01-01-2010, 02:26 PM
Deuteronomy 23:14-15 states about a Jewish army camp:
"And you shall keep a stake in addition to your weapons; and it shall be, when you sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall dig with it, and you shall return and cover your excrement. For the L-rd, your G-d, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore,] your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see any nakedness among you and would turn away from you."
This implies that nakedness of the private parts, and also a *place* where people expose their private parts (even if no one there is exposed at the time), is not appropriate to be a place for G-d to "turn" to a person - meaning G-d's focusing on the person's prayers. Therefore, prayers should not be recited in a bathroom. The Talmud says clearly that a latrine is not a fit place for prayer, even if there is no excrement present at the time. Although a modern bathroom does not have the full strictness of the type of latrine that was used in earlier generations before modern plumbing and running water, it is equivalent in regard to refraining from prayer. Of course, in dire emergency (e.g. if one's life was in danger, G-d forbid) one could prayer there, but not with one of G-d's holy Names, and not with verses from the Hebrew Bible.
"And you shall keep a stake in addition to your weapons; and it shall be, when you sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall dig with it, and you shall return and cover your excrement. For the L-rd, your G-d, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore,] your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see any nakedness among you and would turn away from you."
This implies that nakedness of the private parts, and also a *place* where people expose their private parts (even if no one there is exposed at the time), is not appropriate to be a place for G-d to "turn" to a person - meaning G-d's focusing on the person's prayers. Therefore, prayers should not be recited in a bathroom. The Talmud says clearly that a latrine is not a fit place for prayer, even if there is no excrement present at the time. Although a modern bathroom does not have the full strictness of the type of latrine that was used in earlier generations before modern plumbing and running water, it is equivalent in regard to refraining from prayer. Of course, in dire emergency (e.g. if one's life was in danger, G-d forbid) one could prayer there, but not with one of G-d's holy Names, and not with verses from the Hebrew Bible.