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THEN MOSES AND AARON CAME AND SAID TO PHARAOH: "THUS SAYS THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL: SEND MY PEOPLE OUT SO THAT THEY CAN WORSHIP ME IN THE WILDERNESS.
(Shemot 5:1)
Starting
with Words
From the wilderness of Kedeimot - Although
the Omnipresent had not commanded me to proclaim peace unto Sidon
I learnt to do so from what happened in the wilderness of Sinai, i.e., from an
incident that relates to the Torah which pre-existed [kodmah]
the world. For when the Holy One, blessed be He, was
about to give it [the Torah] to
Another explanation of From the wilderness of Kedeimot:
Moses said to God, "I learnt this from what You said in the wilderness -
from You Who existed before [kadamta] the
world. You could have sent one flash of lightening to burn up the Egyptians,
but You sent me from the wilderness to Pharaoh to say
gently, Send My people out.
(Rashi on Devarim 2:26, following the Silbermann
translation)
When Israel
Behaves Properly, They are Called My People
The people took to complaining bitterly - The people can
only mean "the wicked." And so he says, What
shall I do with this people? (Shemot 17:4) and He says, this wicked people (Jeremiah 13:10). But when they are good, they
are called My people, for it is said, Send
My people out (Shemot 5:1) and, My
people, what have I done to you? (Micah 6:3).
(Rashi on Bamidbar 11:1)
"The
Torah spoke of four sons: One is wise, one is wicked, one is simple, and one
does not know how to ask"
Berel Dov Lerner
We have become accustomed to relate to the midrash about the four sons with profound gravity and seriousness. Some find in it the kernel of a panacea for all of the problems of Jewish education, a kind of "road-map" for the Jewish People's continued spiritual existence. I would like to suggest a less ambitious interpretative strategy.
Note the location of the midrash of the four sons in the Haggadah. Two passages appear immediately before it: The incident involving Rabbi Eliezer and his colleagues who celebrated the Seder in Benei Brak, and the words of R. Elazar ben Azaryah, who described himself as being "as one seventy years of age." Next come the four sons, followed by the halakhic discussion, "One might start from the New Moon."
These four passages appear consecutively; what is their common theme? The answer is clear: None of these passages comes to tell us about the Exodus from Egypt, none of them adds any information to what we have already learned from the section "We were slaves." Their purpose is to tell us something about the manner in which the commandment to retell the story of the Exodus should be observed.
Before we get to the main section of Maggid - the retelling - before the many derashot dealing with the Exodus itself, the Haggadah wishes to tell us something about how we should go about performing the commandment of, You shall tell your son. The core message is quite plain, the main principle has already been set out in the end of "We were slaves":
And even if all of us are wise, all of us understanding, all of us aged, all of us knowledgeable about the Torah, we are still commanded to retell the Exodus from Egypt. And the more one speaks of the Exodus from Egypt the better.
Rabbi Eliezer and his distinguished band of friends come to demonstrate how one is supposed to carry out the principle of "the more one speaks the better" in practice: "They spoke of the Exodus from Egypt all through that night, until their students came and said, 'Our Rabbis, the time has come for the recitation of the morning Shema.'"
Next comes R. Eliezer ben Azariyah to explain why the Exodus must be mentioned at night. The four sons now make their appearance. Next, the editor of the Haggadah emphasizes the importance of devoting many hours to retelling the story of the Exodus by entertaining the theoretical possibility that people could begin performing the commandment from the first of Nissan. All of these passages aim at instilling us with readiness to retell the story of the Exodus in the best way possible, i.e., for many hours into the night.
Here we are confronted with a very important practical difficulty. How are we to engage our sons and daughters - who are, after all, the "target audience" of the Seder - in the commandment of You shall tell your son for hours on end? Perhaps our children are not really interested in a long, drawn-out discussion?
The four sons illustrate four typical responses of children to our educational efforts during the Seder. Their responses are typical, but there is no reason to assume that any one particular child will always behave like the wise son, or like the wicked son. It all depends upon his age, his mood, his wakefulness, and his stomach. If he did not take a nap in the afternoon, last year's wise son can become this year's wicked son. The son who does not know how to ask questions can turn into the wise son, thanks to the efforts of a talented teacher. What then is the advice which the Haggadah offers us in dealing with our children's various behaviors?
The wise son: What does he say? "What are the statutes and ordinances and laws which the Lord our God has commanded you?" And you shall tell him the laws of the Paschal sacrifice [up to the detail]: "No desert is eaten after the afikoman."
