Published: 8 April 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
RABBI RALPH GENENDE: The four questions for children at Seder are a springboard for how we should be interrogating each other in today's chaotic world
I LOVE A GOOD question. It challenges the mind, it stimulates sensitivity, it opens the doors of perception. A fine question is always better than a mediocre answer.
The Yiddish expression puts it that you don’t die from questions. While that is true in a civil society, questioning authority and power can be dangerous. Think Russia, China, North Korea or Myanmar.
Jewish tradition has always savoured the quality of a questing question. In fact, the Hebrew word for wisdom, chochma, is a play on the words koach mah, which mean the power of what and why. Jews love to question and challenge; this has shaped the Jewish intellectual pursuit and our contribution to civilisation.
We are currently in the Jewish season of questioning. During the Hebrew month of Nissan in which the Passover/Pesach festival will fall, we ask ourselves questions about how we can best be prepared for the springtime festival (in Israel), how we can properly prepare our homes and our kitchens, our souls and ourselves for the eight-day celebration.
On the first night of the festival, we will sit around the table with our families and enjoy a sumptuous meal and a stupendous discussion. Questions are integral to the evening – we encourage children and adults to participate in this form of Socratic dialogue.
The famous section for kids in the Haggadah is premised on questions – the fabled quartet (Mah Nishtana): How and why is this night different from all others?
The four questions are a springboard for the unexpected and contemporaneous ways we should be interrogating the text and each other.
This year, these are four of the questions I will be asking:
What’s the point of Pesach in the face of Putin?
I will argue that Pesach is about the confrontation with tyranny, that Pharaoh was a ruthless autocrat who believed only in power and ego – he saw himself as the great Ra, the Sun God. Despite his allegiance to the sun, he liked nothing better than, as DH Lawrence once said, to “put out the sun in other people’s lives”.
