Parsha Themes Archive

This shiur is dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandfather, Yosef ben Meir. For many years, my family would make the trip for Pesach to Cleveland, where my grandparents lived, and spend the Seder with them. Some of my earliest memories of him place him at the head of the table, leading the Seder with my father assisting. Many of the pieces of this shiur were first articulated and developed in his presence by my family and myself over years of Sedarim. In view of this goal, parts of this shiur will be somewhat autobiographical. I hope that this contributes to the shiur rather than distracting from it. May my grandfather’s memory be a blessing.

As a child, I prepared for Pesach by plagiarizing divrei Torah from various sefarim (books) and participating in the annual effort at school to put together a handbook of all the divrei Torah pilfered by myself and all of my classmates so that we could parrot these gems at the Seder. My father, disgusted with our uncreativity and never a great fan of canned divrei Torah anyway, drew the line at our reading these handbooks out loud at the Seder, and insisted that my brothers and I at least know the divrei Torah well enough to repeat them by heart. Also, of course, we had to forbear from repeating the inevitable “bi-mheira be-yameinu Amen!” (“May he come speedily in our days, Amen!”, a reference to the Messiah) which seemed to close every single one of those divrei Torah. We were limited, too, in the frequency of our contributions as well: disappointed, we were each forced to choose only three or four places in the Haggada where we would deliver ourselves of these sermonic contributions.

Let me make it clear: these limitations were not imposed because the Seder was taking too long. My father would happily have sat up half the night engaging in serious exchange with us about the experience of slavery in Egypt, the redemption, its aftermath, and the implications for us today. The problem was that if approached in a certain way, the Seder would cease to be what it describes itself to be -- “In every generation, every person is required to see himself as if *he* *himself* had left Egypt,” the personal recreation of a cataclysmic, world-defining experience, the creation and internalization of memory, mentality, and national identity -- and would become an empty, automatic-pilot-guided, irrelevant ritual performed with the limbs but having no real relationship with the mind and, ultimately, the heart.

I would bet that unfortunately, the reality of many Sedarim in many homes is similar; some of you know what I’m talking about because you’ve been there. Autopilot. Instead of “telling the story of the Exodus” and communicating its excitement and personal relevance, we “recite the Haggada.” Has anyone out there ever experienced any excitement “reciting” *anything*?

What is the Seder supposed to be, and why doesn’t it work for so many of us? How are we supposed to be handling it?

The single most important element of making a Seder “work” is coming to the realization that the Haggada is not there to do it for you. It is *your* responsibility. If you look to the Haggada for *inspiration,* you’re looking in the right place; if you look to the Haggada to make the Exodus *happen* for you (and your children; we’ll get to them in a bit) -- “In every generation, every person must see himself . . .” -- you’re dreaming. Reading the Haggada with this kind of expectation is like sitting down to read a playwright’s notes for a drama he has in mind and expecting that an award-winning musical will unfold magically before your eyes as you sit passively in your easy chair. The Haggada is only a set of notes and strategies for you to develop, using your imagination, creativity, and knowledge; it is not a complete drama, with script, staging, scenery, and songs included. The songs at the end of the Seder are just words until you sing them; the text of the Haggada is just text unless you make it come to life.

Before we explore how the text of the Haggada is designed as a resource for you, I want to offer my personal recommendation for which Haggada you should use. Now, we all probably know that there are hundreds of different Haggadot out there and that more come out every year. Ostensibly, these Haggadot are there to enhance our Seder. But for most of us, this is simply a mistake. Armed with these interpretation-stuffed Haggadot, we cruise through the Seder in “being entertained by someone else” mode. We follow along with everyone else as the Seder goes on, and when things get slow we glance at the commentary for “depth.” But going through the Seder this way reinforces the impression that the job of making the Seder happen is not ours, it is the Haggada’s. This being the case, the Seder can get only as exciting as the highlights of the commentary we happen to be reading (and which we may choose to read to everyone else, to their chagrin). For the most part, we are safely protected from the responsibility of making our own personal meaning of the Seder and arriving at our own conclusions, and almost certainly, we are rendered deaf to the murmurings of our imagination and sense of creativity.

