The Loudest Cry

"And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or never will be again" (Exodus 11:6)

Whose grief do we hear? Since October 2023, Israelis and Palestinians have suffered profoundly, though differently. Yet Jewish pain has left far too little room for the cries from Gaza. Those who focus on Palestinian loss are often demonized as disloyal or indifferent to Jewish needs. Some Jewish leaders even dismiss empathy as a moral failure or psychological impossibility. Can we hear both cries at once?

This week's portion, Bo, confronts us with the same challenge. As the text describes the last of the 10 plagues, the one that will finally free the enslaved Hebrews, we encounter the most terrible: the death of the Egyptian firstborn. This ultimate punishment strikes not only the guilty but the innocent. Every Egyptian parent loses a child, from Pharaoh on down to the lowliest maidservant. The Torah registers this horrific loss with a remarkable line:

"And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been and never will be again" (11:6).

This verse startles. The loudest, most anguished cry in the Exodus story-perhaps in all of history-belongs to the oppressors, mourning their own innocent children.

On its surface, this teaches a profoundly humane lesson: Egyptian or Israelite, losing a child devastates anyone. The pain cuts equally deep. The affliction remains equally unfathomable.

Yet the Torah's language suggests something more. This is not merely an irretrievable loss, but a unique expression of pain-the loudest cry ever, without precedent or equal. Why?

The verse becomes even more perplexing when we consider its context. This story is told unmistakably from Israel's perspective. It is Israel's narrative of oppression and freedom, not Egypt's. Indeed, the parashah opens with God instructing Moses to tell "your child and grandchild how I made a mockery of the Egyptians."

And yet here, at the story's climax, the Torah pauses to acknowledge-even amplify-Egyptian suffering.

The Rabbis wrestle with this tension, seeking to qualify the verse. The late 15^th-century Spanish rabbi Abraham Saba reads it as "a cry of rebellion"-the Egyptians wished to kill Pharaoh for bringing such misery upon them. A generation later, the Italian rabbi Ovadiah Sforno suggests this was the loudest cry only in peacetime, not wartime. The 17^th-century Moroccan mystic Rabbi Abraham Azoulay limits it to Egyptian history alone.

Yet in solving one problem, these commentators uncover another. Many notice a grammatical inconsistency in the Hebrew: the feminine noun "cry" (tza'akah) is paired with masculine verbs "has been" (nehiyaytah) and "will be" (tosef). This misalignment demands explanation.

Writing in 12^th-century France, Rabbi Joseph of Orleans, the Bekhor Shor, suggests this inconsistency is precisely the point. Male and female forms intermingle because each Egyptian parent cried out in their own way for their own terrible loss.

Every loss is unique. Every cry stands alone, incomparable to any before or after. Scale and intensity become meaningless; comparing suffering is insulting.

Yet this story transcends individual loss. It speaks to the categories of collectivity we inhabit-the families, communities, and countries that structure our lives. These bonds persist through suffering, and they condition our moral imagination.

The loudest cry, then, is both utterly personal and undeniably collective. Death knows no boundaries, even as the divides between peoples remain in its wake. Indeed, the very next line declares that God will "separate between the Egyptians and Israel." Loss will not touch both equally.

And yet loss also binds together all who mourn, regardless of the roles they occupy in the story. Nor are the mourners even limited to two sides. Just before describing the loudest cry, the Torah reminds us that not only Egyptian firstborn will die, but even non-Egyptians like "the firstborn of the [foreign] slave girl who sits behind the millstones." Even the non-enslaved Hebrews -themselves captives-are swept up in this violent drama.

The early 17^th-century Italian Rabbi Yedidyah Shlomo Nortzi (the Minchat Shai) captures this when he connects our verse to a line in Amos:

"The young maiden of Israel has fallen and will not rise [lo tosef, the same verb as in Exodus]; she is spread out on her soil, there is none to raise her up" (Amos 5:3).

The parallel strikes him-both the image of losing children and the very sound of the Hebrew phrasing. Then it was theirs; now it is ours. Then it was them; now it is us.

That small crack in the Exodus story suggests our tradition has long known what some now deny. And it offers a moral challenge: What would it mean to truly hear both cries? Doing so will not erase the boundaries separating peoples or relieve moral responsibility for the harms suffered. But it does point the way to a different kind of redemption.