בֹּ֖א

“Come”

***

It is hard times for the firstborns.

At the opening of parashat Bo, nine plagues have failed to free the Israelites, and Hashem is prepping for The Big One. Blood, hail, frogs, lice, boils, and the rest are minor inconveniences compared to what’s to come: the death of Egypt’s firstborn sons. The Israelites mark their doorposts and are spared.

Soon after, God instructs Moses to “consecrate to Me every male firstborn; human and animal, the first [male] issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.” In a balancing of the cosmic scales, Israel’s firstborn are set apart, offered up to a higher service.

On its face, this might seem like a strange exchange – how can death be equal to service? But there is a logic here. To set someone aside is to sever them from community, a death of identity.

In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, painter Wassily Kandinsky imagines cultural progress as led by a “vanguard” of lonely visionaries, slowly pulling society forward.  In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, novelist Ursula K. LeGuin pushes this logic to an extreme, imagining a utopian city which depends on the continued suffering of a single, lonely child.

In between Kandinsky and LeGuin lies an important truth: society depends on those whom it cannot fully include. Distance is essential: the mystic lives on the mountain, not in the village.

In my own family, I am the eldest child, and the only boy. Growing up, I felt this separation. I was loved, but alien. Physically close, but always apart – as though separated by a pane of glass. Distance creates perspective.

To be clear, it is not literally about firstborns. Bereishit beats us over the head with examples – Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Manasseh and Ephraim – of birth order coming second to personal qualities. In Bamidbar, God transfers temple responsibilities to the Levites, following the sin of the golden calf.

Anybody can be set aside for service.

Imagine the parent, working long hours so their children can have better futures. Or an activist, taking unpopular positions years before they come into vogue.

It is their very set-apartedness that enables their service. In the parasha, God says:

לִ֖י הֽוּא

“Lee hu” – they are mine.

They are no longer available to the community, but set aside for different work. Not better work. Essential work. Lonely work.

The question is not whether some will be set aside, but how that sacrifice is understood by those around them. The tragedy is not separation, but denial that separation has even occurred.

I invite us to consider – who do we depend on, but cannot include? Is it those who clean our homes, or deliver our food, whose labor has been made invisible by distance? Is it those who enforce rules we all rely on, but refuse to enact ourselves?

Do we acknowledge those whom we need, but cannot include – or do we let their sacrifice fade away? Or, perhaps more radically – can we imagine how this burden might be more evenly shared?

Parashat Bo reminds us that for society to function, some must be set apart. How we honor that sacrifice is up to us.

***

This d’var was given in-person at the Korban Shabbat gathering in Bushwick, NYC on 6 Shevat 5786