Bo: Firstborns

Every year I feel conflicted on the morning of Erev Pesach. My Abba, a firstborn, usually goes to minyan at shul to attend a siyyum to obviate the obligation to fast as part of Taanit Bechorot, the Fast of the Firstborns. The fast commemorates that while Egyptian firstborns were killed in the final plague, Israelite firstborns were saved. But as a girl, my community growing up never pushed for me to attend a siyyum; I didn’t hear conversation about if women needed to fast. 

Even now, as I don’t fast on minor fast days for health reasons, I have continued to feel guilt about never making it to a siyyum on the busy day preceding the first Seder. Even after I embraced gender-egalitarian mitzvah-observance, I have found myself unable to change this routine. This is related to a broader ambivalence I hold about Makkat Bechorot: did it include women? What are the stakes to assuming only Egyptian men versus all Egyptian firstborns were killed? Does egalitarianism necessitate assuming more death? 

Rabbi Dr. Gail Labovitz, in a thoughtful and comprehensive dvar Torah addressing just this question, asks:

do I really want to insert women victims into the suffering of Egypt, so that I can feel equal in my experience of redemption or my sense of being consecrated to God alongside my husband and other first-born men? 

In exploring this question, Labovitz quotes the Shulchan Aruch and Rema on the subject:

הבכורות מתענין בערב פסח בין בכור מאב בין בכור מאם ויש מי שאומר שאפילו נקבה בכורה מתענה: (ואין המנהג כן)

Firstborns fast on Erev Pesach, whether they are the firstborn of their mother or the firstborn of the father; and there are those who say that even a firstborn woman should fast. (Rema: And the custom is not thus.)

(OH 470:1)

As Labovitz puts it, this text “encodes the tension” between two conflicting ideas. The Mishnah Berurah here, explicating the Rema’s statement that it is not the custom for firstborn women to fast, says that “שהתורה לא נתנה קדושת בכורות לנקבה לשום דבר”  “The Torah does not give the sanctity of the firstborn to women in any respect.” Just as women are not considered firstborns for any other ritual purpose, they do not have the requirement to fast as firstborns. However, in explaining the opinion that women should fast, the Mishnah Berurah writes that “שמכת בכורות היתה גם עליהן כדאיתא במדרש” “since the Plague of the Firstborn also happened to them, as is explained in the midrash,” women should fast.

The Mishnah Berurah is referencing a rich midrashic tradition here. In many locations, the Rabbis attempt to expand the population who was struck down by the last plague: not only firstborns to both parents, but to either; the oldest person in any house that did not have a firstborn; etc. This also includes women. 

Shemot Rabbah 18 is one place where this midrash appears. 

הַנְּקֵבוֹת הַבְּכוֹרוֹת אַף הֵן מֵתוֹת, חוּץ מִבִּתְיָה בַּת פַּרְעֹה, שֶׁנִּמְצָא לָהּ פְּרַקְלִיט טוֹב, זֶה משֶׁה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שמות ב, ב): וַתֵּרֶא אֹתוֹ כִּי טוֹב הוּא.

The firstborn females also died, except for Batya the daughter of Pharaoh, who found she had a good (tov) advocate: this is Moshe, as it is said, “and she saw that he was good (tov).”

While according to this narrative, the scope of death is dramatically widened, there is a person who is saved from it: Batya, who rescued Moshe from the Nile and raised him. Because of this relationship, this midrash teaches, she was saved. 

The Bach (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis), a commentator on the Tur, cites the Agudah, saying that

אף נקבה בכורה תתענה, וראיה מבתיה בת פרעה דאהני לה זכות משה

Even female firstborns should fast, and there is a proof from Batya the daughter of Pharaoh, who had for herself the merit of Moshe.

Here, the midrashic addition of Batya’s rescue becomes the center of the proof suggesting that women should fast. It is the salvation of one particular woman that suggests that all others died; and then, in reverse, that all Jewish women were saved. 

In a stunning Senior Sermon, my friend Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen draws our attention to a woman who in many ways is the opposite of Batya, the Egyptian princess. She points out that in the verses about the Plague of the Firstborn, the Torah makes visible a figure we would otherwise not have noticed.

וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה כֹּה אָמַר ה כַּחֲצֹת הַלַּיְלָה אֲנִי יוֹצֵא בְּתוֹךְ מִצְרָיִם׃ וּמֵת כׇּל־בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבְּכוֹר פַּרְעֹה הַיֹּשֵׁב עַל־כִּסְאוֹ עַד בְּכוֹר הַשִּׁפְחָה אֲשֶׁר אַחַר הָרֵחָיִם וְכֹל בְּכוֹר בְּהֵמָה׃

Moses said, “Thus says the LORD: Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle.”

Koplen moves our focus to the enslaved Egyptian woman “who is behind the millstones.” She points out that this woman, like the Israelites, was marginalized and enslaved in Egypt.

If we ever thought we were the only slaves in Egypt, if we ever thought we were the only people who have ever suffered unjustly, Exodus 11:5 comes to teach us gently, we were wrong. This Egyptian mother who wakes to find her firstborn dead is perhaps the person in Egypt that the Children of Israel would have related to most closely. She is our co-slave. Set to the same menial tasks one workstation away, we would have talked with her – told stories of our growing children, walked the same direction home at the end of the day. Even though we relate to her, our empathy does not protect her. In this moment, God is saving us. God is not saving her.

Even as we ourselves were redeemed, this woman and her pain went unaddressed, unanswered. 

When I think about the kind of egalitarianism I want, I don’t want an egalitarianism that places me only alongside men and the most powerful and exceptional of women. I don’t want to share only in the experiences of those who knew with certainty they would be saved by God. I don’t want my liberation to necessitate imagining more death into the story of the Exodus than is already there. 

I want a feminist egalitarianism where I can be with women who cry out in pain, where there are no steps those who are vulnerable must take to earn their fullest lives. I want an egalitarianism that pushes me toward solidarity with the woman behind the millstone. I want an egalitarianism that craves less pain rather than more.