THE GOING OUT FROM EGYPT SERVES AS THE VERY
‘FOUNDATION AND SEAT OF JEWISH FAITH’ BECAUSE IT
WAS THEN THAT HASHEM’S HASHGACHA
(SUPERVISION) OF HIS WORLD AND THE JEWISH
PEOPLE BECAME EVIDENT TO EVERYONE.
In other words, in the absence of a really fantastic memory regarding what
transpired at the prior year’s Pesach Seder (or a considerable amount of prepping,
as we often do with our children nowadays), how could a child know at the
point in the Seder at which The Four
Questions are asked that (1) only matzah
will be consumed at the Seder meal; (2)
maror will be one of the vegetables consumed; (3) two different vegetables will
be dipped (as only one vegetable, karpas,
will have been dipped by this point in the
Seder); and (4) matzah and wine will be
consumed exclusively while leaning?
In fact, the question about leaning
wasn’t even in the original version of The
Four Questions, but was a later substitution! The original question found in the
mishna was actually: “On all other nights
we eat meat that has been roasted, boiled
or cooked, but tonight we eat only roasted meat.” But again, a child would not
know that only roasted meat would be
served at the Seder until he had made it
all the way through to the very end of the
meal and had the Afikomen, the dessert
of the Seder meal (which, when the Beis
HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, stood consisted of the roasted Pesach offering – a
young goat or sheep – eaten along with
matzah, maror, and charoses – the original shwarma)!
So, what is the “mah nishtana” that our
Sages intended for the child to ask?
To understand the answer, we first
need a bit of orientation to the Seder.
Normally, be it Shabbos or yom tov, a
child is used to coming to the dining
room table, hearing his father make Kiddush and then having some wine to
drink. Immediately afterwards, everyone
40 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 82
washes his hands and says the brocha of
“al natilas yadayim” in preparation for
eating the challah that will be distributed
after the father has made the brocha of
“hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz”. At the
Seder, the child begins to recognise that
something funny is going on when everyone washes their hands – and sometimes,
for those who have such a custom, actually proceed to wash their hands right at
the table (using large basins) – without
saying a brocha. And then, instead of having the usual (warm) yummy challah, the
child receives a vegetable (aka karpas),
such as potato or celery, which has been
dipped in salt water, and watches (a bit
stunned) as his father makes the brocha
of “borei p’ri ha’adama” before everyone
eats the karpas. And why do we engage in
such unusual behaviour? Precisely so the
child will start to ask spontaneously (a la
“mah nishtana” fashion): “Why are we
dipping (vegetables) before we eat (our
meal)? We don’t normally do this!”3 And
this is also a pretty safe guess as to the
reason that we do most unusual things at
the Pesach Seder: in order to capture the
attention of the children, get them to notice that something different from the
norm is happening right before their very
eyes, and encourage them to ask about
these differences.
After we’ve finished eating the karpas,
the Seder continues with the father breaking the middle matzah, setting the larger
piece aside for the Afikomen, and then
holding up the broken piece and stating the
paragraph of “ha lachma anya”, after which
he replaces the smaller piece back in between the other two whole matzahs, where
it had been before being broken in half.
At this point4, the mishna states: “The
second cup of wine is poured and here
the child asks his father.”5 And what exactly is the question that the child asks?
Rashi comments on this mishna that the
child asks: “Mah nishtana (ie, why) did
[we] pour a second cup of wine before
having [our] meal (ie, washing our hands
and making the brocha of “hamotzi” on
some type of bread)?”6 What the child is
supposed to be bothered by – so much so
that he just can’t help but ask at this
point – is the fact that his father is suddenly having a second cup of wine before
the meal has even started! (Had a rough
a week, Dad?) Even if the child’s father
normally has more than one cup of wine
with his Shabbos or yom yov meal, the
significant difference here is that the
meal hasn’t even started! It’s as if the
child wants to remind his father,
“Ummm….Dad….are you forgetting
something? We haven’t even started our
meal yet and you already made Kiddush!”
And the Chayei Adam was not alone in
making this observation. No less than the
Rambam codifies7 what we are meant to
do at the Seder precisely like this mishna
and Rashi’s explanation: “Pour the second
cup and here the child asks (ie, on the
pouring of the second cup). The Korei (lit:
the reader; ie, the one leading the Seder)
asks, “Mah nishtana halailah hazeh m’kol
haleilos? (Why is this night different
from all other nights?)”
The entire point of our annual telling
over of the story of the exodus from Egypt
(sipur yetzias Mitzrayim) is to “implant
emunah (faith in Hashem) in the heart of
a child from the time that the child is very
young”, as the going out from Egypt serves
as the very “foundation and seat of Jewish
faith” because it was then that Hashem’s
hashgacha (supervision) of His world and
the Jewish people became evident to everyone.8 Out of concern for the proper
performance and fulfilment of this mitzvah9 of telling over the story of our exodus, our Sages required that questions be
asked (to the point out that even someone
who makes a Pesach Seder by himself is
obligated to ask himself these questions!)
thereby forcing the father to answer the