D'var Torah on Parashat Bo:
Re-examining Pidyon HaBen

By Gretchen Lieberman
February 3, 2006

This parsha opens in the middle of the battle of wills between Pharaoh, Moses, and G-d. In the preceding chapters, G-d has already smote the Egyptians with hail, insects, frogs, and more. Now come the locusts.

Pharaoh's men plead with him to listen to reason and submit to Moses' requests so that they don’t have to put up with him any longer. Pharaoh relents and says Moses and his men can go and worship. Of course, that is insufficient and the Almighty One helps Moses bring on the locusts until the point at which Pharaoh once again temporarily relents and the locusts disappear. Nevertheless, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened once more.

This cycle continues with the thick darkness that descends over all of Egypt but spares the Israelites. We then reach the climax scene where the Israelites are instructed to sacrifice lambs and mark their houses so that G-d will 'pass over' them when He strikes down all the first-born of Egypt in his massive grand finale smiting campaign.

The desired effect is achieved: Pharaoh and the Egyptians urge the Israelites to leave, giving them their gold and silver as they send them away.

The parsha ends with G-d’s instruction to Moses, telling him that future generations should remember this event in the following ways:

1. through the festival of unleavened bread which we know as Pesach
2. through a sign on our hand and a reminder on our forehead
3. and, through consecration to G-d of every first-born; man and beast: “the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.”

There are so many bits and pieces to wrestle with in this parsha (though I’m sure that’s the case with all of them). As I read and reread, I couldn’t help but wonder about several things, including:

• What IS today's equivalent of divine smite? (This has even been in the news a bit lately.)
• Why does G-d harden Pharaoh’s heart? It's a central feature of the story and there are so many possible interpretations, so I wonder about that.
• Why the repetitious nature of the story, all those plagues with increasing seriousness? Is that a literary tool or is there a psychoanalytical reason for Pharaoh and Moses to go round and round again?
• One intriguing line is where G-d tells Moses that in addition to striking down the first born of human and non-human Egyptians, (male presumably), G-d also plans "to mete out punishments to all the G-ds of Egypt." I love the way that line threatens us with disequilibrium regarding our conception of monotheism.
• Moses' description of what will happen during this last punishment makes me particularly curious. Moses says, "For when the Lord goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and the Lord will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home."
• I'm also curious about why Moses' explanation makes it sound like two forces are involved, G-d and the Destroyer. What does that mean?
• And another thing: I couldn't help but wonder why our all knowing, all powerful G-d, the same G-d who can harden hearts, turn rivers to blood, and bring hail and locusts, needs the Israelites to identify their houses for him. Wouldn't G-d know their houses? Again, is this a literary tool, or is it more about a need for self-identification/affirmation? I’m thinking it has something to do with the latter. But I’ll have to explore that another time.

So, as you can see, I was tempted to explore any one of these thoughts at length, and I might have settled on one of them for tonight's topic if I hadn’t had a sidetracked moment while I was studying this and decided to look up my son Noah's Hebrew birth date. Many of you know Noah. He just celebrated his second birthday a week ago today. I looked up his birthday on a Hebrew calendar and found that the 27th landed on the 4th of Sh'vat two years ago, and furthermore this is the parsha associated with his birthday. What a serendipitous event that Rabbi Maurice, certainly without thinking about Noah’s birthday, would have asked me months ago to put this parsha of all parshas on my calendar.

Noah is my first son, my first child, and in this parsha The Eternal One says to Moses:

"consecrate to Me every first-born; man and beast, the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine."

This called out to me, given the connection between Noah, my first-born, and this parsha, so I sought out more information about the ritual of Pidyon Ha Ben, the Redeeming of the First-Born.

Verses 3:14 and 15 explain the reason for this. They read:

And when, in time to come, your son asks you, saying, 'What does this mean?' You shall say to him, 'It was with a mighty hand that the Eternal One brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to go, the Almighty slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, the first-born of both man and beast. Therefore I sacrifice to G-d every first male issue of the womb, but redeem every first-born among my sons.'

In a traditional Pidyon Ha Ben ceremony, a child's father is presented with a choice to give up the baby to a life service to G-d, or redeem him by giving five silver coins to the Cohain.

Many, if not most, liberal Jews have abandoned this practice for a number of reasons. With its reference to temple service and levites and kohanim it seems disconnected to the reality of our lives today. Furthermore, the idea that the first-born is more important or that it only refers to males, doesn’t sit well with our contemporary understandings of equality.

Reconstructionism and the Jewish Renewal movement are attempting to make Pidyon Ha Ben and other antiquated ceremonies meaningful to us again by examining the heart of these rituals and reworking the practices to honor tradition without losing sight of what we've learned along the journey.

There are some wonderful modern variations of the Pidyon Ha Ben ceremony, including Pidyon Ha Bat (redemption of the first-born daughter), Kiddush petter rechem (sanctification of one who opens the womb), and Seder kedushat cha-yei hamishpachah (ceremony of consecration to family life).

