certain other roles. Besides receiving double the father's inheritance and requiring a pidyon haben, a firstborn son is supposed to fast on the eve of Passover and in the absence of a Levite, a bechor washes the hands of the Kohen prior to blessing the Israelites (see: Priestly Blessing). Animal firstborns In the Hebrew Bible, the feminine plural noun bechorot is used to describe "firstlings" of a flock. In rabbinical Hebrew, the masculine noun bechor is also used of the first born animal to open the womb of its mother. The animal "firstborn beast" (Hebrew bechor behema בכור בהמה) is listed as one of the twenty-four priestly gifts. Today, when there is no Temple in Jerusalem, most Jewish believers do not give first-born animals to Kohanim. Instead it is customary to sell the mother animal to a non-Jew before it gives birth to the firstborn, and then buy back both the animal and its firstborn. Other Abrahamic religions The importance of the literal firstborn son is not as greatly developed in Christianity and Islam as it is in Judaism. Christianity applies the concept of firstborn to Jesus of Nazareth as "firstborn from the dead", and adopts the Septuagint terminology prototokoi (plural) to describe the church as "firstborns." Muslim scholars traditionally consider Ishmael as the firstborn of Abraham mentioned in Qur'an 37.103. However, Islamic law contains no preference for the firstborn son. References Hebrew Bible words and phrases Jewish society Jewish law and rituals Kinship and descent