(RNS) — Tomorrow evening, Jews all over the world will sit around their tables for the Passover seder.
They will hardly be alone. Not only will the generations accompany them, so will four distinct children in the Haggadah: the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one and the one who does not even know enough to ask.
Just guess which one is my favorite. You got it: the wicked one (rasha). They are the one that I would want to hang out with.
Except, maybe “rebellious” is more accurate and more appropriate to describe this child. Why do I love them?
I relate to that child, as someone who rebels, challenges and asks questions — and shakes and stirs.
Here is how the Haggadah presents them (according to Sefaria):
“The wicked son, what does he say? What is this service to you?” “To you, he says, not to him.” When he sets himself apart from the community, he denies the very core of our beliefs. And you must set his teeth on edge and tell him, “Because of this the LORD acted for me when I came out of Egypt.”“For me,” and not for him; had he been there he would not have been redeemed.”
And, look at how artists over the centuries have portrayed this child.
The wicked son as a warrior: This was a common artistic motif in medieval Haggadot, in this case from Prague, 1526. Bearing arms was un-Jewish — in line with the refusal of Haredim to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. It was the idea that “nice Jewish boys don’t fight,” but the wicked one does.
The wicked son as an assimilated Jew: This is from the Szyk Haggadah, 1940. The wicked child is an Anglophile, dressed in riding gear of the British upper class. Here, I recall the legacy of Ralph Lauren, nee Lifshitz, who ironically designed a world Jews could only have dreamed of entering — the clubs they could not join, the tony suburbs in which they once could not live, the universities they could not attend (and some of which, today, have become increasingly uncomfortable for them).
The wicked son as a sardonic comedian: Groucho Marx (Dick Codor, 1981). The Marx brothers came from a German-Jewish immigrant family. But, of all the Marx brothers, Groucho is the one who consistently presents as “Jewish.” As Captain Spaulding in “Animal Crackers,” in the song “Hooray for Captain Spaulding,” he is heralded as “the African explorer,” to which he adds: “Did someone call me schnorrer (Yiddish for “beggar”)?” That was Groucho inserting his Jewish identity into a place you would hardly expect to find it.
The wicked son as wise ass: This is from a Haggadah produced in Chicago in 1879. The wise son looks like Maimonides, but the wicked one is smoking a cigar and tilting his chair backwards, creating distance between himself and the proceedings before him.
What about the wicked daughter?: Here’s one from the Haggadah, “A Night to Remember,” in an illustration by Michel Kichka. The wise daughter is a student of Talmud, while the wicked/rebellious one is wearing peace symbols, advocating for abortion rights and against animal testing.
So, who is the wicked or rebellious kid today?
The Haggadah speaks of the Jews as “you.” I, the wicked child, am not a part of “you.”
Some so-called rebellious Jews believe there should be no state of Israel and/or support Hamas. That means they support those who would harm Israel and Jews. I would rather not engage with them.
But the questioning child is one I believe we should include.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic — also the man who found himself invited to that virtual national security seder — writes in the “New American Haggadah”:
“What the wicked child is saying, in effect, is “the fate of my people is not my concern.” Here is a vexing demand sometimes made of young Jews by their elders in America today: You should worry about Jews more than you worry about non-Jews. In the shtetls of the Pale, or the ghettos of Morocco, this was not such a difficult thing to ask, because Jews were sequestered from the world. … But in America, a place that accepts, even embraces, its Jewish citizens, this becomes a more troubling proposition. A war rages in the souls of American Jews — the war between the universal and the particular. … There are so many challenges embedded in Judaism, but perhaps this is the greatest one of all: How do we balance our faith’s demand to care especially for our fellow Jews, and care especially for the world, at the same time?”
That is the right question: how do we balance our concern for our own people and our concern for other people?
Which leads to other questions, like what does it mean for the Jews to be not only a religion but a people and a nation? How has Israel lived up to its own ideals as stated in its Declaration of Independence?
To quote my colleague Sandra Lilienthal, my partner at Wisdom Without Walls: an online salon for Jewish ideas:
“We at Wisdom Without Walls follow the model of the seder, and different kinds of children are welcome at our table. … None of us can grow without listening to one another and holding civilized conversations. We promote the idea that everyone gets a seat at the table — literally and figuratively.
It is with that experience that we challenge our fellow Jews this Passover to see the wicked child as an opportunity for meaningful conversations. Because, in fact, many of these so-called wicked children are not wicked. They are bright and have serious questions which they feel have gone unanswered by much of mainstream Judaism, and, as with all children whose questions go unanswered, they find their answers from questionable sources.”
What happens when we choose not to respond to those rebellious kids?
They shut down. They opt out. We end up with the kid who does not even know what to ask and does not want to ask.
In “Jaws,” there is that famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
The Jews are a people in pain, meaning they need a bigger boat or a table that includes those who question.
May you have a joyous, sweet, liberating Pesach.