In view of these observations, I personally recommend the “Maxwell House Haggada,” familiar to many of us as the paper-covered, flimsy, no-frills model of Haggada. The truth is that any similar Haggadah will do; the point is that there is no commentary at all. The best Haggada, I believe, is one that will not distract us from the truly hard work of making the Seder come alive, unlike most Haggadot, which swamp us with interpretations of the Haggada. The intense focus on the *text* of the Haggada and the minutiae of its nuances and formulations can only reinforce our sense of the absolute centrality of the recitation of the Haggada, rather than the centrality of the story and our responsibility to communicate it at our Seder.

I have mentioned that it is our responsibility to “make the Seder happen.” But what does this mean? What is the goal of the Seder?

Let us take a parallel from another area of Jewish practice: if you have ever studied the nature of the mitzvah of “Talmud Torah” (the mitzvah to learn Torah), you will be aware that the Rambam’s formulation of this mitzvah is striking: in Sefer ha-Madda, Hilkhot Talmud Torah, the Rambam discusses the details of the mitzvah of learning Torah. As usual in the Rambam, this section of the Rambam’s halakhic code begins with a “koteret,” a “headline,” which tells us, before the Rambam begins the section, which mitzvot will be discussed therein:

“Hilkhot Talmud Torah: there are among them two positive obligations: 1) To teach Torah* 2) To honor its [Torah’s] teachers and those who know it [Torah].”

[*Note that some editions of the Rambam with vocalized text vocalize this as “li-lmod,” “to learn,” but I believe this is a mistake, as the rest of the Rambam’s presentation seems to imply.]

Apparently, the mitzvah is not to *learn* Torah, it is instead to *teach* Torah. [Contrast this with the Rambam’s formulation in Sefer ha-Mitzvot, Aseh 11, where the Rambam mentions both teaching and learning.] The distinction between teaching and learning becomes clearer as the Rambam develops the mitzvah in the first perek (chapter) of Hilkhot Talmud Torah:

1:1 -- “. . . A father is obligated to *teach* his son Torah . . . .”

1:2 -- “Just as a father is obligated to *teach* his son, he is also obligated to *teach* his grandson . . . . in fact, every sage of Israel is obligated to *teach* all students . . . .”

So far, every time the Rambam mentions the mitzvah of Talmud Torah, he formulates it as teaching, not learning. But does the Rambam not admit that one has an obligation to learn oneself, and if so, that this obligation would have to be formulated as “learning,” not “teaching”?

1:3 -- “. . . One whose father did not teach him [Torah] is obligated to *TEACH HIMSELF* . . . .”

The answer is no -even one’s obligation tlearn Torah is formulated by the Rambam as an act of teaching! When one learns, one must be teaching oneself. Later on (1:8), the Rambam does use the word “learning” as opposed to “teaching oneself,” but this is only a shorthand for the latter term, since he has already clearly stated many times that the obligation is to teach.

Our job at the Pesach Seder is right up the same alley: just as the command to learn Torah comes as a command to teach ourselves and others, the command to tell over the story of the Exodus (sippur yetziat Mitzrayyim) comes as a command to teach the story to ourselves and others. This is explicit in the Gemara:

(Pesahim 116a): The rabbis learned: “If one’s son is wise, his son asks him; if he is not wise, his wife asks him; if not, he ASKS HIMSELF.”

Now, we would not be too surprised if the Gemara had said that even one who has no one to whom to tell the story of the Exodus must tell it over anyway to himself. But here we have much more than that -- we have what appears to be a close parallel to the Rambam’s formulation of the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. Both the mitzvah of retelling the Exodus story and the mitzvah of Talmud Torah are formulated as requirements to *teach.* Both mitzvot, therefore, lead to the striking formulation that one is required “to teach oneself.” Ultimately, we are called upon not to be a nation of learners, but a nation of autodidacts. We do not so much learn as teach ourselves and others.

