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Vital Fluids
Said Rabbi Levi: On that night, the blood of the Passover
offering mingled with the blood of circumcision, as it is
written: “And I passed over you, and I saw you weltering
in your blood; and I said to you, ‘By your blood you
shall live!’ and I said to you, ‘By your blood you
shall live!’ ” [1]
Midrash Rabbah, Ruth 6:1
As our sages explain, when G-d came to redeem the Jewish
people from their exile in Egypt, He found them “naked
of mitzvot.” So He gave them two commandments—the
mitzvah of circumcision and the mitzvah of korban pesach
(the Passover offering)—so that they should merit the
redemption. [2]
One of the things that these two mitzvot have in common[3] is that they each relate to a particular age or phase in a person’s
life. The prescribed time for circumcision is at the age of
eight days, soon after the infant’s entry into physical
life.[4] The korban pesach was
brought by the head of the household—a status a person
attains only at an advanced point in his life, after having
raised a family and assumed a position of authority in the
lives of a significant number of individuals.[5]
Circumcision marks a beginning: a Jew is born, and immediately
enters into a covenant that binds his life to G-d. The korban
pesach, on the other hand, is brought by a person in mid-life—a
person with a past, perhaps even a past that requires re-evaluation
and change. Indeed, when instructing the people of Israel
to bring the korban pesach, Moses tells them to “retract
your hands from idol-worship, and take the lamb,”[6]
emphasizing that this mitzvah was to mark a break from their
idolatrous past and a redefinition of their lives as servants
of G-d.
Our every moment embodies this duality, being both the first
moment of the rest of our lives and the culminative moment
of all we acheived and experienced up until that point. The
challenge to us, as individuals and as a people, is to mingle
the “blood of circumcision” with the “blood
of the Passover offering”: to combine the freshness of
birth with the lessons of maturity, to make our every moment
a pristine beginning that, at the same time, is the fruit
of a rectified and optimized past.
Based on a public letter by the Rebbe, Nissan 11, 5729
(March 30, 1969)[7]
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[2]. Ibid., verse 7, as per Rashi’s commentary;
Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 17:3 and Ruth 6:1; Pirkei d’Rabbi
Eliezer, 28:1; et al.
[3]. Another common denominator is that these are the
only two mitzvot assei (positive commandments) that
carry the penalty of karet.
[4]. Indeed, Maimonides does not consider a child fully
born until its eighth day (Guide for the Perplexed, part
III, ch. 49).
[5]. See Exodus 12:3-4. While any adult Jew could bring
a korban pesach, the laws governing its offering
and consumption dictated that it be brought by the head
of a large household or extended family. The korban pesach
(a yearling lamb or kid) had to be eaten before midnight
of Passover eve, and none of its meat was to be left over;
only those who were members in the chaburah (“group”)
in whose behalf that particular animal was offered were
permitted to eat from it; it was supposed to be eaten at
the end of the meal, on a full stomach, but not past the
point of normal satiety. So for each animal, there had to
be a chaburah large enough that nothing would be
left over after each of its members ate his small portion—usually
no more than the requisite kezayit (approx. 1 oz.).
Thus, the head of the chaburah, who brought the korban
pesach on its behalf, was usually the head of a large
household or extended family (see Mishneh Torah, Laws
of the Korban Pesach, 8:3 and Kessef Mishneh,
loc cit.).
[6]. Exodus 12:21; Mechilta, ibid.
[7]. Rebbe’s Haggadah, pp. 622-624.
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