Ta’anit Bechorot: The Fast of the Firstborn

The firstborn in the Torah

“Israel is My son, My firstborn”

Before the plagues began, Hashem gave Moshe a message for Pharaoh:

Thus saith Hashem, Israel is My son, even My firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let My son go, that he may serve Me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

The last plague is announced at the very beginning. The conflict between Hashem and Pharaoh is a conflict over a son. Pharaoh had enslaved Hashem’s firstborn and thrown Israel’s sons into the Nile (1:22); measure for measure, the firstborn of Egypt would die. On the night of 15 Nisan, “from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon” (12:29), the blow fell. Israel’s firstborn, sheltered in houses marked with the blood of the lamb, lived.

“Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn”

Because Hashem spared them, the firstborn of Israel belonged to Him:

Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is Mine.

The Torah ties this law directly to the Exodus and to the teaching of the next generation: “And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? … Hashem slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt … therefore I sacrifice to Hashem all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem” (13:14–15). The firstborn of clean animals were offered, the firstborn of a donkey redeemed with a lamb, and the firstborn son redeemed.

The Levites in their place

Originally the firstborn were to serve Hashem. The Mishnah says that before the Mishkan was erected, the sacrificial service was performed by the firstborn.¹ In the wilderness, Hashem transferred that role to the tribe of Levi:

And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel: therefore the Levites shall be Mine; because all the firstborn are Mine.

Moshe counted the firstborn males: 22,273. The Levites numbered 22,000, so the 273 extra firstborn were redeemed at five shekels each, and the money was given to Aharon and his sons (Numbers 3:40–51). Midrashic tradition explains the transfer by the golden calf: the Levites stood with Moshe when the firstborn of the other tribes did not (Exodus 32:26–29).²

Pidyon haben

The redemption of the firstborn continues in Jewish life. “The firstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem … from a month old shalt thou redeem, according to thine estimation, for the money of five shekels” (Numbers 18:15–16). In the ceremony of pidyon haben, held on or after the thirty-first day, a father gives five silver coins to a kohen to redeem his son who “opened the womb” of his mother. The ceremony does not apply if the father is a kohen or a Levi, or if the mother is the daughter of one, since the tribe of Levi took the firstborn’s place.³ The firstborn’s sanctity, in other words, is still remembered in every generation.

The origins of the fast

Ta’anit Bechorot is not mentioned in the Torah, the Mishnah or the Babylonian Talmud. Its earliest clear source is the post-talmudic Tractate Soferim, compiled in the Land of Israel around the end of the talmudic era, which records that the firstborn fast on the eve of Pesach in remembrance of the miracle that they were saved from the plague of the firstborn.⁴

A passage in the Jerusalem Talmud (Pesachim 10:1) is also cited, but it survives in two versions. In one, the firstborn have a custom to fast on the eve of Pesach; in the other, the passage seems to say that they do not. Medieval authorities quoted it both ways, and some, such as the Mordechai in the name of Rabbeinu Yechiel, held that the custom was only to refrain from bread and baked goods.⁵

By the time of the great codes the custom was well established. The Tur and the Shulchan Aruch record: “The firstborn fast on the eve of Pesach,” including one who is the firstborn of either his father or his mother.⁶ One opinion requires firstborn daughters to fast too, but Ashkenazi practice does not follow it. By Ashkenazi custom a father fasts on behalf of a firstborn son who is still a minor, and, if the father is himself a firstborn, the mother may do so; later authorities allow leniency where this causes distress.⁷

The custom is striking in another way. Nisan is a month of joy in which public fasts and eulogies are otherwise avoided.⁸ That the firstborn fast at all in Nisan shows how deeply the memory of the tenth plague was felt.

Why fast to give thanks?

Fasting in gratitude can seem strange. Tractate Soferim gives only the bare reason, remembrance of the miracle. One way to understand it is as the response of someone who has survived a narrow escape: the firstborn of Israel were saved by the blood of the lamb, not by any merit of their own. However it is explained, the fast keeps the firstborn from treating their survival as something owed to them.

The siyum: how the fast is broken

Almost everywhere the fast is now broken at a siyum. The logic is halachic. The fast of the firstborn is a custom, not a biblical or rabbinic decree. A se’udat mitzvah, a meal that celebrates a mitzvah such as a circumcision, a pidyon haben, or the completion of a tractate, is a religious obligation of joy, and the joy of a mitzvah overrides a customary fast. The Talmud records that Abaye made a feast for the sages whenever a young scholar completed a tractate, and the siyum feast has been honored ever since.⁹ Later authorities, especially the Maharshal, ruled that a firstborn who participates in such a meal may eat, and the Mishnah Berurah records the practice.¹⁰

Ideally a firstborn hears the conclusion of the study and the hadran, the prayer recited at a completion, and then eats something at the celebration. The custom turns a fast into an occasion for Torah study: the morning of 14 Nisan is spent finishing a book of learning before the night of telling the story.

