How to Keep Your Kids at Your Seder

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Friday, April 28, 2006 • Modified Monday, July 3, 2006

Why should our childen want to sit so long at a long seder. So much talking, mumbling, praying, eating, and drinking? Why should I suffer this different night from all other nights? How might we to convince our children to invest their time and their attention for such a heavy evening?

Midrash Sifre Deuteronomy 46 tells us that our we are required to speak to our children in the Holy language, Hebrew and "to teach him Torah. We are taught a similar law with the same diction in the Mishnah, Pesahim 10:4 that after the second cup is mixed or poured, the child asks what the child will ask. And if the child does not appreciate the differences between Passover and all other nights, the father "teaches him," i.e., the child to ask questions. From the above comparison we learn the following about the covenantal Judaism called Torah:

1. The father does not assume the role not of authority figure, but Torah figure who teaches by appropriate word and sacred deed
2. One teaches Torah to one's child, and the child is encouraged to ask what the child will, without being prompted or programmed to ask by communal convention.
3. Only if the child does not know how to ask does the father teach the child how and what to ask.
4. The four questions are to be asked ideally by the child, out of a real curiosity and not as a pre-packaged formula or ritual
5. The four questions recited by the child is a less than ideal method. Questions are ideally spontaneous, probing, and inquisitive.

We teach our children to speak Hebrew, the holy language. No dirty words, swearing, sarcasm, insults, or racial epithets. We are to speak with precision, respect, refinement, kindness, and care. And we use this holy lexicon to inspire the young Jew to ask the right questions, his or her own questions, to embark on their search for the sacred.

By teaching your child what and how to ask, you are teaching your child how to think, act, and speak not like a member of an ethnic tribe or cousin's club, but like an authentic Torah Jew. You share your heritage with your child so that when the child compares the atmosphere and attitude of the home to the dirty words, swearing, sarcasm, insults and racial epithets of the street, he or she on their own will recognize that the home is where one's values are forged. The father is not an authority figure, but an authoritative figure. Just as Isaac walked willingly with Abraham, together, sharing a mission and commitment, the father invites and does not command commitment. It would not help. But by teaching your child how to ask, and by answering your child with respect and by example, with words that are consistent with your actions, you will be morally superior to and more convincing the other worlds in which your child will travel and which will compete with you for your children's loyalty..

When we command our children to ask canned formulaic questions, we are not learning Torah and we are not answering the command to "teach our children." We are asking questions which do not talk to us, and we are offering answers to questions not being asked. We are instead of acting like Jews who welcome the dialectic and probing of the inquisitive mind, we stifle the probing mind by demanding the performance of rituals which reflect loyalty to the expectations of the tribe but are not necessarily sanctifying commandments. A conditioned culture than only allows canned questions, but stifles real, sincere, and independent probing, and that ritualizes appropriate responses is a culture that will inspire boredom at best and revolt at worse. Just as the Golden Calf was an image that is manipulated by the mob who forced Aaron to erect it, canned questions in our historical present deflect real concerns questions and confuse the routine and ruts of the familiar with the command and excitement of religious discovery. An education which gives the canned question and "accepted" answer without the dialectic probing may be an education done by Jews, but it is not a Jewish education.

There are many people who succumb to the pagan idea that we accept authority blindly, as demanded by Pharaoh, emperor of Upper an Lower Egypt in antiquity and by those who fear being questioned regarding their own claims to know God's will more fully than the canonical record of that will in the Judaism of the Dual Torah. Some complain that the Da Vinci Code is anti-Catholic. There are indeed mistakes in the book. The Gnostic writings are not found in the Dead Sea Library, but at an Egyptian site called Nag Hammadi. It is claimed that there is no source that Jesus married Mary Magadelene. While there is no source for this claim, the claim remains plausible because 1] Jesus hung around women of not the best repute, 2] Mark's Gospel, written c.a. 60 CE, shows discomfort when dealing with Jesus' biological origins, 3] the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke conveniently provide two versions of the Jesus's biological origins, and both the Romans and the Jews argued that his biological father was a Roman soldier named Panthera. And if one requires proof for suggesting in mythic fiction that Jesus married Mary Magdelene, the claim that the Gospel's resurrection narrative reflects historical fact must also be questioned. By dismissing all criticism and alternative readings as bashing and heresy, we deny the right to question. People who claim to always be right are usually wrong. The right to question protects human beings against error of ignorance and the arrogance of power..

The Jewish Left claims that it believes in pluralism. But recently, the theologically liberal Conservative Movement argues 1] that Jewish law must be rejected and 2] pluralism cannot be extended to those who are not egalitarian. In other words, one cannot be a good Jew if one is Orthodox. In point of fact, the only way to be a bad Jew is to challenge the truth claims of the secular Left, which the Jewish religious Left rarely if ever does. This seems to be a fundamentalism not very different in structure from the religious right, and it is motivated by politics and conscience, not probity and tolerance.

The Jewish religious right does allow canned questions, with canned, conventional, expected, accepted and ritualized answers. Probing questions are considered gauche, rude, inappropriate and a sign that the questioner is not really an insider, an unzerer yid. Instead of probing the holy text for authentic meaning, we are commanded to obey the rules of the holy person, whose holy words are not subject to review because they are closer to God than we. They are great and we are not. Some rabbis claim the right to rule on the basis of intuition, and other rabbis, however Orthodox, are not really good enough do not have a right even to a reasoned opinion, because their biases poison their points of view. If we have real questions, there are no answers. And if we merit not to have questions, we do not need answers. The simple Orthodox Jew asks, "and where is it written a] that your intuition counts, b] my reasoning is not worthy of consideration," and was the Torah given not to you but to us all"? And the Oral Torah reminds us that we are commanded to learn Torah and to teach Torah and we are commanded to ask, because the one overwrought with shame cannot learn, the intimidator should not teach, and according to the Haggadah, we are commanded to teach our children how to teach, so that they return to us, to our table, and to our Tradition, for answers.

The Jewish child will return to the seder table, plate, and evening because she or he realizes that the God who took us out of Egypt kept us alive to the season of Freedom because God commands that we be free to be the best that we can be. We obey God who demands that we refine our souls, and we reject the social Judaism that commands a] confine, 2] control, and 3] conform. If Moses our model and teacher was anything, he was not a conformist. And the same Torah that was given to Moses was given to us all.

When answering the four questions, we tell the entire narrative of the Exodus. The Dayyenu song tells the whole narrative. And in this narrative the Torah is given to us, all of us, and not a privileged few. And precisely because the Torah was given to all of us, we all have the command to ask, and what did God say to me when I left Egypt. According to God, the question "why?" is always kosher and the answer that is acceptable must be found not in intuition, but induction, not in declaration, but in demonstration, and with decorum but not deference, because our redemption did not happen yet. So in the season of asking the right question, may we merit to enjoy the broiled steak of the Passover offering in the rebuilt and redeemed city of Peace, Jerusalem.

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