Last night at our home Seder we had the ever-adorable neighbor girls here to participate. As I read the story, they came to the flannel board with their figure of Pharaoh or Moses and donned the masks as we went through the ten plagues. Their mom took pictures and everyone was happy.
All three girls are excellent readers for their ages, but I was particularly impressed with 8-year old Aria who carefully sounded out each word–even hard ones like “intelligent”–and spoke with great inflection. Then we got to the part in the Haggadah where the children are to ask the Four Questions which is really one question and four statements. The question asked by the youngest, as is the tradition, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I prompted, “In what ways do you find this night different?” Taking turns the two older girls, aged 9 and 10, read the statements:
- On all other nights, we may eat chametz and matzah, but on this night, only matzah.
- On all other nights we eat many vegetables, but on this night, only maror.
- On all other nights we don’t dip even once, but on this night, we dip twice.
- On all other nights we eat either sitting up or reclining, but on this night, we all recline.
They are all statements with an implied question: why? When you think about it, the Haggadah and the Seder service turns education on its ear. Instead of the adults testing the children’s knowledge, the kids get to test ours. They get to ask why.
It got me to thinking about how I teach. While I ask the obligatory “What questions do any of you have?” after presenting a topic, I rarely get any more than blank stares. They’ve been conditioned over the last 10-12 years of schooling to know it’s not their place to ask questions. Teachers ask questions and students answer. That’s the routine. And the answers fall into four basic categories: a classic response from exactly what it says in the book, a smart-aleck answer from the class clown intended to evoke a response from the other kids, a simplistic response based on what they think they know, or a blank stare because they either don’t understand at all or they simply don’t care.
How great is it that this ancient book, the Torah, says the way to teach children is to be ready as an adult to answer even the most difficult question they might pose. If you’ve ever been around a preschooler, you might not be shocked to know that they ask questions constantly and most of those questions start with “why.” The most common question that my high school students ask is “Can I go to the bathroom?” I’m willing to bet the current education system has everything backward. I wonder if we made it about the kids asking questions of the teacher, we might get a little further.
Stephanie, the girls’ mom, homeschools these three beauties and, of course, part of that education includes Bible study. She said that in reading through the stories of Torah, 8-year-old Aria turned to her one day and asked, “Why do all the women cause so much trouble?” She was referring to Eve, Sarah and her displeasure with Hagar, Rachel and Leah and their birthing wars. Most recently she was reading the story of Lot and his family escaping Sodom and she got to the part where Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt. She read that verse dramatically and slowly and with great surprise. She was noticeably shocked when she said with emphasis, “See what I mean? The women are always causing trouble!” Mama Stephanie had some answering to do.
Maybe we can get a little bit of insight into this phenomenon by looking at what immediately follows the 4 Questions. It’s the story of the Four Children: the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child, and the child who is too young to ask. One article exploring these four types of children says the way to answer is not to answer the question, but answer the child. We need to see beyond the obvious question and answer based on who is asking.
The wise child can take all the detail you can muster. He’s thought it through with faith, but asks some real stumpers. Maimonides says that even if there are no children at the Seder, you must ask yourself those questions and you have to approach the questions as though you never knew the answer. You have to go deeper. As one of my professors once said, you have to ask others questions from a point of ignorance, as though you really don’t know the answer. Too often we ask questions like lawyers. They never ask a question to which they don’t already know the answer. Questioning is their way to back the witness into a corner or into some admission they’d rather not make. Be ready for the wise child. He or she will have some toughies.
The wicked child is not really wicked, but he’s about to throw in the towel on this religion stuff. He asks the questions that are bothering him and pretty much all of Torah is bothering him. How could these plagues have really happened? Why didn’t the Israelites just go on strike? What does any of this have to do with me right now? While the questions might feel confrontational, at least you know this one has two brain cells to rub together. Be honest, not condescending, and avoid the urge to say he’s not asking serious questions. He’s hanging on by a thread and you can push him out the door or you can let him know you take him seriously.
The simple child is often the one who is ignored. Her confidence is often low and she doesn’t usually ask a question, because she never really gets an answer that makes sense. The Haggadah says we must deal with this one by nurturing the wonderment of it all. Don’t give her less than the wise or the wicked child, but don’t insist she become like them.
The one who doesn’t know what to ask is neither too young nor too stupid to ask a question. You may die waiting for this one to ask a question. He’s been to school and knows that he’s supposed to keep his mouth shut while you, the adult, shovel content into his brain. Your response may be to try and elicit a question. “For the sake of this, God did what He did for me when I left Egypt.” What is “this”? What do you mean when you left Egypt? You weren’t there.
If we are being honest, we recognize ourselves in each of the four children. We’ve been wise–though probably not often enough. We’ve been wicked or rebellious at times in our lives. We’ve looked for the simple answer and we’ve more often than we’d like to admit, not even knowing where to start with questions.
Max, the 78-year old child at our table last night asked, “Why do we dip our fingers into our wine and drop some on our plates as we name the plagues?” Turns out, wine is considered pleasure and when we take even a drop aways as we name the plagues, we recognize that Egyptians died during the plagues, especially the tenth one, and they are God’s children too. Tradition holds that when the waters closed over Pharaoh’s army at the Reed Sea and drowned them, the angels wanted to chant hymns of praise. God admonished them saying, “How can you sing hymns when My creatures are perishing?”
Regrettably, people spend far too much time reading the pashat or obvious meaning in the Bible. They look at the literal meaning of the text and think they are done. As a pastor once said to us in reference to the spiritual lives of most people, “They spend most of their lives swimming in the shallow end of the pool.” The Haggadah with its four questions and four children, and an emphasis on understanding more than the surface of the words on the page, is meant to stir up something more in us. We are not wading into the deep end if we don’t have the courage and the faith to ask questions. If we do, we just might live up to the sort of education we are meant to have. Chag Sameach.
I Am My Father's Daughter 