Every year at the Pesah seder, when we arrive at the ‘four children,’ I find myself troubled by the wicked child. What about asking a question can be wicked? The question, effectively “what does this mean to you?” doesn’t seem so bad to me, and the response given seems harsh at best. I’ve spent so much time defending the wicked child that I’ve never spent much time at all thinking about the other children, most especially not the wise child. It always seemed to me that the wise child just asked a smart-sounding question and got a smart-sounding answer. What else was there to know? (I guess that might give you a sense of which of the children I’m not).
I recently came across a teaching of the 19th century Hasidic Rebbe, the Sfat Emet, that flipped everything I thought about the Wise Child on its head. The Sfat Emet shares that the Wise Child, the hakham, is not a child who is wise, but is rather a child who is interested in hokhmah – wisdom, or knowledge.
We are commanded to experience Passover each year as if we ourselves were leaving Egypt. The Hasidic masters say that this means that while the Passover story itself happened in the past on the collective level, every year, we can actually experience it on a personal level. Every year on Pesah: “Every Jew is made a free person and is redeemed from all bondage, from all that binds us to worldly vanities. Later, on Shavuot, the giving of the Torah is reawakened [within us]” (Sfat Emet, Pesah 3:86-7).
The Wise Child knows this, because the Wise Child knows things. But, the Wise Child is only interested in wisdom, and thus is much more interested in the revelation of Shavuot, in the receiving of the Torah, our source of wisdom, than in the freedom of Passover.
Thus, on Passover, when the Wise Child asks, “What are the testimonies, the statutes and laws, that the LORD our God commanded you?” the Sfat Emet interprets him to mean: why are you all so joyful at our liberation from Egypt? Don’t you know that the best is yet to come? When we receive the Torah at Shavuot, that will be a reason to celebrate.
Our prescribed response to the Wise Child is thus a rebuke: “After eating the Pesah offering, one does not eat anything more.” In other words, hold your horses. One thing at a time. Do not rush the process.
So often in our lives, especially when we think we know what’s going to happen, we try to rush the script. We want to just skip ahead and get to the good parts. The Jewish holidays are here to teach us to slow down. We know that after a topsy turvy Purim, we’ll come to a Passover of liberation, and then, counting our way through the Omer, to a Shavuot of revelation. And yet, our calendar implores us to take each holiday one at a time, as its own set of experiences, each with unique and important lessons.
As we move through this season, I bless us all that we make each day count, showing up to each moment for whatever teachings it has to offer us.
Carrie Watkins
Monday – Thursday, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Friday, 8:30 am – 3:00 pm
