Orbit April 2012 - Plainview Jewish Center

ORBIT
Page 4
FROM THE RABBI by Rabbi Steven Conn
Most Jewish worship services divide us into leaders and followers.
Cantors and rabbis lead, people in the congregation “participate.” The Passover
Seder, however, is different. Sure, someone usually directs the Seder and helps
move things forward. But at a good Seder, everyone pitches in: sharing insights,
leading songs, and reading parts of the Haggadah. The more everyone
contributes, the more enjoyable the Seder.
Even at the best Seders, though, there is one part that no one ever wants: the wicked child.
Soon after the four questions, we read the passage that begins: “The Torah speaks of four kinds of
children: wise, wicked, simple and one who does not know how to ask a question.” The Haggadah
then goes on to describe each of these children, the questions they might ask, and the answers we
ought to give. At our family Seders when I was a child, we always went around the table, taking turns
reading from the Haggadah. Even as the youngest child began to ask the four questions, we were
already trying to calculate who would get stuck reading the part of the wicked son. It was not
uncommon for one of us to suddenly develop a desire to help out in the kitchen or sit next to Grandma
in order to evade the dreaded assignment.
With all the effort that went into avoiding association with the wicked child, we might think that
the wicked child’s crime would be something particularly embarrassing or repulsive. Was the child
called wicked because he pulled the wings off flies, or beat up other kids and stole their lunch
money, or burned down the house playing with matches? Not at all. The Haggadah calls the child
wicked for doing nothing more than asking a simple question: “What does this service (this Passover
ritual) mean to you?” Incredible. How, we might ask, could anyone condemn a child for merely
asking a question?
The answer, the Haggadah tells us, lies not with the act of questioning—the wise son and the
simple son have questions too. Rather, it is the attitude behind the question that betrays the child’s
wickedness. “Saying this” the Haggadah continues, “he excludes, and by excluding himself from the
group, he denies a basic principle of our faith.” The Haggadah imagines that the child asks his
question in a mocking tone—”what does this whole Passover ritual thing mean to you anyway—it
certainly doesn’t mean anything to me.” By asking this question, the child places himself deliberately
outside the Jewish community. He makes himself into a dispassionate, even cynical observer. And
if there is one thing that our tradition cannot tolerate, it is a Jew who so loses his connection to his
people and his heritage that he becomes an enemy. And for this reason, the Haggadah concludes,
“if he had been in Egypt (with the Israelite slaves at the time of the exodus), he would not have been
redeemed.”
With the story of the four children, the Haggadah reminds us that asking questions can be an
important part of our religious development—as long as these questions arise out of our passion for
Judaism. To live and to grow Jewishly, we must always be partisans, must always look at Judaism
as our “home team.” To appreciate the beauty and value of Jewish life, we must identify ourselves
always as part of the community. And being part of the community means not only feeling Jewish in
our hearts, but also taking part in those rituals and ceremonies that bind us together as Jews.
Like so many of our rituals, the Passover Seder helps bind us together as a community. By
performing the rituals of the Seder, we link ourselves to other Jews in our city and all over the world
who are doing the very same thing. Even if we personally question the value or meaning of these
rituals, we perform them for the sake of being part of the community. As Rabbi Shlomo Riskin points
out in his Haggadah commentary, the Jewish attitude toward ritual has always been, as the Israelites
( continued on page 5 )