Offbeat Israel: Kitchen Appliances Visit the Mikveh
By Nathan Jeffay
Of all the characteristics Israelis have been blessed with, electrical safety is not one of them. Bare wires are a common sight. Earthing appliances is seen as a quaint indulgence a bit like wearing ties — popular abroad but not part of the culture here. And oy, the love affair with splitter sockets.
One doubts there’s any country in the world with as high a number of many five-way electrical splitter sockets as Israel. Everywhere you go, home, office or restaurant, the current runs around the place via splitter socket upon splitter socket. It’s easy to wonder whether the whole country is plugged in to a single socket in Jerusalem through an elaborate arrangement of splitters and extensions chords.
In the last few years, a couple of factors have come together to make things even more dicey — a trend for kitchen gadgetry and increasingly strict religious standards in the Orthodox world.
According to Jewish law, some kitchenware, crockery and silverware items need to be toiveled on acquisition. This means that they need immersing in a mikveh, a ritual bath. Different rabbis take different views on what items need toiveling, with some saying pretty much everything and others taking a minimalistic approach.
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