The 4 Sons—and the 4 big questions on Judaism

• Published date: 12 April 2022
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

One day, the phone rang, a little boy answered

"May I speak to your parents?"

"They're busy."

"Is anybody else there?"

"The police."

"Can I speak to them?"

"They're busy."

"Is anybody else there?"

"The firemen."

"Can I speak to them?"

"They're busy."

"Let me get this straight: Your parents, the police, and the firemen are there, but they're all busy? What are they doing?"

"Looking for me."

The Origin of the Four Sons

It is impossible to think about Passover without the four sons occupying a central place. The four sons with their vexing four questions have captured the Jewish imagination for millennia.

The origin of the "four sons" is fascinating. Four times, in four places, does the Torah address our duty to tell the story to our children—three of them in the book of Exodus (Parshat Bo), right after the actual Exodus story, and once in Deuteronomy, at the end of the forty years in the desert.

The first is in Exodus 12:25-27:

When you enter the land that G-d will give you as He promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children say to you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to G-d, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'

The second is in Exodus 13:8:

On that day tell your son, 'I do this because of what G-d did for me when I came out of Egypt.'

The third is in Exodus 13:14:

In days to come, when your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' say to him, 'With a mighty hand, G-d brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

The fourth passage is in Deuteronomy 6:20:

In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws the Lord our G-d has commanded you?" tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but G-d brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Why the need for four separate passages?

Our sages, in their attentiveness to nuance, deduced that Moses was addressing four different types of children. We must speak—the Torah is intimating—to each of our children, but we cannot speak in the same way, with the same language, to each child. What modern education techniques have discovered in the last half-a-century, the Torah has articulated 3300 years ago by communicating the story of the Exodus in four passages, in four different ways, addressing four different types of children. Each child requires an individual dialect relating to his or her composition, challenges, and strengths.

In the famous words of the Passover Haggadah:

כְּנֶגֶד אַרְבָּעָה בָנִים דִּבְּרָה תּוֹרָה. אֶחָד חָכָם, וְאֶחָד רָשָׁע, וְאֶחָד תָּם, וְאֶחָד שֶׁאֵינוֹ יוֹדֵעַ לִשְׁאוֹל.

"The Torah speaks of four sons: The wise, the rebellious, the simple one, and the one who knows not to ask."

4 Critical Directives for Education

Listen carefully to these words of the Haggadah. They contain four critical points:

1) We are not dealing with one child; we have at our table four different types of youth. What works for one, may not work for the other.

2) despite their differences, all of them are our beloved children. They are not strangers; they are our flesh and blood. None of them should ever be rejected.

3) The Torah does not speak to one genre of children; rather, it addresses all of them, containing life-messages for each of the four children. If we can't find the words for each of them, it is because we are not accessing the full wisdom of Torah.

4) The Torah message to each child is distinct. You can't speak the same words to two children.

Every communicator knows that before you communicate, you must know your audience well. So Moses—and the Haggadah—are cautioning us: Before you communicate the story of your heritage, history, and faith to the next generation, you must "know your audience." You need to spend time understanding the unique persona—both strengths and challenges—of your "audience," of your children, so that you can address each of them appropriately, in a way that might enter their hearts.

Many of us try to speak to our children, on the night of Passover and other nights, but we fail to evaluate the audience properly. I may speak to the child I would have liked him/her to be, or to the child in the way I depict him/her in my imagination. But how can I be effective if I do not understand what you are hearing and experiencing?

Who Are They?

Who are these four children? What's this great hullabaloo about them? Why four and not five, six, or ten? Why are they central...