By Clifford S. Fishman
Three times the Torah commands us to teach children about Passover (Exodus 12:26-27; Exodus 13:8; Exodus 13:14). The Haggadah, elaborating on this mandate, tells how to respond to four children: “one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple, and one who does not know how to ask.”
The child who gets the most attention in rabbinic commentary is the Rasha, the “wicked” child. The traditional text reads:
Rasha. Ma hu omer? What does the wicked one say?
The Rasha says:
“Ma ha-avodah hazot lechem?” “What does this avodah, this service, this ritual, mean to you?
The Haggadah interprets this:
To you, and not to him. By excluding himself from the community, by denying God’s role in the Exodus, you should blunt his teeth and say to him, “For the sake of what Adonai did for me when I went out from Egypt.” For me, but not for him. Had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.
Some rabbis, at least, acknowledge that the Rasha is not irredeemably lost. Jonathan Sacks, for example, noted that the numerical value of Rasha (wicked) is 570, while the numerical value of Tzaddik is 204. To turn a Rasha into a Tzaddik, Rabbi Sacks wrote, you must merely subtract his fangs (“hakeh es shinav”—“blunt his teeth”) because the value of shinav (his teeth) is 366. Take away the threatening but superficial fangs of the wicked son (570 minus 366), and you get 204 — his true righteous potential.
But most Haggadot are not so kind. Consider how illustrated Haggadot depict the Rasha. One Haggadah pictures him as a demon. Another, as a man at the seder table smoking a cigarette, waving dismissively at the entire idea of a seder. Another: a young boy threatening to hit the Chacham, the wise child, with a stick. In another, he is a boxer, as if to ask rhetorically: “This is a job for a nice Jewish boy?”
Along the same lines, many Haggadot portrayed the Rasha as a soldier, who was considered the embodiment of evil. (I don’t think any Haggadot since 1948 portray the Rasha as a soldier. It’s not hard to figure out why.)
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin likens the Rasha,” the wicked son, to the first generation of Jews born in America who, according to Riskin, “rejected his parents’ customs and ways of thinking and acting.”
In a Haggadah written by Holocaust survivors in 1946, the Rasha is the Jew who denies the necessity of creating the State of Israel. In a feminist Haggadah, the Rasha is the daughter who disassociates herself from women’s struggle for equality and dignity.
Perhaps including the wicked child in the Haggadah once served a useful purpose, but no longer. Rather, the Rasha passage in the Haggadah sends exactly the wrong message and should be replaced.
What’s wrong about the traditional message, and replaced with what?In the seders I conduct, I substitute the following:
The amitz, brave child; the maskil, the child who thinks; the boteah, the child who trusts you to understand the question and to give an honest answer: what does this child ask?“What does this ‘avodah,’ this service, this ritual, mean to you?”
This child is asking:
Do you in fact believe the entire story?
Do you really believe that it actually happened, precisely as the Torah described it?
And if not, what parts do you believe, and what parts don’t you believe?
If you have your doubts, then why do you do this avodah, this service, this ritual, year after year?
Is it OK that I have doubts and questions and uncertainties?
Can I honestly talk about those doubts, or do I have to stick to the scripted responses?
At our seders, I ask our guests, “How would you answer any or all of these questions?”
We’ve had some very interesting discussions at this part of the seder.
You will, too. And you might just help a young man or woman to see that there is more to Judaism than a bunch of old prayers and old rituals for old people. ■
Clifford S. Fishman is an emeritus professor of law at The Catholic University of America and a long-time member and former president of Tikvat Israel Congregation in Rockville.