Creating Lively Passover Seders

A Call for Empathy
David Arnow

Published in A Haggadah for Chaotic Times: Moment Magazine’s 2026 Haggadah Supplement

Unlike the biblical Exodus, the traditional Passover Haggadah devotes relatively little space to the plagues. Perhaps this is because the plagues are so morally ambiguous. For the last five plagues God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, depriving the Egyptian king of free will and preventing him from acceding to Moses’s demand to “let my people go.” The last plague, the slaying of the Egyptian first born, raises a different question. Is it justified to slay Egyptian children for the sins their parents may have committed? The God of Jonah was reluctant to destroy Nineveh because it contained 120,000 children “who cannot discern between right hand and left hand; and also much cattle” (Jonah 4:11). The God of the Exodus evinces no such empathy and slays the Egyptians firstborn children and animals to boot.
Jewish tradition is by no means blind to God’s seeming lack of empathy toward the Egyptians. The Talmud strikes an apologetic note when it imagines God chiding the angels for singing songs of praise when the Egyptians, “the works of My hands,” are drowning in the sea. The same source is often erroneously given as the rationale for the custom of spilling out a drop of wine for each plague from our cups at the seder. This tradition arose from treating these drops of wine as embodiments of the plagues and spreading them on the homes of our enemies, as was the custom in various Jewish communities.

In these times when empathy often feels in such short supply, it’s worth pondering a midrashic tradition involving the slaying of the firstborn. It first surfaced in the 3rd century and was elaborated upon many centuries later. The early version simply asks a question: What would happen if an Israelite and an Egyptian were in the same bed? Yes, goes the answer, God would pass over the Israelite and slay the Egyptian firstborn (Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Exodus 12:23).
A medieval midrash compiled in the Land of Israel expanded on this curious question. Before the last plague struck, the Bible says the Israelites should not leave their homes (Exodus 12:22). But…

When Moses said: ‘I [God] will smite all firstborn’ (Exodus 12:12), there were some [Egyptians] who were afraid and some who were not afraid. One who was afraid would take his firstborn to an Israelite and would say to him: ‘Take this one and let him stay the night with you.’ When midnight arrived, the Holy One killed all the firstborn. For those who were located in the houses of the Israelites, the Holy One would step between the Israelite and the Egyptian and would take the soul of the Egyptian and leave the soul of the Israelite. The Israelites would awaken and find the Egyptian dead between each and every one [of their children] (Exodus Rabbah 18:2).

This text’s call to act with empathy is breathtaking. The Israelites not only open the door to their oppressors and offer sanctuary to their firstborn children, but they are risking their lives. Are they opening the door to the mashchit, the destroyer who actually slays the firstborn (Exodus 12:23)? But the Israelites don’t just offer harbor to these Egyptian firstborn, they take them into their beds. The Israelites likely hope this will help save the Egyptians from the destroyer. Whatever drives God’s inscrutable judgment to slay Egyptian firstborn children, down here on this earth, this midrash calls us to know the heart of those in narrow straits—to be rescuers, not bystanders. It’s a tall order in any time, but if not us, who?

David Arnow is co-editor of My People’s Passover Haggadah and author of Creating Lively Passover Seders and Choosing Hope: The Heritage of Judaism.