What is it?

Why do you need a washing cup?

If you need a utensil, why do you need a special one?

Why does it need to handles?

What to do when you don't have a washing cup and need to wash your hands?

Thank you in advance for any information on this topic.

There may be problems with using a disposable cup for netilas yadayim.
There may be problems with a cup that doesn't hold enough water to cover the entire hand at once.
There may be problems with touching the cup with wet hands. If the cup has two handles, then it's less likely that you'll touch a spot that's already wet and make your hands tomei again.
A washing cup needs a smooth edge with no spout.

If you have a cup that doesn't present these problems (and possibly others), you don't need a special washing cup.

why?



Wouldn't you be touching a handle with your wet hand regardless?



what are these problems, where do they come from?


why do you need a cup at all?

what do you do if there is no cup? (e.g. at work).

Kitzur Shulchan aruch, Chapter 40. (Yay, kitzur! A sefer I actually know!)

http://www.geocities.com/yona_n.geo/kizzur/kizzur40prn.html

In a place where I have no cup, I use a water bottle. And I don't necessarily pour the water over my hands like they taught us in preschool - twice on each hands. Just pour the water over my hands and make a bracha.

A bigger problem than finding a vessel is finding a sink. So often sinks are in bathrooms and no matter how hard I try, I cannot get my rabbi to say that it's okay to wash one's hands in the bathroom. So I've washed in water fountains and garbage cans (I always feel bad doing that and hope it dries before someone has to take out the trash).

Wash over the grass.


Doesn't the water have the cover your entire hand at once?

isn't there something about turning the faucet on and off each time you wash?



never heard of it, guess i'm still stuck in the preschool stage

Grass is not always convenient. Neither is concrete or dirt.



Doesn't everyone pour water over their right hand twice, then over the left hand twice (when washing for bread)? I thought it was a universal custom.

No. We do 1-2 1-2 1-2 o in the morning for negel vasser, and 1-2-3 1-2-3 when washing for bread.

i think many do it this way (or is it most? lubavitch is different, as Jeanette said, don't know about other chassidim - eye, RH, see, here i included lubavitchers among chassidim, aren't you glad? ), but you wrote that you don't do it last they taught you in preschool

Okay, I've heard of that. It's a variation on the 1-2 on the right hand, 1-2 on the left hand. I suppose I was subconsciously grouping that together with the way I do it - they both wash the right hand multiple times, then the left hand multiple times. Which - I think - is what everyone does. Yes? No?


I mean that when I'm pouring with a water bottle, I don't necessarily do it the way they taught in preschool. Any other time I do.

You haven't addressed my question. How does washing with a water bottle fit in with kitzur SA 40:4?

http://www.hashkafah.com/Washing-Cup-Hamotzi-t29524.html

That's what I do. (Although I sometimes get distracted and do the opposite one instead.)



Hubby does it that way. I think he'd like me to just do twice on each hand but I just can't seem to.

and that's what i was commenting on - i never heard of people doing it differently, even with a water bottle. why can't you pour the regular way with a water bottle?

You can do that during the week, but not on Shabbos or Yom Tov.