That’s Meshuggeneh! — Pidyon HaBen

I rarely watch the local news in Nashville, but when I do I’m always amused.  My favorite part is a segment they get really excited about called That’s Messed Up!  Some guy talks about a stupid/weird Nashville issue and how frustrating/silly it is.  Strange, but endearing.  In that same spirit, I want to introduce an occasional feature for Faith Hacker called That’s Meshuggeneh! in which we’ll examine weird/random Jewish rituals and/or texts.  Because hey, Judaism isn’t all Shabbat dinners and Passover seders.  Sometimes, for instance, we buy and sell babies.   Yes, we do.  It’s called a Pidyon HaBen.   The Pidyon HaBen ceremony is one of those things that I dread explaining to non-Jewish friends.  “Well, when a first born baby boy is a month old we, um, put him on a platter, cover him with jewelry and then his parents have to give money to a cohen, a member of the priestly family, so that the priest doesn’t, you know, take him.”  Doesn’t come off real well, right?   Well, it is a pretty odd ritual.  It goes way back to Numbers 18:14-16, which states “"Everything in Israel that is devoted to the LORD is yours. 15 The first offspring of every womb, both man and animal, that is offered to the LORD is yours. But you must redeem every firstborn son and every firstborn male of unclean animals.  When they are a month old, you must redeem them at the redemption price set at five shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel, which weighs twenty gerahs.”   Basically, during the ten plagues when God killed all the first born Egyptian men and spared the Israelites.  In Exodus 13:2 God says, “the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine" meaning, apparently, that the oldest son in every family should be devoted to God through service at the Temple.  But then the whole Golden Calf thing happened with the people of Israel worshipping an idol, and God got pissed.  Because the Levites didn’t take part in the idol worship God told Moses he’d rather have them than the first born sons.  First born sons would still have to be redeemed, (Pidyon means redemption), because they had already been promised to God.   The redemption comes in the form of money, at least five shekels worth, and it should be paid to a cohen, because cohanim were the people running the Temple, and thus would have been the people in charge of first-born sons if they had been in service for God.   Today a Pidyon HaBen will usually be called for the 31st day after a baby boy is born (unless that comes on Shabbat, in which case we wait until Sunday).  Generally it’s a celebratory event, much like a bris.  The baby is often put on a platter and adorned with jewelry (to equal the five shekels worth).  The father then recites two blessings, one which praises God for the mitzvah of Pidyon HaBen, and the other, Shehecheanu, praising God for sustaining us to this moment.  Five silver dollars or some kind of silver object is then given from the father to a Cohen, who holds the money over the baby’s head and says, “This instead of that, this in commutation for that and this in remission for that." Then he prays for the baby and recites the traditional priestly prayer.  Then usually there’s lots of singing and dancing and eating.   Pidyon HaBens are fairly rare, because to qualify the baby has to be the first born child of his mother, he can’t be the child of a cohen or a levi, and he can’t have been delivered by C-section.  Additionally, if the mother had a miscarriage after 40 days of gestation before she had this baby then there’s no Pidyon HaBen.   It sounds pretty weird, but both of the Pidyon HaBens that I’ve been to have been fantastic.  Check out some pictures here.  It’s meshuggeneh, and really fun.