Celebrating our capacity to question

Jewish people are not only the People of the Book, we are surely also the People of the Question. Inquiry, debate, argument are part of our culture. This is evident in our feisty communal interactions, our boldness and our bolshiness. It is a source of strength but can also be dangerous when confronting rigid and authoritarian individuals or leaders.

We have been a questioning and questing people from our very inception. The story of the Jewish people starts with Abraham who is the Master Questioner. Abraham has the audacity to question God himself: Will not the creator of Justice act justly? And ever since then we have not stopped questioning the world around us.

Judaism is in love with questioning and rarely tries to silence a question asked from a genuine enquirer. Religious faith, for us, is certainly not blind and accepting.

If anything characterises festival of Pesach it is the capacity to question. On the first night of the festival, we begin our journey through the seder meal with the four questions, we then proceed to the four enquirers or children and in many ways the entire evening is held together by questions both formal and informal.

The ability to live with difficult questions is a sign of a mature mind. As the Yiddish expression reminds us, ‘we don't die from asking questions’.

The most famous query of the seder night and its Haggadah handbook is undoubtedly : Why or how is this night different from all other nights? It is far more than a technical enquiry about matza, bitter herbs and double dipping. It's an existential cri de coeur evoking the long black nights of Jewish history. One commentator sees it as referring to four different dark periods of our past.