In a way, these new variations on the Pidyon ceremony are a 180 degree twist on the original. Where the ancient form of the ritual focuses on redeeming the child from a life of service, these new forms actually sanctify or dedicate the child for a life of service. The old ceremony revolves around the idea that we should give to G-d the first and the best of all that comes into our life. The new ceremony is shaped around another key concept, that of Tikkun Olam, and that we all need to take part in the creating the world we want to live in, not just temple priests as the case may be.

There's even justification for this "everybody is involved" perspective just a few chapters earlier in Exodus. G-d tells Moses to say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord: Israel is my first-born son. I have said to you, "Let my son go, that he may worship Me." ' G-d is equating the entire Jewish people with G-d's first-born. It's worthy of note that the interpretation of first-born when it comes to the Pidyon Ha Ben ceremony, is that halachically, it has to be the mother's first child, regardless of whether or not it is the father’s, which makes G-d's statement all the more interesting, in thinking of all of Israel as G-d’s first-born, with regards to a image of G-d and gender issues. And indeed, the journey across the Red Sea can be seen as the birth of the Jewish people. It makes sense to think of this commandment as talking about both the literal first-born children of each individual families, as well as the Jewish people as a whole.

Recreating these ceremonies help speak to our contemporary reality. The lives of modern liberal Jews are certainly different from those of Jews who lived a hundred years or so ago, and drastically different from the days before the destruction of the temple. The biggest difference to me is that it requires more of a conscious effort to live a Jewish life today. We don’t live in isolated communities, immersed in a Jewish-only culture. The style of liberal Judaism doesn’t much use the kind of social pressure that works to keep us observant. While a community like ours here at TBI offers endless opportunities for Jewish engagement, we, with our busy secular careers and activities still have embrace it, we have to choose to actively seek out and create that Jewish experience in our daily lives.

So in the past, when we assume living a Jewish life was somewhat of a given for a Jew, we can understand the sentiment of redeeming the first-born from temple service. In our world today we need to be more active participants.

As we all know, there is a great amount of Jewish ritual surrounding life-cycle events, birth, b'nei mitzvah, marriage, etc. These rituals are all opportunities for a renewal of commitment and a taking on of new Jewish responsibilities. I wish that Cary and I had had a Pidyon ceremony for Noah, because his birth has certainly brought new responsibilities as Cary and I have learned intimately in the past two years, responsibilities unique to being parents for the first time.

In addition to all the mundane responsibilities, like making sure that Noah gets the right food, learns to sleep, is kept healthy, and all the other universal parenting concerns, we are faced for the first time with figuring out how to raise him Jewishly. Thankfully, there are great books on the subject, other Jewish friends, and this wonderful community that we’re a part of to help with the task. But what we've found is that in our modern busy assimilated life, it falls down to us to do this.

Cary and I used to come almost every single week to Erev Shabbat service. We depended on the community to nurture our Jewish souls, particularly given that Cary had very little Jewish-spiritual experience in his childhood to draw from, and I had none. As it became more and more difficult to bring growing, squirming, squawking Noah to Friday night services, we had to teach ourselves how to do some of these things on our own, to create our own traditions. I think we're on the right path and learning more all the time.

I don't know which came first. I don't know whether Noah was just destined to be inherently crazy about all things Jewish or whether it’s been something we’ve been instilling in him. Rabbi Yitz's voice on CD was just about the first sound he heard in the world, but either way, Noah is crazy about Shabbat. When we ask him on Friday mornings, "Do you know what tonight is?" He answers, "Shabbat!" He asks for it throughout the week. (We often wish it were already Shabbat, too.)

While we haven't yet figured out how to incorporate a big special home-cooked meal on Fridays, we are lighting candles, making blessings over challah and grape juice in Kiddush cups as well as sippy cups. Noah covers his eyes when he sees the candles, and is well on his way to singing along to our nightly hamotzi. He is eager to sing songs from the siddur we have at home, and will sometimes sit for long periods of time, flipping the pages of it and singing by himself. We welcome in the angels and Shabbat and it's absolutely adorable to hear him say, "Come in angels" during Shalom Alechem and "come in Shabbat" during Leha Dodi.

I've started saying the Shema with Noah right before I leave his room at bedtime. He may not be able to tell me with words, but I know that this has helped him go to sleep. We have so much yet to learn, but every piece that we add helps create our Jewish family and makes it more instinctual to add more rituals.

Noah, as our first child, has given us the opportunity to learn how to be Jewish in new ways. In the text of Pidyon Ceremony in the Reconstructionist Rabbi's Manual it says,

"As new parents, we are like children. Just as this child, new to the world, must rely on us for sustenance and guidance, so we, having no experience of parenthood, must depend on G-d, as reflected in the patient support of this community; for wisdom and compassion are needed to raise our child in holiness…. Our ancestors sought to redeem their children from priestly service. In our time there can be no exemption from responsibility to participate in the global Temple. May this child, first in the home, become a leader in Godliness."

And I might adapt slightly to say, "may this child, first in the home, lead us into Godliness."