim 1:2), a 2nd-century CE compilation of Torah law. In an 18th-century text, Pri Megadim, there is a teaching that the rubbing is done so that the water touches every part of skin on the back and front of the hands and in the nooks between the fingers. This led me to become more mindful of the ways that rubbing brings your consciousness to the contours of your hands and to the act of caring for your hands. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) taught that when the rubbing is done with intention, it helps you to obtain a “tahara yeteira” — an extra level of purity.
I slowed down even more. I started using the minimal amount of water, turning my hand gently as I poured the water, and focusing on the sensation of the water covering the entire surface of the hands. In doing so I felt more connected to water’s miraculous power to cleanse and to refresh. And as I did this again and again, it became more than just a conscious moment of self-care and connection to water — it was as if I were awakening the deadened nerves in my hands and healing from the psychic wounds of those many months of lockdown and general fear of others. Through this gentle cleaning and attention to my hands I was experiencing a rebirth and a return — two themes that take us to the present moment.
In the Brenner home, we are frantically zipping about preparing to host the extended clan for Passover, a massive Tetris game of rearranging furniture, shlepping folding tables from the basement and cramming just enough chairs for three generations to sit together in a charming old house in New Jersey that sadly lacks “flow.”
Having guests find their way out of this maze and parade through the kitchen to wash is not feasible. Still, I want to share my newfound love for handwashing, so I will be passing out small cups with 3.2 ounces of water (the minimum amount required) so that everyone can fully engage with that often overlooked second ritual of the seder, known as urchatz. I even went so far as to work with an artist, Helene Brenenson, to design a guide to handwashing that includes a series of wellbeing-centered teachings to accompany the four essential steps of the ritual: lifting the vessel, pouring the water, rubbing the hands together and lifting the hands.
As I worked on this guide, I had a minor epiphany: Giving this water ritual, urchatz, a prominent spot at the seder was a brilliant rabbinic move. The Passover story begins with a drought (lack of water) that brought the Israelites to Egypt, ends with the miraculous crossing of a sea (walls of water), and eventually leads us to a land described in Deuteronomy as having “streams of water, of springs and underground water bursting forth from valley and mountain.” Urchatz connects us to the water imagery of the Passover seder and both physically and spiritually prepares our hands to take hold of the parsley (or other vegetable) and taste the “Spring” that symbolizes this time of rebirth.
Now I look back on those months of frantic pandemic handwashing and feel gratitude. My disconnection not only helped me seek out new ways to approach a basic pre-eating ritual, but led me to appreciate something that was always right there in the seder but I had never truly bothered to appreciate. This year the number two ritual in the seder’s order is number one in my heart.
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21 Arab, Islamic, African States and Entities Condemn Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland
The signatories’ flags enclosed in the statement in Arabic. Photo: Screenshot via i24.
i24 News – A group of 21 Arab, Islamic and African countries, organizations and entities issued on Saturday a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sovereignty.
The statement’s signatories said that they condemn and reject Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “in light of the serious repercussions to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and its serious impacts on international peace and security, which also reflects Israel’s clear and complete disregard for international law.”
It was signed by: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Maldives, Nigeria and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The joint statement voiced support “for the sovereignty of Somalia and reject any measures that would undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty over all its lands.”
The signatories also “categorically reject linking Israel’s recognition of the territory of the land of Somalia with any plans to displace the Palestinian people outside their land.”
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Nvidia, Joining Big Tech Deal Spree, to License Groq Technology, Hire Executives
A NVIDIA logo appears in this illustration taken Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire away its CEO, a veteran of Alphabet’s Google, Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The deal follows a familiar pattern in recent years where the world’s biggest technology firms pay large sums in deals with promising startups to take their technology and talent but stop short of formally acquiring the target.
Groq specializes in what is known as inference, where artificial intelligence models that have already been trained respond to requests from users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models, it faces much more competition in inference, where traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have aimed to challenge it as well as startups such as Groq and Cerebras Systems.
Nvidia has agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to Groq’s technology, Groq said. It said its founder Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, as well as Groq President Sunny Madra and other members of its engineering team, will join Nvidia.
A person close to Nvidia confirmed the licensing agreement.
Groq did not disclose financial details of the deal. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report. Groq said in its blog post that it will continue to operate as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO and that its cloud business will continue operating.
In similar recent deals, Microsoft’s top AI executive came through a $650 million deal with a startup that was billed as a licensing fee, and Meta spent $15 billion to hire Scale AI’s CEO without acquiring the entire firm. Amazon hired away founders from Adept AI, and Nvidia did a similar deal this year. The deals have faced scrutiny by regulators, though none has yet been unwound.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here, though structuring the deal as a non-exclusive license may keep the fiction of competition alive (even as Groq’s leadership and, we would presume, technical talent move over to Nvidia),” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday after Groq’s announcement. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “relationship with the Trump administration appears among the strongest of the key US tech companies.”
