As we get ready for our Passover seders next week, we will look at the number four and its significance in the ritual.
A man asks his rabbi, “Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?” And the rabbi replies, “How should we answer?”
Often when I work with conversion students raised in another faith, they share that one of the aspects of Judaism that feels most appealing is the freedom to question. Rather than be told what to believe, these students appreciate the encouragement to wonder and ask and explore. I should note that there are students—young and old alike—who express their frustration about this very concept, wanting to just know “what Judaism says.” But, I digress, since questions are the topic of the moment. Because, of course, questions are central to the seder. The Maggid, the telling of the story, cannot begin until those Four Questions are asked.
In a review of the book Answering a Question with a Question: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Jewish Thought by Lewis Aron and Libby Henik, Daniel Stuhlmann writes: Answering a question with a question, a hallmark of Jewish Talmudic tradition and of psychoanalysis, often is an act of freedom. In a ritual that celebrates a journey from bondage to freedom, it is a profound statement that the opening word is one that perhaps a slave is never allowed to ask aloud: Why? Educator Dassee Berkowitz teaches: Passover is the festival of questions. Slaves and those in bondage can’t ask questions. Questions are the medium by which we know we are a free people.
When you think of the power of learning at a young age, or whenever you encounter your first seder, that power comes from questioning and debating instead of dogma and compliance. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks writes beautifully of the Jewish imperative to question. He said: “To be a Jewish child is to learn how to question. Against cultures that see unquestioning obedience as the ideal behaviour of a child, Jewish tradition, in the Haggadah, regards the ‘child who has not learned to ask’ as the lowest, not the highest, stage of development.”
Whether you are 3 or 93, may you continue to ask why, never losing your curiosity or commitment to learning.
— Rabbi Sari Laufer