This Shabbat, we will read Parshat Bo (the only two letter Parsha name, in both Hebrew and English by the way). There’s one aspect/commandment of the parsha that’s always struck me as odd. In Chapter 12, we learn that God commanded the Israelites in Egypt to sacrifice a lamb and to mark their doorposts with blood so that God would see which houses were the Israelites and not bring the last plague upon them, that is the killing of the first born.
And the blood shall be to you for a sign upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
What’s always seemed odd to me is that God wouldn’t already know which houses were those of the Israelites and which were the Egyptians’. Even in the unlikely event that the Jews lived in mixed neighborhoods with their Egyptian masters, surely God knew who lived in each house, just as God knew who was firstborn. So what was this sign all about?
I think there are several possible answers to this. The first is that it was an act of defiance. According to Rambam, the Egyptians were accustomed to worshipping the zodiacal sign of the lamb. That was why they forbade the slaughter of cattle and despised shepherds. God commanded us to slaughter a lamb on Pesach and sprinkle its blood in Egypt on the doors outside – to cleanse ourselves of the idolatrous ideas of Egypt, demonstrating publicly our rejection of them.
The second reason is related to this one. Since it was expressly forbidden to sacrifice a lamb, making this sacrifice and showing it off to their Egyptian neighbors would place bnei-yisrael in great danger. In a sense, this was a test: If the Israelites were willing to place their lives in danger in order to carry out the wishes of the Almighty, that would be a true token of their love of God. Their fulfillment of this commandment would therefore not only be a proof of their complete faith in God, but it would be a way to take ownership of their redemption to some degree, to step up and be counted.
The echo of this rite remains with us to today. The marking of the Israelite houses with blood on the doorposts of course evokes the mitzvah of placing mezuzot on our doorposts. So in our own way, each of us can still stand up and be counted. In these times, I think the memory of what our ancestors had to do to advance their freedom should remind us of our own responsibilities to stand up and be counted. There’s nothing free about freedom; we all have to pay for it with our own blood, sweat and tears.
Shabbat shalom,
Rav-Hazzan Scott M. Sokol, PhD
Head of School, MetroWest Jewish Day School