Given the volume of sacrifices offered in the ancient Temple and the intrinsically messy work of animal sacrifice, it’s no wonder the rabbis are concerned with ensuring the priests stay both physically and ritually clean. In recent days, we’ve encountered an extended debate about how to handle blood that spatters on the high priest’s robe. This leads to some very specific laundering instructions. Because the blood itself is sacred, it must be laundered on Temple grounds. But how?
Today, everyone seems to have a home remedy for getting nasty stains out of clothes, but the traditional components of ancient detergent come into conflict with other limitations:
But doesn’t (laundering) require seven (abrasive) substances? As Rav Nahman says that Rabba bar Avuh says: Blood of a sin offering and shades of (leprous) marks on garments require the seven (abrasive) substances. And it is taught: But urine is not brought into the Temple.
Mishnah Niddah 9:6 lists seven components that were used to clean a garment, including the morning saliva of someone who hadn’t eaten all night (“tasteless saliva”), liquid from split beans and potash. One of these components is urine, which is a problem because urine is not permitted in the Temple. So if you can’t bring urine into the Temple, how is it possible to wash the garment?
Interestingly, Maimonides resolves this by saying you should just leave the urine out. But the rabbis of the Talmud test out a couple of different possibilities:
And if you would say that (the urine) is absorbed together with the seven substances, and one applies all of them at once, but didn’t we learn: If one applied them not according to their order, or if one applied all seven simultaneously, he has done nothing.
The Gemara notes that we might have thought that urine mixed with other substances ceases to be urine, but then it reminds us that the process laid out in Niddah is a painstaking one: Each ingredient has to be applied in a particular order. As a result, mixing the urine with the other substances would invalidate the entire process.
If mixing all the ingredients together isn’t an option, what if you just took one of the other ingredients — liquid from split beans, say — and mixed urine with just that?
And if you would say that (the urine) is absorbed together with only one of the substances, but didn’t we learn: One must rub three times with each and every one.
Again, we have a process problem: Each component is meant to be rubbed independently against the garment, so mixing them won’t work. As a result, the urine is still urine and can’t come into the Temple.
Rather, that (urine) is absorbed in tasteless saliva; as Reish Lakish says: Tasteless saliva must accompany each and every one.
While we can’t mix urine with most of the ingredients, mixing urine and tasteless saliva, Reish Lakish tells us, is acceptable, as tasteless saliva goes with each of the ingredients.
I’m doubtful that any of us would use this recipe in our own washing machines, as the smell alone would be a significant deterrent. But if our goal is to figure out how to launder the high priest’s robe, we have our answer.
Read all of Zevachim 95 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 18, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
