The Four Children

One of the fine folks from the West Side Minyan has asked my permission to post the d'var Torah that I gave there last Shabbat regarding the Four Children on the WSJ website. (It should show up there, eventually, on the Resources page.) Unfortunately, I never wrote it out—since I live outside of the eruv (to say the least), I try as much as possible to avoid carrying, so the whole talk was in my head. But here it is, as best I can remember it. Needless to say, this'll be a bit rambling.

The Four Children mentioned in the haggadah are The Wise Child, the Wicked Child, the Simple Child, and the Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask. The Wise Child is considered wise because he or she asks what are the decrees and the judgments that Hashem our G-d commanded you, whereas the Wicked Child asks, "What is this service to you?," seeming to exclude himself/herself. The Simple Child just asks, "What's this?," while the Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask, well, doesn't ask.

One of the most logical explanations I've heard—I'd gladly cite a source, if I could remember it—is that the Four Children represent four stages of development. The Wise Child is the adult, one who's ready and willingly to identify with the Jewish community and assume his or her responsibilities as a Jew. The Wicked Child is the rebellious teenager, the one who still thinks his or her parents know nothing. Perhaps the text tells the parent to set the Wicked Child's teeth on edge because the Wicked Child sets the parent's teeth on edge. The Simple Child is a young child who's still learning—you have to explain everything in simple terms. The Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask is a child too young to know how to communicate. According to one interpretation that I heard somewhere, the phrase "at p'tach lo, you open for him" means that you open the child's mouth and put a piece of matzah in it. At that age, a child's Judaism is purely experiential. A very young pre-schooler truly embodies the biblical quote, "Naaseh v'nishma, we will do and we will hear." The human child develops by doing first and understanding later, and so it is with Judaism—you can't just study Judaism, you have to live it.

Another explanation that I forgot to mention—you’re getting the benefit of the "edited" version :) —is that the Wise Child is actually a crowd-pleaser who's feeding the parents what they want to hear, whereas the Wicked Child is the challenger, the one who's always asking questions, who won't just quietly accept a standard explanation. I rather like that version, being, in some ways, a bit of a Wicked Child, myself.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, in his own haggadah, passed along this explanation, in the name of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe: The Four Children represent the four stages of American immigration. The Wise Child is the generation "straight off the boat," the Bubbe lighting the holiday candles, the Zayde reciting kiddush. The Wicked Child is the first-generation American, eager to toss out tefillin and tradition and become a "real American." The Simple Child is the second-generation American, a confused kid who sees Grandma lighting candles and Grandpa making kiddush while Mom and Dad stand there impatiently, mentally twiddling their thumbs. The Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask grew up without the grandparents from the Old Country, and hardly even understands what he's missing. In his haggadah, Rabbi Riskin told a true story of a seder that he'd attended at which a little girl began singing "Happy Birthday" when she saw the hostess lighting the Yom Tov candles—she'd literally never seen anyone lighting candles for any reason other than a birthday. A far worse story was told by blogger WestBankMama here (on her old blog). She and her brother, both then in the process of becoming baalei t'shuvah ("returnees" to Orthodox Judaism), had scrupulously cleaned and prepared their parents' home for Passover. Imagine their shock when they opened the door on the seder night, and their aunt walked in carrying a freshly-baked loaf of bread!!! They politely informed her that the table was too full, putting the bread aside on a coffee table, and, the minute their aunt and uncle left after the seder and were out of visual range, tossed the bread into the neighbors' garbage can.

The tragedy of the Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask is that this child doesn't even know that there's a question: Such an individual doesn't know enough to be aware that there's something s/he doesn't know. This is a person who wouldn't think to ask whether it's okay to cook chicken parmesan in a kosher kitchen because s/he doesn't know that poultry is considered meat according to Jewish law, and thinks, in all innocence, that the combo is kosher. Did I mention that I just learned last year, at the grand old age of 57, that not only miscellaneous grains and legumes, but also seeds, are kitniot? No wonder I can't find kosher-for-Passover techina!

Another interpretation of the Child Who Doesn't Know to Ask is that this is the child with special needs. "At p'tach lo, you open for him" means, in this case, to do whatever is necessary to make the story of our liberation from slavery in Egypt comprehensible, whether that means using large-print haggadot, sign language, visual aids and/or music for a child with learning and/or developmental disabilities.

Here's my own midrash, standing on one foot: "At" is (arguably) feminine, "p'tach" is masculine. From this, we learn that both the mother and the father are responsible for ensuring that their children learn the story of our liberation from bondage.

Finally, Rabbi Riskin reminds us that far worse than the Wicked Child is the child who's either so far removed from Judaism or so rebellious that she or he is not even at the seder. In recent times, many of those who grew up under the Soviet regime came out of the former USSR knowing nothing, or almost nothing, about Judaism. It's our responsibility to help provide "spiritual food" for those who are hungry to come and eat.