Chew on this hevreh! And please send up a flare that you’ve read this!

Either I’m not looking in the right place, or nobody’s conversing in this online learning experience! Ok so maybe I went a bit overboard with too much text. Or maybe I upset some of you by opening the curtain on the doubts about the historicity of the Exodus itself. 

This lesson will be much shorter. It’s about the number four on Passover specifically and Jewish life in general. We have the 4 Questions, the 4 Children (Wise, Wicked, Simple, and the one who doesn’t know how to ask), and 4 cups of wine.

Carl Jung, not a big fan of the Jews, loved the number four, or as he called it, the quaternity. “The quaternity is an archetype of almost universal occurrence [. . .] For instance, if you want to describe the horizon as a whole, you name the four quarters of heaven…There are always four elements, four prime qualities, four colors, four castes, four ways of spiritual development, etc. So, too, there are four aspects of psychological orientation [. . .] The ideal of completeness is the circle sphere, but its minimal natural division is a quaternity”.

Question: How does Jung’s notion of the completeness of the quaternity help us understand the deeper meaning of Passover?

Question: How is the Exodus a story of universal transcendent truth?

 In an article entitled The Four-fold Structure of the Passover Haggadah, Dr. Jeremy Schonfield explores the thread of four as it runs through the first half of the Pesah Seder. What looks on the surface like a somewhat incoherent, repetitive text is actually, he argues, the Pesah story told four times, each from a different aspect and each aimed at different audiences. He identifies the audiences, moreover - each version is aimed at one of the four children whose story precedes them.

THE FOUR SONS As we tell the story, we think about it from all angles. Our tradition speaks of four different types of children who react individually to the Passover Seder. It is our job to make our story accessible to all the members of our community:

WHAT DOES THE WISE CHILD SAY? The wise child asks, What are the testimonies and laws which God commanded you? You must teach this child the rules of observing the holiday of Passover.

WHAT DOES THE WICKED CHILD SAY? The wicked child asks, What does this service mean to you? To you and not to himself! Because he takes himself out of the community and misses the point, say to him: “It is because of what God did for me in taking me out of Egypt.” Me, not him. Had that child been there, he would have been left behind.

WHAT DOES THE SIMPLE CHILD SAY? The simple child asks, What is this? To this child, answer plainly: “With a strong hand, God took us out of Egypt, where we were slaves.”

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO ASK A QUESTION? Help this child ask. Start telling the story: “It is because of what God did for me in taking me out of Egypt.”

The Haggadah of the wise child, he argues, is the one attributed to the teacher Shmuel. It begins, Avadim hayyinu le’faroh bemitzrayim [We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt], which is the answer given in the Tanakh to the wise son’s question there. The Haggadah of the wicked child is the one attributed to the teacher Rav, beginning, Mithila ovdei avodah zarah hayu avoteinu, [From the beginning, our fathers were slaves] picking up the child’s own language in her/his question, ma ha’avodah hazot lakhem? [what is this service to you?] The Haggadah of the simple child is the one which follows, beginning Tzei u’lemad - go out and learn. And the final Haggadah, appropriately enough for a child who does not know how to question, is that of Rabban Gamliel - a show and tell of the shankbone, the matzah, and the bitter herbs. Thus, before the meal reaches the table, four types of children have had the story told in the way they personally need to hear it.

Question: What is the logic of telling the story in 4 different ways?

Question: Do you discern the different variations for each of the 4 children?

Question: Which child are you right now?

Question: What part of the story provides the most meaning to you today?

Question: What kind of a seder will you be attending? The wise child’s that begins with the beginning and aims to get to the end? The wicked child’s seder, that begins in harshness and maybe defensiveness? The simple child's seder that is all about the core Exodus story? Or the final child’s seder where there is some rudimentary show and tell and then dinner?

Question: What kind of seder do you want to attend?

Chew on this hevreh! And please send up a flare that you’ve read this!

rebhayim