Different From All Other Nights

The Haggadah, or prayerbook for the Passover seder speaks of four children: the wise child, the rebellious child, the simple child, and the child who doesn’t know how to ask. All four of these children are to be told the story of Passover, but each must be told in a different way, suited to her attitude and understanding. Between them, these four children are supposed to represent the entire Jewish people, but there’s one child missing.

She isn’t wise, since she’d never ask about all the statutes and laws. Nor is she rebellious, since she includes herself among the Jewish people. Simple? No, that’s too easy an excuse; and not knowing how to ask is not the problem. This child, the fifth child, is the bored child.

“How many more pages until we get to the food?” she asks. “I learned this in Hebrew school.”

You might explain to her that it is the duty of every Jew to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt (whether or not it is historically supported) on Passover; you might remind her that it’s her duty to re-hear it and make it part of herself. But, in response, she might ask, “Then why do we recite it from a dry book in a language nearly none of us could understand without the English translation alongside? Why don’t we discuss real issues of slavery, like institutional racism in North America and globalized corporations hiring Third-World workers for abysmal wages?”

She has a point: could there possibly be a less involving way to discuss the important issues tied up in our story of slavery, freedom, and redemption? Once the page is turned, do you remember which rabbi inferred how many plagues from the particular wording of the Torah? If you’re honest, do you care?

The bored child doesn’t mind the songs, at least. Everyone likes to sing, although, if hard-pressed, they probably can’t explain most of the lyrics. It’s like shul. The melodies are lovely and familiar, but how many North American Jews can translate the words of Adon Olam? When we stand for Amidah, that’s the bored child whispering in your ear, “Do you think G-d really cares that you can read these Hebrew words off the page? Are you just avoiding the effort of making a real emotional commitment? Isn’t this spiritual plagiarism?”

You point out that generations of Jewish people fought hard to maintain these traditions: during the Holocaust, under the persecution of Tsarist Russia, through the Spanish Inquisition. To abandon these traditions now would be to abandon those who died and suffered to uphold them – those who sacrificed everything so we Jews of today could hide our Afikomans and coax our children into asking the Four Questions.

The bored child is sceptical: “They died for the traditional trappings because, to them, those trappings represented fundamental Jewish beliefs. They don’t anymore. To keep the dead limbs is to discard the living core.”

In the end, you can’t argue away the bored child, because the dilemma she presents has no easy answer. Past and present both feature in giving meaning to a ceremony or a prayer; something has meaning both by virtue of what it means now and what people used to take it to mean. Even though there are those who wish to use the swastika in its original, ancient meaning as a spiritual symbol, the way in which it was used in the recent past prevents people from accepting it as one now; even though nearly everyone in Elizabethan England thought of the liver as the seat of passion, to make it a symbol of the same today would be obscure and ambiguous.

It seems like religious rites are a special case because we demand of them that they have meaning: if you aren’t feeling anything as you pray, then, in some sense, you aren’t praying. The question is, is it enough to feel a link to your past? Is a sense of tradition enough to compensate for a sense of spirituality?

Obviously, these questions are complicated somewhat by the fact that the answer is going to be different depending on whether you believe in G-d, and what you believe a good G-d should or does demand of G-d’s followers. Would G-d rather you follow the letter of the law or its spirit, if you have to choose? Would G-d place more value on tradition or sincerity – or would G-d demand nothing less than both?

There’s no simple answer for the bored child, because, unlike her four siblings, the questions she poses aren’t easy ones.

But if the Haggadah were to prescribe an answer, it would probably run something like this:

“I don’t know. But don’t stop asking.”