Here we have important messages for both parent and child. The child wants to behave appropriately and win praise. The Haggadah tells him what to do: If someone wants to look intelligent, he must ask many detailed questions. The message for the parent is no less important: If the child begins asking complicated and perhaps even annoying questions, the parent should not throw his hands up in despair, crying out, "God Almighty, this kid is driving me crazy!" Rather, the parent must take advantage of the opportunity offered by the child's curiosity and teach the child as much as possible, "And you shall tell him the laws of the Paschal sacrifice [up to the detail]: 'No desert is eaten after the afikoman.'" Such a parent will, no doubt, need to gird himself with patience and listening skills.
The dialogue with the wicked son is a different story. We must first understand exactly who this "wicked son" is who appears in the Haggadah. Is he a little heretic, a reincarnation of Spinoza or of Elisha ben Avuyah? Or perhaps the "wicked son" is a lowly traitor who collaborates with Hamas and Islamic Jihad? To my mind, we are dealing with a much less shocking situation. In his commentary on the Haggadah, the RITVA, following the Jerusalem Talmud, formulates the wicked son's question in these words:
What is this bother that you trouble us
with every year, delaying our feast?
In other words, the wicked son is asking: "Nu, so when do we eat already?" The wicked son's impatience teaches us that it is most inappropriate for one to announce one's hunger to the other participants in the Seder while they are engaged in discussing the Exodus. Thus is solved the famous question regarding the differences between the wise and wicked sons. They both ask exactly the same question ("What are you doing?"), only that the wicked son speaks curtly in order to have the meal served as quickly as possible.
What, then, is the proper response to the wicked son? If a child complains that he is hungry, are we to "set his teeth on edge"? I believe that the Haggadah offers its own harsh response in order to spare us the need for such unpleasantness. We do not have to answer the evening's "wicked son" - the Haggadah has done that for us when it announced before the world that a person who complains that he is hungry at the Seder is behaving like a "wicked son" who has "removed himself from the community." The Haggadah reminds us all that those who wish to be redeemed must demonstrate patience.
It should be no problem to guess the meaning of the passage regarding the "simple son." He asks a simple question and receives a simple answer. If a child asks, "What's that?" and we bury him under a long lecture describing "the laws of the Paschal sacrifice [up to the detail]: 'No desert is eaten after the afikoman'" our efforts shall be wasted. In such a case, it is better to answer plainly: With a mighty arm, the Lord took me out of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Finally, we get to the one "who does not know how to ask." Here we are not dealing with a child who refuses to participate in the Seder, rather he is not sure about how to participate. There are many different reasons why a child may not know how to ask: perhaps he is shy, or he thinks he already understands everything and is left with nothing to ask, or he might feel that the Seder is aimed towards his younger siblings, and that it would be inappropriate to interject with questions that are of interest only to the older children. In any case, it is incumbent upon the parent to "open up for him," a way must be found for him to participate in the Seder as an educational experience. This certainly demands that the parent be attentive to how the "passive" child understands his own role in the evening's activities.
Each and every child can pass through a series of transformations in the course of the Seder, moving from archetype to archetype of the four sons. A particular child may begin as the one "who does not know how to ask." When the parent tries to open up the discussion for him and becomes a bit long-winded, the child's stomach might get the best of him, making him a "wicked son." After a few minutes, he might compose himself and ask "simple" questions. Finally, as maggid is reaching its end and the meal is almost served, the child may allow himself to let loose with an onslaught of "wise" and complicated questions, which leave even the most experienced and learned of grandparents struggling for answers! There is no escaping it: Our duty is to remain flexible enough to deal with any educational challenges with which our children face us at the Seder table.
Dr. Berel Lerner is a member of Kibbutz Sheluhot
and a lecturer in philosophy at the Western Galilee Academic College.
...it seems to me that the reason for the fact that all the sin-offerings, both of private individuals and of the congregation are he-goats [se'irim] - I refer to the he-goats [offered on the occasion of the festivals] of pilgrimage, on the New-Moons, on the Day of Atonement, and [for the sin] of idolatry - is that the reason, in my opinion, was that their greatest act of disobedience consisted at that time in sacrificing to the se'irim [the same word can mean both "goats" and "devils"]; as the text states: And they shall no more offer their sacrifices to the se'irim after whom they have gone a whoring (Vayikra 17:7). However, the Sages, may their memory be blessed, consider that the reason for which the congregation is constantly atoned for by means of se'irim is that the whole congregation of Israel committed their first act of disobedience with the help of a kid [se'ir] of goats. They refer to the sale of Joseph the righteous, in whose story it is said: And they killed a kid of goats, and so on (Bereishit 37:31). Do not regard this reason as feeble. For the end of all these actions is to establish firmly in the soul of every disobedient individual the constant need for remembering and making mention of his sin - as it said: And my sin is ever before me (Tehillim 51:5) - and that he, his descendents, and the descendants of his descendants, must seek forgiveness for the sin by an act of obedience belonging to the same species as the act of disobedience...