Clearly, this should have far-ranging applications for how we learn Torah when we are learning on our own; instead of learning, we should be engaging in a substantively different process: one of teaching ourselves. Learning and teaching are dramatically different activities. But the Rambam’s formulation of learning Torah as self-teaching should imply to us that the two experiences should be much more similar than they are. Since our real focus is the mitzvah of sippur yetziat Mitzrayyim, however, we will leave for another time the development of the idea that our learning should be self-teaching, and instead return to our focus on the teaching going on at the Seder.

The idea that our job at the Seder is to teach is not an idea invented by Hazal. In fact, the Haggada itself clearly shows us the roots of this didactic posture in the Torah itself. The Torah anticipates that some day our children will turn to us and ask what all of these Pesach rituals are about.. The Torah prepares us with the basic answers. Naturally, different types of children should receive different types of answers. These answers, and the type of child to whom each answer is to be given, are spelled out in the Haggada in the section we all know well: the section of the “four sons,” the wise, the wicked, the simple, the silent. These children and their questions come from the Torah itself (with significant interpretation and elaboration added by Hazal in the Haggada, of course); see Shemot 12:26, 13:8, and Devarim 6:20.

The Torah, then, anticipates our children’s questions and guides our responses to them. This makes us teachers. But what the Pesach Seder adds is that not only are questions something we have to be *prepared* to answer, they are in fact something we must work hard to *provoke* from children (or from ourselves, if we are doing this alone):

Pesahim 116a, Mishnah:

“They pour the second cup [of the four cups of wine], and then the child should ask his father.”

Rashi’s interpretation of the above Mishnah (and that of his grandson Rashbam) make it clear that the child is supposed to be made curious by the fact that dad is having a second cup poured for him, and the child consequently questions the practice. The Mishna continues:

“If the child is not aware/mature, his father teaches him: ‘Ma nishtana . . . .”

It should be clear, then, that what most of us do at the Seder may be wrong! The Mishnah instructs us to arouse curiosity by doing something strange -- pouring what appears to be another kiddush cup even though we have already made kiddush -- and thereby creating an opportunity to draw the child into the meaning of the night and its practices. No one ever needs an answer unless he has a question! The “Ma Nishtana,” which supplies a questionless youngster with questions, is only a last resort -- if the child is not aware of the strangeness of the second kiddush cup or for some other reason fails to ask, we are supposed to turn to the child and point out how strange the night is. Instead, since we are laboring under the false assumption that the Haggada is the “text to be recited” at the Seder, the be-all and end-all of the Seder experience, we dutifully instruct our children to recite these questions, which are not their own and do not really trouble them!

Moreover, the “Ma Nishtana” may not even be a set of questions, but instead a set of exclamations -- it is not, “How is this night different than all other nights?”, followed by a list of some of the differences; it is a statement of wonder: “How *different* this night is from all other nights! What a weird night this is! We eat only matza, we eat bitter vegetables (on purpose!), we dip things, and we eating leaning over! How strange!” This exclamation is supposed to wake up any kid who isn’t already curious about the weird things we are doing. It is supposed to make him curious. It is supposed to make him wonder, “What does this all mean?”, a question which provides us with the opportunity to thrill him or her with the story of our salvation from Egyptian slavery. Instead, having put these so-called “questions” into the mouth of a child with no questions of his or her own, we dutifully “recite” the answer of the Haggada to the questions: “Avadim Hayinu . . . .”