When 14 Nisan is Shabbat

Because one does not fast on Shabbat, and avoids entering Shabbat fasting, when 14 Nisan falls on Shabbat the fast is moved back to Thursday, 12 Nisan.¹¹ See our calendar for the date in any given year.

Messianic: Yeshua the firstborn

Presented in the Temple

Luke places Yeshua’s infancy squarely within these laws:

And when the days of her purification according to the Torah of Moshe were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to Hashem; (as it is written in the Torah of Hashem, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to Hashem;) and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the Torah of Hashem, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

Luke quotes Exodus 13:2, 12 and the offering of a poor family after childbirth (Leviticus 12:8). Yeshua was a firstborn son of the tribe of Yehudah, holy to Hashem. Luke does not mention the five shekels of redemption, but he stresses that the family “performed all things according to the Torah of Hashem” (2:39). Paul says the same in general terms: Yeshua was “made under the Torah” (Galatians 4:4). The Messiah did not stand outside Israel’s commandments; he was born into them.

“The firstborn among many brethren”

The Brit Hadashah (the New Testament) calls Yeshua “the firstborn” in several places, and the title must be read in its Jewish sense. In the Tanakh, “firstborn” (bechor) is a title of rank, inheritance and love, not only of birth order. Hashem says of the Davidic king, “I will make him My firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27). Ephraim, Yosef’s younger son, is called “My firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9). A midrash on Exodus 13:2 applies Psalm 89 to the Messiah: as Hashem made Yaakov a firstborn, so He will make the King Messiah a firstborn.¹²

Read this way, the Brit Hadashah’s language is clear:

• “The firstborn of every creature” (Colossians 1:15): Yeshua is the preeminent heir over creation, the one through whom and for whom Hashem’s purposes in creation are fulfilled. He is “the image of the invisible God,” the one who perfectly reflects the Father, not the Father Himself.
• “The firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18; compare Revelation 1:5): the first to be raised to everlasting life, “that in all things he might have the preeminence.” The rest of the dead still sleep, awaiting their resurrection.
• “The firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29): Yeshua is the first of a large family. Those who follow him are “conformed to the image” of the Son, and share his inheritance.
• “The assembly of the firstborn, which are written in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23): all the redeemed share the firstborn’s status. Just as Israel as a whole is Hashem’s firstborn son (Exodus 4:22), the community gathered to “mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22) is an assembly of firstborn, belonging to Hashem.

The fast of the firstborn and these passages share one idea: the firstborn are spared and belong to Hashem. Yeshua, the Son whom the Father “spared not” (Romans 8:32), was given so that others might be counted among the firstborn. That is a Messianic reading of the theme, not a claim about the origins of the custom, but it springs from the same soil: the night of 15 Nisan, the blood of the lamb, and the firstborn who lived.

Prophetic: mourning for a firstborn, and Ephraim restored

Zechariah sees a day when Hashem will pour out “the spirit of grace and of supplications” on the house of David and the people of Jerusalem:

And they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

The prophet reaches for the deepest grief he knows, the loss of a firstborn son, the very grief that came upon Egypt on the night of the Exodus. The Talmud applies this verse to Mashiach ben Yosef, the Messiah who is slain.¹³ Benei Avraham sees in Yeshua’s first coming the pattern of Mashiach ben Yosef, suffering and rejected, and in his return the revelation of Mashiach ben David. The mourning of Zechariah 12 is followed at once by “a fountain opened to the house of David … for sin and for uncleanness” (13:1). Grief for the firstborn leads to cleansing and restoration.

Jeremiah’s promise of the new covenant is preceded by the regathering of Israel from the ends of the earth: “They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them … for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9). Ephraim, the house of Yosef, scattered and lost among the nations, is still the firstborn. The Pesikta Rabbati, in a series of homilies on the suffering Messiah, calls him “Ephraim, My righteous Messiah.”¹⁴ The firstborn who was lost will be found, and the father’s house will be whole.

The fast of 14 Nisan therefore points forward as well as back. Israel’s firstborn were spared in Egypt; Israel itself is Hashem’s firstborn, never disowned (Romans 11:28–29); and the prophets foresee a day when the firstborn son, Ephraim and Yehudah together, will be gathered home.

Keeping Ta’anit Bechorot

• For firstborn men. Follow your community’s custom: fast from dawn, or attend a siyum on the morning of 14 Nisan and join the celebration. Better still, prepare a siyum yourself by finishing a tractate, a book of the Bible, or another unit of study.
• For parents of a firstborn son. Teach him why he is honored this day, and, by Ashkenazi custom, consider fasting or attending a siyum on his behalf while he is young.
• For everyone. Remember that the whole of Israel is Hashem’s firstborn, and that the redeemed are called “the assembly of the firstborn.” Use the quiet morning before the Seder for gratitude.

See our calendar for this year’s dates.