Inasmuch as the he-goat that was sent forth into the wilderness served wholly to atone for great sins, so that there was no sin-offering of the congregation that served as atonement in as great a measure as that goat, which was as it were the bearer of all the sins, it was not to receive at all such treatment as being slaughtered or burnt or sacrificed, but had to be removed to as great a distance as possible and sent forth to a land that is cut off, I mean one that was separated from habitation. No one has any doubt that sins are not bodies that may be transported from the back of one individual to that of another. But all these actions are parables serving to bring forth a form in the soul so that a passion toward repentance should result: We have freed ourselves from all our previous actions, cast them behind our backs, and removed them to an extreme distance.
(RaMBaM, Guide of the
Perplexed III:46, following the Pines translation)
"Gifts
to the Poor" - Human Reformation and Social Justice
For the Lord, may He be
blessed, wanted His chosen people to be adorned with every good and precious
moral virtue, and that they be endowed with blessed souls and magnanimous spirits.
I have already written that the soul is affected by actions so that it may be
good and that the Lord's blessing be upon it. There is no doubt that when one
abandons a portion of his fruits in the field so that the needy might enjoy
them, his soul will enjoy satisfaction and a correct and blessed spirit, and
that the Lord, may He be blessed, will satisfy him with His beneficence and his
soul shall rest in goodness.
(Sefer HaHinukh, Positive Commandment 213)
You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger - It is evident that these laws are not made
for the direct purpose of the actual maintenance of the poor. Even the poor man
himself has to leave his gleanings, the forgotten sheaf, and the edge
of the field from his own field to other poor people! It is clear that, at
once at the harvest, at the moment when a person takes home that which Nature
and his own hard-work has yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching
words "my own" in his mouth, these laws are to remind every member of
the Nation, and to demand an act of recognition from him, of the fact that this
"my own" includes for everybody the duty of caring for others who are
needy... that in God's holy state the care for the poor and the stranger
without property is not a matter which is left to the greater or lesser
soft-hearted feelings of sympathy... but is raised to a God-given right to the
poor, and a God-ordained duty to the owners of property from God.
(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 19:10, Isaac Levy translation)
Readers
respond
My friend, Yossi Penini, published a pleasant, interesting, and sociable article in issue number 387 of Shabbat Shalom. That is all well and good, but it is built upon a common mistake, one made even by serious and important rabbis. There does exist a biblical holiday marking the entry to the Land, and its function is to complete the epic story of Israel's beginnings, namely - the festival of Shavuot. In the days approaching Shavuot, upon bringing the first fruits to the Temple, every householder had to recite the special declaration which appears in the beginning of parashat Ki Tavo. Each Israelite would return to the nation's foundations: The Patriarchs (the preamble to national history), the Exodus from Egypt (celebrated on Pessah), and the entry into the Land (celebrated on Shavuot). The recitation for the first fruits was deemed so important by the early rabbis that after the Second Temple's destruction, they decided to enter the entire text into the Pessah Seder, "until the end of the entire passage." After centuries of exile, new generations of rabbis who wished to justify Diaspora life "revamped" the holidays: They censored the text of the recitation, cutting out all mention of the entry into the Land. Furthermore, they completely changed the significance of Shavuot. The goal of the Exodus became the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai, rather than the entry into the Land and the return to agricultural work.
Secular Zionism has started off on the road towards reinstating Shavuot with its original significance, but religious Zionism seems stuck in the ways of Diaspora religious thinking, so distant from the reality of a people living in its land.
Ilan Michel
Yossi Penini, author of the article, writes:
Checking the mishnah cited by Rabbi Dr. Ilan Michel (Pessahim 10:4), it is easy to determine that it reflects the ritual of Pessah night in the period when the Temple still existed, and not after its destruction, as the respondent's comments imply. That same mishnah includes a version of the third of the "Four Questions": "All other nights we eat meat roasted, scalded, and cooked, this night it is all roasted." This refers to the paschal sacrifice itself, and that is why the question has been reformulated in our own Haggadot.
And what of the recitation for the first fruits, and its exposition while the paschal lamb was being eaten, in the days when Israel dwelled in its own Land? - Yes, this is a "fifth question"...
As for the Haggadah itself. It brings the recitation of the first fruits accompanied by an expanded version of the Sifrei's (Ki Tavo 301) expositions, but it is missing the verse, And He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Devarim 26:9). Perhaps this teaches us that the Sages considered the liberation from slavery, in each and every generation, to be of much greater importance than dwelling in the Land of Israel ("a hint is sufficient for the wise").