You have been told to take a bundle of hyssop branches, dip it in fresh blood, and touch it to the lintel of your door and to the mezuzot, the doorposts. You have been told that such a bloodied entryway to your home will serve as a sign and a protection, a shield to you and your family; when God passes through on the way to smite the first-born of Egypt, God will recognize your home as an innocent home filled with innocent people who ought not to be punished. And in that recognition, “God will not allow the Mashchit, the Destroyer, the Angel of Death into your home to strike you down.” (Exodus 12:23)
Maybe you wonder, as many commentators and midrashists have, why such a sign is necessary. Why does the All-Knowing God who has come to redeem you and your people from slavery, who will carry you to freedom on eagles’ wings, require a bloody reminder not to kill you on the very eve of rescue?
Shouldn’t God, the God of your ancestors, recognize you? Shouldn’t God know your address, shouldn’t your very presence and essence inside your own home be enough protection from the Destroyer? For that matter, why have you been instructed not to venture outside your home all night long? Shouldn’t God know your face and your story, recognize you as someone who needs to be protected rather than killed?
Or maybe you understand intuitively an unpleasant truth recorded in the midrash called the Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael:
“Once the Angel of Death has been let loose to strike down, it does not (or perhaps cannot) distinguish between righteous and wicked.” (Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, Pischa 11:15)
There are certain forces that, once unleashed — for good or for evil — will subject all in their path to death and destruction, such that not even God can (or will) restrain them. Today, one might call them bullets, rockets, words of rage and dehumanization. A missile cannot tell righteous from wicked. A missile cannot distinguish, and while one might picture the Iron Dome as blood painted across the lintel of our national home, a civilian in Gaza has no such miracle-hyssop brush.
Here is what a terrified Israelite in Egypt understands, that the Mekhilta also understands, that a child in a Gazan home understands, that a child in a Metula bomb shelter understands: There is no such thing as weaponry smart enough that will swerve out of the way of a non-combatant. And here is what a Palestinian-American wearing a keffiyeh understands, that an American Jew wearing a kippah understands, that the Mekhilta also understands: There are no words of heightened, violent rhetoric that are so wise they cannot be spit in the face of someone just trying to go to school.
So here is what we all must understand as well: The Mashchit has been unleashed. The rockets and the missiles are raining down. Civilians are dying in their homes and soldiers aren’t returning to theirs and children from first-born to youngest around the world are paying the price of the destructive rhetoric adults have spoken into being. And when we know the Mashchit has been given permission to strike down, we must do everything in our power to brush the mezuzot, the doorposts, of the world with blood — not the spilled blood of our enemies, but the protective blood of sacrifice.
And when we cannot do that, when we recognize that what we have let loose is so destructive in its inability to discern righteous from wicked, innocent from guilty, civilian from combatant, bystander from responsible party, friend from foe, and when we recognize that we have no hyssop brush powerful enough to change that reality — then we must retract the permission we have given to the Destroyer to destroy. We must, in fact, restrain it.
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So, long ago, you have been told to take a bundle of hyssop, dip it in fresh blood, and touch it to the lintel of your door and to the mezuzot, the door-posts.
When the Angel of Death has been let loose to strike down, it will not distinguish between good and evil. So you must be the one to distinguish and discern and protect the innocent yourself.
As you have also been told:
“And you shall observe this matter as a law for you and for your children for all time.” (Exodus 12:24)
And all time is now.
Rabbi Amelia Wolf is the rabbi of Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, VA, and a former T’ruah Israel Fellow.