A Brief Note Before Passover

On rebellion, silence, and joy

I’m down to the wire if I want to get something out before tonight’s Passover Seder, and I still haven’t decided what I most want to say. So I’m going to split the difference, and say less, about two different things.

First: I expect this year there will be a lot of sermons on the “wicked son” making reference to the profound generation gap that has opened up in the highly-educated American Jewish world over the Gaza war. To recap for those who are unfamiliar: early in the Haggadah, there’s a discussion of four sons: the “wise” son, the “wicked” son, the “simple” son and the son who “does not know how to ask.” The text explains what question each child is likely to ask when sitting at the Seder table, and how you’re supposed to respond. The typology is, among other things, a rabbinic gloss on the fact that there are a variety of biblical verses saying “this is what you will tell your son on that day” when commemorating the anniversary of the exodus on Passover; if there are multiple verses, they must each be intended for a different kind of child, in response to a different kind of question. But it’s become a favorite for modern sermons because the typology can be applied to so many different subjects. This year, though, I have an inkling how it is most commonly going to be applied.

My only contribution today to this likely discourse is to note that the preemptive “answer” given to the son who does not know how to ask is the same verse as the one used to rebuke the “wicked” son. To whit: when the “wicked” son asks what all this means to you (meaning to his father running the Seder), the father is supposed to slap him across the mouth (literally or, more likely, metaphorically) and reply “it was because of this that the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:8). The emphasis is placed on the “for me” and “I” in the verse as a rebuke to the son for saying “to you” and thereby implicitly excluding himself—the lesson is supposed to be that if you exclude yourself from the community, then you will not be redeemed with it.

But the same verse is used in response to the poor child who can’t ask, because he or she is too young, or too shy, or too confused, or for whatever reason. That can’t possibly be a rebuke. So the emphasis is presumably different; the implication, presumably, is that the “for me” and the “I” are invitations: you should be curious about what’s going on, you should ask questions, because this is deeply meaningful to me, a recollection of an extraordinary and terrible journey I took, and could be to you as well because the journey is still available to you. So the verse itself isn’t a rebuke at all; the rebuke is all in the relationship between the two people, a rejecting child met by further rejection from a parent.

Whose mind is this rejection in, though? The Haggadah is read by both parent and child, after all. I can’t get on board with the idea that the best way to respond to a rejecting child is to slap them across the mouth and tell them that with their attitude they’d never be redeemed. But if the child reads this story, and considers it seriously, that might help them (and maybe even their parent) see just what the dynamic they are in feels like and is likely to lead to.

And this is where the fact that the same verse is used for the “wicked” son and the son who doesn’t know how to ask comes into play for me. You might think that the “wise” son is the “best” child of the bunch, but I don’t think that’s what the text thinks—if anything, I think the “simple” son is the most valorized; he after all, is the only one who is answered with words that explicitly include him in the redemption. The wise son, by contrast, is answered with a lesson on the rules of the Seder, one that I think is a gentle implicit rebuke in its own way (but to go into my explanation of that would be too much of a digression for this quickly-written note). I think the “simple” son, and his relationship with the hypothesized parent, is intended to be a kind of contrast to the relationship with the “wise” son—and I think something similar is true of the contrast between the “wicked” son and the son who doesn’t know how to ask. Maybe “doesn’t know how to ask” could be understood as the parent’s (mis)understanding of that child’s situation—or a gentle way of describing what rebellion (“rebellious” is better than “wicked”) looks like when loud and vocal anger has retreated and one lets oneself feel, even show, the sadness underneath. And maybe the change in the valence of the verse the parent speaks is, itself, a kind of implicit recognition of that change.

It’s not quite a meeting, because the divide is still huge. But perhaps it is the establishment of a ground for a possible meeting in the future, of terms under which questions might be asked, and actually heard.

Second: I expect there will be a lot of sermons about how hard it is to celebrate Passover at a time when (to pick your political poison) there are still hostages being held in horrible conditions (if they are even still alive), and when the government of Israel feels to many to be little better than Pharaoh’s genocidal regime. How can we celebrate now, sing Hallel, drink four cups of wine, and end the Seder with “next year in Jerusalem?”

I want to answer that sentiment with a bit of aggadah from Sotah 11b:

§ Rav Avira taught: In the merit of the righteous women that were in that generation, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt. He tells of their righteous actions: At the time when these women would go to the river to draw water, the Holy One, Blessed be He, would materialize for them small fish that would enter into their pitchers, and they would therefore draw pitchers that were half filled with water and half filled with fish. And they would then come and place two pots on the fire, one pot of hot water for washing their husbands and one pot of fish with which to feed them.

וּמוֹלִיכוֹת אֵצֶל בַּעְלֵיהֶן לַשָּׂדֶה, וּמַרְחִיצוֹת אוֹתָן, וְסָכוֹת אוֹתָן, וּמַאֲכִילוֹת אוֹתָן, וּמַשְׁקוֹת אוֹתָן, וְנִזְקָקוֹת לָהֶן בֵּין שְׁפַתַּיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אִם תִּשְׁכְּבוּן בֵּין שְׁפַתָּיִם וְגוֹ׳״, בִּשְׂכַר ״תִּשְׁכְּבוּן בֵּין שְׁפַתָּיִם״ זָכוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל לְבִיזַּת מִצְרַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״כַּנְפֵי יוֹנָה נֶחְפָּה בַכֶּסֶף וְאֶבְרוֹתֶיהָ בִּירַקְרַק חָרוּץ״.

And they would then take what they prepared to their husbands, to the field, and would bathe their husbands and anoint them with oil and feed them the fish and give them to drink and bond with them in sexual intercourse between the sheepfolds, i.e., between the borders and fences of the fields, as it is stated: “When you lie among the sheepfolds, the wings of the dove are covered with silver, and her pinions with the shimmer of gold” (Psalms 68:14), which is interpreted to mean that as a reward for “when you lie among the sheepfolds,” the Jewish people merited to receive the plunder of Egypt, as it is stated in the continuation of the verse, as a reference to the Jewish people: “The wings of the dove are covered with silver, and her pinions with the shimmer of gold” (Psalms 68:14).

וְכֵיוָן שֶׁמִּתְעַבְּרוֹת בָּאוֹת לְבָתֵּיהֶם, וְכֵיוָן שֶׁמַּגִּיעַ זְמַן מוֹלְדֵיהֶן הוֹלְכוֹת וְיוֹלְדוֹת בַּשָּׂדֶה תַּחַת הַתַּפּוּחַ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״תַּחַת הַתַּפּוּחַ עוֹרַרְתִּיךָ וְגוֹ׳״.

And when these women would become pregnant, they would come back to their homes, and when the time for them to give birth would arrive they would go and give birth in the field under the apple tree, as it is stated: “Under the apple tree I awakened you; there your mother was in travail with you; there was she in travail and brought you forth” (Song of Songs 8:5).

The point being: the only appropriate rebuke to fear and sorrow is rejoicing in its season, because joy is where life comes from. Turn your back on that—as it feels like so many are increasingly inclined to do, at least rhetorically—isn’t any kind of resistance; it’s just surrender to whatever enemies you find so oppressive.

Chag kasher v’sameach.