Dear Author of the Haggadah,
As Passover approached, I feel compelled to revisit a section of the Haggadah that has always troubled me. The Haggadah tells of four different types of children, and I’m concerned particularly about what you label as the “wise child,” the chacham. I’m bothered that we characterize such a child as “wise,” when they asks a question that seems nothing more than trivial and boring.
״מָה הָעֵדוֹת וְהַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ אֶתְכֶם.
What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the laws that God, our God, has commanded you?”
One not even need to begin to answer this child, simply direct him open up a book, or better yet, type his question into Google, which will spit out a list of enumerated laws and statutes that are as bland and dry as the taste of matzah. If you’re going to ask the same question year after year, your question should at least be expansive and generative, provoking new thoughts and interpretations on the narrative of the Exodus. Even if the criteria for wisdom were to be knowing a finite set laws and statutes, the fact that you need to ask your lame question annually proclaims your ignorance and inability to learn.
I raise my children to ask thoughtful questions, and to add value to the conversation. I care little whether they are able to give me correct answers so long as they generate curiosity and intrigue. Ironically, the only person who asks a question worthy of the label of wisdom is the child who you call rasha, wicked. מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם. What is this ritual that you are doing? You call this child wicked because they say “lechem,” referencing the 2nd person plural, and thus, as you suggest, excluding themself from the community of the Jewish people. Did you forget that he is quoting the Torah directly? God tells Moses, וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃
It will be that your children ask you, “What is this ritual that you are doing (Exodus 12:26)?” This is a question that should not only be lauded, but should be the spark of a conversation worthy to be had each and every year at the Passover Seder. We should consistently be asking ourselves what these rituals mean to us, and how we might be making them relevant in each and every successive generation. The “wicked” child’s question is perpetually relevant.
Perhaps we shouldn’t blame the “wise” child for their lackluster performance. The parents surely bear a great deal of responsibility in raising their child. Knowing and following all the laws and statutes of Passover is not a marker of wisdom, but obedience, and for some parents, this feels paramount. You might say that the seder, which means order, should value order. But we Jews are troublemakers of the best kind. We are the disruptors of that which is normative, we set ablaze the social order with ingenuity. Going all the way back to Moses, who demanded that Jews revolt against slavery. Einstein, Freud, and Marx, all took a hammer to conventional wisdom and smashed it. They were all the wicked child who called everything into question, who saw the world differently, and were thus compelled to change it.
Society hates those who defy the established order, and we Jews have been persecuted for millennium because we don’t always fit into a normative box. We are a tradition of counter-culture, pushing the status quo to think. Our persistent and endless questions demonstrate our freedom, and inspire movements that forever impact the world at large. We created Shabbat in a time when tyrants demanded that slaves work without rest to build their great cities. We proclaimed one God in an era of idols and vain deities. And we reinvented our identity through Zionism when everyone told us that we were a people that simply belonged to nowhere. And for all of our questions that challenged authority, we became subjected to libels, pogroms, ghettoization, expulsions, and genocide. Yet we never stop questioning, we persist in the forward thinking mentality that seeks a world more perfected.
“I think, therefore I am,” wrote Decartes. We are Jews because we think for ourselves and question what is, even when we are persecuted for it. Our currency is thought, and our most valuable bill is the question. The child who asks simple queries requiring little contemplation is not our paradigm of wisdom, but of complacency. I reject the label of the “wise child,” and I pray that my children should never grow to be such bores. Let us remember to never reject the child who many call wicked, for they often emerge the genius. For as the Psalmist wrote, אֶ֭בֶן מָאֲס֣וּ הַבּוֹנִ֑ים הָ֝יְתָ֗ה לְרֹ֣אשׁ פִּנָּֽה׃ The stone that the builders rejected shall become the chief cornerstone.
“אזהו חכם, who is wise?” asks the rabbinic sage Ben Azai. He answers himself: “משלומד מכל אדם,” the person who learns from everyone. But there there needs to be more. Learning from all those around you is a start to wisdom, but wisdom also requires the ability to synthesize different ideas, world-views, and opinions, in order to elevate any given conversation. The key lies in the simple task of asking the right question. “Who is wise?” The one whose question pierces our soul, who can generate an idea that shakes the foundations of society, who is far too often confused to be wicked, when they are really just a revolutionary genius.
Your’s truly,
A “wicked” child.
