#toiveling

Today I had the opportunity to toivel dishes for the first time. To toivel is to immerse each new utensil/plate/kitchen item in a natural, flowing body of water before using it for the first time. This ritual began my kosher kitchen journey, and I can't imagine a more meaningful way to have started it. It was a lovely afternoon of Judaism and nature. Before I found this nice rocky spot, I ran knee deep into water and mud. It was so much fun and this is an afternoon I'll never forget. Next is to kasher the sink, oven etc and start hechsher hunting!!

Sometimes you have a small specialized mikvah intended specifically for utensils, but I was using a regular-size women’s mikvah. When toiveling you must let go of the utensil entirely for a moment so that every part of the utensil’s surface is touched by the water. I didn’t manage to catch one of the utensils after I did that, so it sunk to the bottom of a few feet of water, and thus was unreachable without either a specialized tool of some kind or actually entering the mikvah (and has apparently now entirely disappeared).

Toiveling my kumkum didn’t break it! :)