Exodus Bloody Doors

Parashat Bo Exodus 10:1-13:16

Chapter 12 of Exodus delivers a well-timed break in the narrative of the Passover story. After nine plagues against Egypt, the Torah pauses to share some laws about how to observe the impending festival of liberation.

The centerpiece of the Biblical ritual is the pesach-offering, the sacrificing of a lamb on the eve of the Exodus. For the Israelite slaves who were about to be freed, the sacrifice comes with an unusual feature—and a premonition of what is about to happen:

They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they are to eat it…

The blood on the houses where you are staying shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over [pasachti] you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:7, 13; JPS translation).

When Moses delivers God’s instructions to the people, he conveys this unique instruction—with some added details:

Moses then summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, pick out lambs for your families, and slaughter the passover [pesach] offering.

For when YHVH goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and YHVH will pass over [pasach] the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home (Exodus 12:21-23).

This is a well-known part of the story, not only because the scene is so striking, but also because it has been codified in the Passover Haggadah. The Haggadah (quoting the Mishnah, Pesachim 10:5) asks, “The Pesach sacrifice that our ancestors would eat at the time when the Temple was standing: What was it for?” The Haggadah’s answer is: at the time of the 10th plague, God spared the Israelite households while striking down the first born of the Egyptians.

As familiar as this story is, it raised many questions for our Rabbis and commentators. I can’t tackle all these questions here. As is often the case with familiar stories, curiosities can hide in plain sight.

For instance: an early Midrashic text, the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, asks us how, precisely, the Israelites were supposed to fulfill this command. Did the blood go on the outside or the inside of their homes?

They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they are to eat it (12:7).

“The two doorposts and the lintel.” This means on the inside. (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Pischa 12:7)

Every door has two sides to it: an inside and an outside. Our gut instinct—shaped by annual retellings, plus illustrations in Haggadot and movie versions of the Torah story—is: the blood was put on the outside of the houses, the part facing the street! How curious that the midrash’s first instinct is the opposite!

Still, the Mekhilta entertains the possibility that the blood went on the outside of the doors. It continues:

But maybe it means on the outside? No. For the text says, “When I see the blood I will pass over you” [12:13]. That is to say: the blood that would be seen by Me—but not by others. These are the words of Rabbi Yishmael.

Rabbi Yishmael makes the argument that God did, in fact, tell the slaves how to put the blood on their doorways. He interprets the verse to imply that the ritual should be done privately, on the inside of the home where no one outside will see it.

Another Sage agrees with Rabbi Yishmael:

Rabbi Yonatan says: This means: on the inside. But maybe it means on the outside? No. For it further says, It shall be a sign for you [12:13]. That is: a sign for you, but not for others.

Rabbi Yonatan cites a different part of the verse to come to the same conclusion: the blood goes on the inside of the Israelite homes.

But there is a dissenting opinion with which the Midrash concludes:

Rabbi Yitzchak says: No. It must go on the outside, so that the Egyptians will see it and be scared to death.

Rabbi Yitzchak disagrees: Of course the blood should go on the outside of the doorways; how else would the Egyptians learn their lesson that God is controlling these events and delivering the slaves from the cruelty of their enslavers? When the slaves put their sign on the outside of their homes, they are saying: We are no longer afraid.

Pause and reflect: Which answer seems correct to you? Was the blood intended for the outside or the inside of the slaves’ homes?

What’s at stake in this debate? In truth, a great deal. The position that the blood should go on the inside of the doorways is an argument for interiority. For whom do we do Mitzvot, anyway? Surely it’s for our own spiritual awareness and growth. Religious living is a path towards a deeper understanding of how God’s loving and protective presence works in the world, and therefore cultivates gratitude—a point that would not be missed on that dark night in Egypt, as Jewish families huddled in their homes and saw the blood, a testimony to the violent and bloody events that were happening outside their safe havens.

Not so fast, says the other perspective. Much of Jewish living is about building confident identities for ourselves and our children, in cultures that often are less than hospitable (to say the least). External signs of Jewish identity are ways of saying that we have nothing to hide, and, in this multicultural society, we are unafraid and unashamed putting our Jewish identities into the cultural mix.

“Inside versus outside” seems like a very contemporary debate. These days, every Jewish community is weighing the conflicting values of security versus welcoming. Surely everyone wants to spread open our doorways and welcome people into our sacred spaces, as it says in Pirkei Avot (1:5) in the name of Yosei ben Yochanan of Jerusalem: “Make your home so that it is wide open.” But, sadly, we are living through a moment in history when other voices are telling us that we must take security seriously—the list of Jewish institutions that have been attacked is growing at a dizzying and terrifying pace. Some have even been tempted to tone down the public Jewish identifiers of our buildings (as many Jewish communities in Europe have been doing for years as antisemitism surges), which is rather tragic.

So we have to ask ourselves: What Jewish identifiers are we willing to put on the outside, for all the world to see? A menorah in the window? A piece of Judaica around our neck? A Mezuzah on the door? An Israeli flag on the landing? All of these are cultural identifiers that say: We are here, we are proud, and we are not afraid.

Or, feeling vulnerable, should we keep those expressions of our identity on the inside, for our eyes but not others?

Each Jewish home and institution must weigh these competing values. The question that the Midrash raised long ago—did the blood go on the inside or outside of the doorways?—reflects our own psyche. What do our answers reveal—about our self-image, our identity, and our comfort with our place in the society we inhabit?

RABBI NEAL GOLD teaches and writes about Jewish texts, Israel, and the intersections between Jewish spiritual life and the contemporary world. He is adjunct faculty at Hebrew College, and teaches widely in the college’s community learning programs. He is the Founder of A Tree with Roots, an online community for adult Jewish learning, and the spiritual leader of Am HaYam—Cape Cod Havurah. He is the author of many academic and popular writings about Judaism and Israel, and is the editor of Radiance: The Collected Prose and Poetry of Danny Siegel (JPS, 2020).

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