Groq more than doubled its valuation to $6.9 billion from $2.8 billion in August last year, following a $750 million funding round in September.
Groq is one of a number of upstarts that do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, freeing them from the memory crunch affecting the global chip industry. The approach, which uses a form of on-chip memory called SRAM, helps speed up interactions with chatbots and other AI models but also limits the size of the model that can be served.
Groq’s primary rival in the approach is Cerebras Systems, which Reuters this month reported plans to go public as soon as next year. Groq and Cerebras have signed large deals in the Middle East.
Nvidia’s Huang spent much of his biggest keynote speech of 2025 arguing that Nvidia would be able to maintain its lead as AI markets shift from training to inference.
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Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Ahead of Zelensky-Trump Meeting
Rescuers work at the site of the apartment building hit by a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 27, 2025. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Russia attacked Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, ahead of what President Volodymyr Zelensky said would be a crucial meeting with US President Donald Trump to work out a plan to end nearly four years of war.
Zelensky cast the vast overnight attack, which he said involved about 500 drones and 40 missiles and which knocked out power and heat in parts of the capital, as Russia’s response to the ongoing peace efforts brokered by Washington.
The Ukrainian leader has said Sunday’s talks in Florida would focus on security guarantees and territorial control once fighting ends in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, started by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
The attack continued throughout the morning, with a nearly 10-hour air raid alert for the capital. Authorities said two people were killed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, while at least 46 people were wounded, including two children.
“Today, Russia demonstrated how it responds to peaceful negotiations between Ukraine and the United States to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters.
In Russia, air defense forces shot down eight drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday.
THOUSANDS OF HOMES WITHOUT HEAT
Explosions echoed across Kyiv from the early hours on Saturday as Ukraine’s air defense units went into action. The air force said Russian drones were targeting the capital and regions in the northeast and south.
State grid operator Ukrenergo said energy facilities across Ukraine were struck, and emergency power cuts had been implemented across the capital.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said the attack had left more than a million households in and around Kyiv without power, 750,000 of which remained disconnected by the afternoon.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said over 40% of residential buildings in Kyiv were left without heat as temperatures hovered around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
TERRITORIAL CONTROL: A DIPLOMATIC STUMBLING BLOCK
On the way to meeting Trump in Florida, Zelensky stopped in Canada’s Halifax to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney, after which they planned to hold a call with European leaders.
In a brief statement with Zelenskiy by his side, Carney noted that peace “requires a willing Russia.”
“The barbarism that we saw overnight — the attack on Kyiv — shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine in this difficult time,” he said, announcing 2.5 billion Canadian dollars ($1.83 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.
Territory and the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remain the main diplomatic stumbling blocks, though Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv on Friday that a 20-point draft document – the cornerstone of a US push to clinch a peace deal – is 90% complete.
He said the shape of U.S. security guarantees was crucial, and these would depend on Trump, and “what he is ready to give, when he is ready to give it, and for how long.”
Zelensky told Axios earlier this week that the US had offered a 15-year deal on security guarantees, subject to renewal, but Kyiv wanted a longer agreement with legally binding provisions to guard against further Russian aggression.
Trump said the United States was the driving force behind the process.
“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump told Politico. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”
Trump said he believed Sunday’s meeting would go well. He also said he expected to speak with Putin “soon, as much as I want.”
FATE OF DONETSK IS KEY
Moscow is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from a large, densely-urbanized chunk of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian troops have failed to occupy in nearly four years of war. Kyiv wants the fighting halted at the current lines.
Russia has been grinding slowly forwards throughout 2025 at the cost of significant casualties on the drone-infested battlefield.
On Saturday, both sides issued conflicting claims about two frontline towns: Myrnohrad in the east and Huliaipole in the south. Moscow claimed to have captured both, while Kyiv said it had beaten back Russian assaults there.
Under a US compromise, a free economic zone would be set up if Ukrainian troops pull back from parts of the Donetsk region, though details have yet to be worked out.
Axios quoted Zelensky as saying that if he is not able to push the US to back Ukraine’s position on the land issue, he was willing to put the 20-point plan to a referendum – as long as Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire allowing Ukraine to prepare for and hold the vote.
On Saturday, Zelensky said it was not possible to have such a referendum while Russia was bombarding Ukrainian cities.
He also suggested that he would be ready for “dialogue” with the people of Ukraine if they disagreed with points of the plan.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Kyiv’s version of the 20-point plan differed from what Russia had been discussing with the US, according to the Interfax-Russia news agency.
But he expressed optimism that matters had reached a “turning point” in the search for a settlement.
($1 = 1.3671 Canadian dollars)