The Four Children of the Pesach Seder

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, from The Jonathan Sacks Haggadah

It may be that the four sons are not different people, but successive stages in the development of a child. We begin by being unable to ask. We accept the world as given. The next stage in intellectual growth is curiosity (the child "with a simple nature"). We ask questions with no ulterior motive. We simply want to learn. This is often followed by a period of testing and challenging the values we have received (the "wicked" child, or the adolescent). The Hebrew world for adolescent, na'ar, also means "shake off." The teenage years are ones where we develop our own identity by pitting received values to the test. This can sometimes lead to rebellion as a form of self-exploration. The culmination of cognitive growth is "wisdom," the point at which we have internalized the values of our heritage and are sufficiently mature to see their objective merits. Although the Haggadah uses the word "wise," rabbinic tradition preferred the phrase talmid hakham, a "wise disciple." Wisdom, in Judaism, is not a state, but a process of constant learning. That is why it lies as much in the questions one asks as in the answers. Every answer is itself the prelude to a deeper question, and thus there is constant growth as we move to new levels of understanding.

The Four Sons

The four sons are a vignette of the Jewish people. One asks because he wants to hear the answer. A second asks because he does not want to hear the answer. A third asks because he does not understand. The fourth does not ask because he doesn't understand that he doesn't understand. Ours has never been a monolithic people.

Yet there is a message of hope in this family portrait. Thought they disagree, they sit around the same table, telling the same story. Though they differ, they stay together. They are part of a single family. Even the rebel is there, although part of him does not want to be. This too is who we are.

The Jewish people is an extended family. We argue, we differ, sometimes to are deeply divided. Yet we are part of the same story. We share the same memories. At difficult times we can count on one another. We feel each other's pain. Out of this multiplicity of voices comes something none of us could achieve alone. Sitting next to the wise child, the rebel is not fated to remain a rebel. Sitting next to the rebel, the wise child may share his wisdom rather than keep to himself. The one who cannot ask will in time learn how. The simple child will learn complexity. The wise child will learn simplicity. Each draws strength from the others, as we draw strength from belonging to a people.

From "A Different Night" by Noam Zion and David Dishon

A Reminder for Parents! Thus far the Haggadah has given guidelines to the parent who is full of earnest enthusiasm to pass on an historical and cultural "message" to the younger generation. If ever there was an event which appears to the parent's desire to bring their youth-culture-centered children to appreciate the old values of cultural and ethic pride and identification, the Pesach Seder is it! Here lies a dangerous pitfall for the parent-educator. The leader of the seder is likely to concentrate on the text of the Haggadah without sufficiently taking into consideration the audience - the younger generation - and their level of interest. Absorbed with the sales-pitch, the salesperson often forgets the customer!

From A Passover Haggadah, with comments by Elie Weisel

For Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch...the four sons symbolize four generations. The first follows the precepts of the father, the second rebels against them, the third submits without understanding them. As for the last, he doesn't know even that he doesn't know. In other words, there is regression and loss. The more removed each generation is from Sinai, the less it knows, the more complacent it becomes....

Interestingly, it is thanks to the fourth child that we are reading the most important verse of the Seder: "And you shall tell your son on that day..." This is the essence of our tradition. What is the meaning of tradition? The Hebrew masorah comes from the word limor - to communicate. A Jew must communicate a tradition. Not to do so is to mutilate it. As a Jew it is my duty to tell my child not only my story, but also the story of my story, which is also my child's story...

From A Night to Remember, by Paul Cowan, (ed. by Michael Zion and Noam Zion)

One might identify four generations - since the great emigration of Eastern European Jews to the New World began in the 1880s. The first generation of immigrants is the WISE child who knows and feels comfortable with Jewish tradition. The second generation is the REBEL who in the name of progress and Westernization rejects their parents' Judaism after having imbibed it at home. The third generation is assimilated. There is little knowledge and little resentment, but there is still SIMPLE curiosity about the customs of their grandparents. Finally, a fourth generation, without knowledge or even mild curiosity, is born. They DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ASK. They might be called "orphans in history" lacking in any the resources of Jewish wisdom against which to struggle and from which to draw personal meaning.