Which brings me to my next point: who are we kidding? We all know what the Seder is all about, and as kids we knew too. Our own kids, if we have any, also know what the Seder is all about. Most of our kids know much better than *we* do what all the symbols mean, why we’re eating matza and not hametz, and why we’re eating maror and haroset, and dipping things into other things, and breaking matza in half, etc., etc., etc. The reason they know all this is because we pay teachers to teach them all these things at school! Now, that being the case, can we really expect them to be curious about these supposedly unfamiliar, weird behaviors in which we are engaging? Obviously not. The only option, then, is to take matters into our own hands and arouse their curiosity in other ways. It is incumbent on us to do things which are completely out of the ordinary, preferably fun, perhaps involve eating something, and most important of all, we should absolutely not tell the children about it before the Seder! The goal is to evoke a “Why are you *doing* that?!”

If you are particuarly daring and adventurous, you may find this example inviting: dress up in costume! Designate some people to dress as Egyptians, some as Israelite slaves, maybe act out a scene. (I did this last year. It worked.)

Just to further support the idea that the Haggada is not the “text to be recited” at the Seder, and that it is instead a guidebook and source of inspiration for communicating the meaning of the Exodus to our families, let’s take a look at a few key sections of “Magid,” the part of the Seder in which we are supposedly focused on telling the story of the Exodus.

If the focus of the Haggada is just to tell us the story, or to provide a convenient summary of the highlights of the story so we can report it to our children/ourselves, then all of this material is confusing and extraneous. Why are we watching other people’s Sedarim, hearing about different kinds of children, asking other people’s questions and giving answers which are not answers? If this is the text for the Seder, why does it keep dancing around the point, which is the story?

Not to belabor the point, but the answer is that the Haggada is not a “text to be recited.” Besides being a convenient source for the Exodus story material which comes later, the Haggada provides methodology: models of successful Sedarim and advice for how to relate to different child personalities so that we can successfully perform on this night as educators. Reading this material cover to cover at the Seder table (you know how it goes, each person reads a paragraph, maybe some brief discussion, maybe a devar Torah, sometimes a song) is like standing up in front of a classroom of students and reading to them not only the content of the lesson you have prepared, but also some passages from texts on teaching methodology which you photocopied and stapled into your lesson plan because you found that they would be helpful in delivering this lesson.

My point is not that the methodology parts are less important or should not be part of the Seder, but that we should consciously realize that they are distinct from the story itself. The reason they are part of the Haggada and should be part of our Seder is because we need to pass on to our children not only the content of the Exodus story, but also the tools for teaching it to the next generation. Of course, in order to do this properly, we need to be aware that these are tools and how they are to be used.

We have already mentioned some tactics offered by the Haggada for teaching: one of the most important was that in order to communicate with students/children, we have to grab them and make them curious. Ideally, we should do something to make them ask a question; if they are burning with a question, they are burning for an answer. Failing that, we should point out the anomalies ourselves: “Look at all the weird things we’re doing!” The Seder also contains other strategies for successful parental teaching:

On a final note, I want to offer one other piece of advice: instead of preparing divrei Torah, prepare only questions. Do not do any research about possible answers, and get the others at your Seder also to prepare questions but not answers. This is a risk, I acknowledge: we don’t have “the answers” right there on our crib sheet (i.e., devar Torah notes page), and we may not have answers to some of our questions when we finally finish the Seder. But several years of beautiful, electrifying Sedarim have shown me that the risk is well rewarded. If we trust our creativity and challenge ourselves and our families, we will be pleasantly surprised at our ability to collaborate and come up with answers we don’t already have going into the Seder. The opportunity and challenge to spontaneously synthesize answers to questions makes us able to think creatively, even if we are not particularly knowledgeable. In addition, asking questions accomplishes the basic goal of the Seder: provoking the others at the Seder to become involved in telling the story and making it meaningful.

Comments: please address all comments to eitan@juno.com

Archive: http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brutalist/608, believe that URL or not!

Subscribing: send a message to listproc@vjlists.com, leaving the “subject” line blank. In the body of the message, write, SUBSCRIBE PARSHA-THEMES your name

Unsubscribing: same as above, but substitute UNSUBSCRIBE