parshat bo Archives - Rachael's Centre

Parshat Bo: Thanks But I’d Rather Be Second

Over the years, I have explained to parents and grandparents what happens when the first baby a woman has is a boy. Everyone is familiar with the ‘bris’, the celebration Jewish people do that surrounds circumcising the baby boy. It’s usually done early in the morning. We can thank Abraham, the Patriarch, for that timing because he was the first Jew to be circumcised, and he always preferred doing God’s bidding early in the morning —that’s why the Sages told us that the Shacharit service (morning prayer service) is to symbolize Abraham. So, like Abraham, we get up at the crack of dawn and rush to the ‘bris’. The ceremony itself is not very long (thank goodness because everyone there is uncomfortable thinking about it). After the ‘bris’ there is a breakfast served. That’s because we are commanded to surround rituals with a meal, to emphasize that while we are engaged in spiritual expressions with God, we must never forget to ensure everyone has the basics of food – some form of bagels…and lox, of course.. Jewish spirituality must balance with the realities of this world.

Ceremonies for naming baby girls are still open for development. We have some very beautiful traditions in both the Sephardic and Ashkenazi world that can help parents create meaningful ritual for their daughters. Whatever the ceremony looks like, it will be followed by a meal, and no surprise, probably bagels and lox at that one too. I’ve often heard the baby girl’s naming ceremony referred to as the ‘bris-ket’).

When my husband was planning the ‘bris’ for one of our sons, it happened that the only mohel in town was sick. He told us to call 1-800-BABY-BOY, which we did, and a mohel flew in from New York and performed the bris. Globally, Jews take that eighth day bris commandment very seriously.

But, if the baby boy is the mother’s first born, the thirty day birthday will trigger another Jewish commanded event: ‘Pidyon haBen’ —‘Redemption of the Child’. It is a lesser known ritual, but it is equally commanded in the Torah. We buy our child out of a lifetime of service to God.

‘Pidyon haBen’ is the result of the final plague in Egypt —death of the first born. In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Bo, we finish reading about the plagues, God’s explanation of that final plague, and its ramifications moving forward. We usually understand that last plague as God passing through Egypt and taking the lives of all the Egyptian first born. Except, the Torah didn’t exactly say that. The Torah states that God will pass through Egypt and take the lives of every eldest child born in Egypt. Worded that way, it now includes all the Jewish first born as well. The fact that the Israelite first born shelter in homes that have blood painted on the doorposts means they are protected, it does not mean they are exempted.

Even these days, the ‘Fast of the First Born’ that occurs right before Passover commemorates the unique positioning of these people within the Passover experience.

Because Jewish eldest children were not exempted, they now owe every breath they take to God. They are to live out their lives in the service of God, who owns their futures. The Torah says we can redeem them out of this predicament. The ceremony is called ‘Pidyon haBen’, the ‘Redemption of the Child’.

But, wouldn’t we want our child to live in the service of God? Isn’t that an entrance to holiness? Shouldn’t we be honoured?

We’re honoured with the concept but we’d rather our children choose their own destinies. Starting in the ancient world, the Sages look for ways to minimize who would be obligated for a ‘Pidyon’. It must be the child that is the mother’s ‘first opening of her womb’, so a previous miscarriage or abortion would now nullify the obligation of any subsequent birth. The Sages rule that it must be the womb opening on its own, therefore any C-section delivery would nullify the need for a Pidyon. If either parent is the child of a Cohen or a Levi, they don’t have a Pidyon. That’s because Cohens and Levites were the ones serving God (when we had a Temple), —they’re the ones we redeem our children from. But the Sages are making these laws when there is no Temple. They are clearly trying to minimize the scope of the law when it involves limiting our childrens’ life choices.

Judaism always teaches us to temper our spiritual expressions with an understanding of the real world. Life is always a challenge, how much more so if one is forced into a life of spiritual service when they do not prefer it. Holiness is to be sought and found each in our own way, but we do not seek a life of only holiness or a life that sits exclusively in this world, we are commanded to seek them both.

It seems like finding our balance between our spiritual and material worlds shouldn’t be too difficult. We generally shape our lives to be productive for our work week, spiritual retreat for Shabbat and run all our errands on Sundays. With particular adjustments, each of us could generally find some form of balance that would work for us, and we would revisit it as needed for minor tweaks. But these days are not our norm as we encounter the global pandemic that still challenges lives and livelihoods. Many of us find ourselves becoming stagnant in our current reality. It is easy to neglect our spiritual expressions as we notice every day resembles every other day. Someone mentioned to me that every day has now become ‘Blursday’. But the opposite reality is equally true. We can easily sit quietly with our thoughts and our spiritual moments while we wait for the world outside our doors to change. We can retreat from our physical involvement in the world and plan our re-entry when the vaccine is complete and the world goes back to what it was. We forget that time and experience can only move us forward –we forget that the real world will never go backward to what was, so we favour our spiritual reclusivity.

