Water is such a magnificent item. People always look at me strange when I ask for water at a Shobbos table. I usually lift my glass, swirl it around, and declare, “Water, God’s beverage of choice. You just can’t do better.”

This past Shobbos, at a Shobbos kallah table devoid of males, I felt comfortable declaiming on the wonder that is water.

Water, first of all, is liquid at the temperatures we most need it. This is not the case of most things in the world.

Liquidity is a beautiful property, I think. It occurs when molecules are attracted enough to each other that they stick together, but not enough that they can’t move past each other or around each other. If the molecules didn’t have just the right amount of cohesion to each other, we wouldn’t be able to pour it, collect it, spray it, or do the many other magnificent things we can do with water. Life would not be viable if water wasn’t, for the most part, liquid.

Water does have other marvelous properties. Unlike almost any other fluid, it is less dense in its solid form than its liquid. Meaning, its ice floats. Just think what would happen if ice sank as it formed. Life in oceans and ponds and rivers would never survive winter. We would have no fish, no ice skating, no icebergs in our punch bowls. It would be more difficult to cool our drinks, because the coldness generated by the ice would just sit in the bottom of the glass and never circulate on convection current to the top unless we stirred it.

Water has a very high specific heat. That means it takes a large application of heat to raise its temperature, and also takes longer to lose heat once it’s acquired it. If water didn’t have that property, temperate regions would vary between being burning hot and frigidly cold throughout the year.

Furthermore, water contains only two elements: hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is the most necessary element for survival. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is really just a proton and a neutron. Both form a pretty important part of the aerobic respiration that powers us as human beings. Our cells actually perform atomic fission and fusion, breaking up glucose and releasing protons alone, which are later caught up and combined with negatively charged oxygen atoms to form… yup, water.

Most of our blood plasma is water. Water is thick enough to carry things around our body, but thin enough not to clog up our capillaries. It monitors our body temperature. It washes out our kidneys. It cools us when we’re hot. It forms most of our cells, our skin, our body…

Water is beautiful. It is probably one of the most photographed occurrences in nature. Oceans, rivers, lakes, streams, waterfalls, raindrops, droplets hitting a water surface… we’re just crazy over water. And for good reason. It is clear enough to show us what lies beneath, but adds a pure, shiny gleam to it. It can be dark, opaque, and mysterious, it can be white and frothy, it can be a clean blue reflection of sky, or a spinning silver vortex. It’s optical properties are worthy of a discussion of their own; perhaps after I take physics.

Why would anyone dilute their water with hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, and other impurities? Water is an incredible creation, designed in the greatest laboratory specifically for the consumption of human beings. Enjoy it – l’chaim!