The Torah reminds us that even when God tells us to devote someone’s entire life to spirituality, we argue for a balance in our lives —how much more is that balance crucial for our present moment.

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I was helping someone move into their new home this week. They pre-warned me that I would be walking into a mess. Lots of boxes, lots of chaos, piles of things waiting to be organized. I thought of my life and whether or not being in the midst of a mess bothers me. I decided…it depends.

I always have a mess in my car. I consider my car a big purse on wheels. If I were stranded somewhere for a while, I could exist on what is in my car – pillow, blanket, dental floss, lots of books and…yes…emergency popcorn. It is a purposeful mess, in that I know where everything is and why it’s there. To others, it’s messy, to me it’s organized chaos. If you move anything around in my car, I won’t understand where and why you put ‘that thing’ where you did, so I will now be confused. Once, years ago, I got into my car one morning only to find it had been broken into. Nothing was taken (I never leave valuables in my mess). How did I know it was broken into? The thieves left piles of things they had gone through searching for anything worthwhile. My stuff is never in piles – that’s how I knew. For neighbourhood statistics, I reported it to the police who kept asking if there was any damage to anything. I finally had to admit that the thieves left it neater than they found it. Not my best moment.

When we encounter a mess, it is our inclination to tidy it or find ‘method to the madness’. We don’t ever intend to create chaos. It’s actually really difficult to do.

Have you ever intentionally tried to make a mess? I don’t mean have you ever ended up with a mess, but have you ever tried to make a mess? Most often, a mess is the result of trying to do something else. It’s easy to make a mess when you try to cook something, or when you’re trying to fix something. I can’t actually think of a situation when the goal is to make a mess and nothing else. In fact, we usually ask people not to leave a mess behind them – our goal is anti-mess.

We come by this honestly, so much in Judaism is about ordering chaos. Whether it’s the beginning of Genesis, where God is ordering chaos, our prayer book, a Siddur (which translates as ‘Order’), or the Seder (‘the Order’) at Pesach, our model is to organize everything around us. Even our texts are formatted on each page so there is order to the commentaries. We are never presented with disarray.

So, if everything is about ordering chaos, we come to this week’s Torah reading, parshat Bo, we read about the plagues God brings to Egypt, and we have to ask…what’s going on? If the goal is to get us out of Egypt, surely God can do that in an instant without bothering anyone. Sitting on the wings of eagles comes to mind. In other words, why have plagues?

Maybe Egypt needs to be punished for what it did. Except, God never mentions punishing Egypt as a goal when he enlists Moses to lead. In fact, we are so bothered by the plagues that during the Seder we take wine out of our cups when we recite them because we are reducing our joy. We are troubled by those plagues enough that we have to ask: why have them?

If we go back to the job God describes to Moses, we notice that there are two parts to it. The first is the one we all know: get Israel out of Egypt. The second goal is the lesser known one: all of Egypt must know that God is God. Basically, change Egypt’s world view. Get Pharaoh to acknowledge that he, in fact, is not a deity and they’ve had it wrong all along. When Moses insists to God that he doesn’t want the job, I believe he’s rejecting the second goal. When you’re dealing with a powerful God, the first part of the task is easy. It’s when you’re dealing with people’s attitudes that the task becomes unimaginable. How can Moses possibly change Pharaoh’s mind?

And so God proceeds to undo creation in Egypt. Each plague will remove another element of the creation of the world, and Egypt will be plunged back into primordial chaos. For example, the first thing created in Genesis is light. It lasts for three days as a unique light of creation that the Sages describe as light that can be felt. Undoing this light results in the plague of darkness in Egypt. The darkness lasts for three days and is described as a darkness that is heavy upon the person. It can be felt.

But the most obvious example of God’s message is the last plague: the death of the first born. The opposite of God creating the first person. The undoing of life. God breathed life into Adam and God will pass through Egypt taking the breath out of every first born.

The message now becomes: only the God who created the universe would know how to undo it. God is deliberately putting chaos back into Egypt with the goal of having them realize God is the One who created it all. The plagues trouble us because they weren’t meant to speak to us and, in the end, they don’t.

Judaism is a model of order from chaos and organization from disarray, but not all of God’s messages are meant for us. The Torah always lets us know that God has relationships with all people and all beings. How humbling to realize that the redemption from Egypt, the pivotal moment in creating the Jewish people, is framed with unique and monumental events that were never meant to speak to us.