Seder and Children: Why Kids Are So Precious in Judaism

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Seder night is a night which revolves around the children. It is a night of reliving the miraculous Exodus, not just for us but for the generation who will ask us tomorrow. A night where the painful past and the hopeful future coalesce. As the bitter galut of Mitzrayim continues to spill into now, we hope that our children will witness and usher in the sweet redemption too.

Seder night is possibly one of the most fundamental nights of the year as it implants a basic emuna to live by all year round. It is the Pesach story which testifies to us and the entire world that Hashem chose each of us and watches over us with special hashgacha. The entire Mesorah of our unique Exodus story has been passed through the children of each generation. In fact, we are only sitting around our Seder table because the story has been retold from father to son. I was in Egypt, my father was in Egypt, my grandfather. Great-grandfather. And so it continues …

In fact the majority of the Torah is not written in the Chumash but encoded in the Torah shebaal peh, which was transmitted for many generations from father to son. The beginning of Pirkei Avot outlines that Moshe received the Torah from Hashem, passed it onto Yehoshua who passed it to the zekeinim, then to the anshei knesset hagedola, eventually trickling down to us. We relied completely on the unblemished transmission of Torah between father and son, for generations, to learn the Gemara and other oral Torah texts which we study today.

It is each family sitting down to their Seder to tell our story to their children which has enabled us to keep telling it. Each child who asked mah nishtana on their Seder night, each father who answered avadim hayinu, has strengthened our emuna in the greatness of Hashem and above all, His direct connection with us through the miracles.

Pesach, of all the nights of the year, is a night of tradition. The goal of the night is giving it over to our children, piquing their curiosity through all the senses. Immersing in the bitter slavery through the tear-drenched saltwater and marror, crunching the poor man’s matza, acting out the story and singing the liberating songs of Hallel.

Rav Amnon Yitzchak, a kiruv rabbi, was once challenged by an irreligious man who claimed that since no one alive could verify the stories in the Torah, he could not believe that they were true.

“Do you remember whether we celebrated Pesach last year?” Rav Amnon Yitzchak asked.

“Yes, we did,” replied the man.

“How about five years ago?” asked Rav Yitzchak.

“Of course,” responded the man.

“And ten years ago?”

“YES!” snapped the man, slowly losing his patience.

“Now I am going to ask you a difficult question,” continued Rabbi Yitzchak. “I know that you were not alive 50 years ago, but do you think that Jews who were alive then celebrated Pesach?”

“Why not?” replied the man.

“How about 100 years ago?”

“Certainly!” shouted the man. “They celebrated Pesach 100 years ago and 1000 years ago too.”

“So when did the Jews start celebrating Pesach?” asked Rav Yitzchak.

“When they left Egypt!” replied the man.

“What?” exclaimed Rav Yitzchak. “I thought you don’t believe that they left Egypt!”¹

I remember when I went on a trip to Poland in high school and met, by the hellish entrance to Auschwitz, a saintly Holocaust survivor, Leslie Kleiman z’l. He turned to our tour guide and told him “Tell them what happened here, tell the girls what happened here.” For this special survivor, his deepest wish was that the Jewish nation should not forget. That tour guides should share the horrors and the pain with the high school students, the university students, the seminary girls and the yeshiva bachurim. And they should all give it over to their families too. Through the unbreakable chain of Jewish child to Jewish child, our stories of tragedy and triumph, of exile and liberation will never be forgotten.

I repeated those words of Leslie Kleiman at my own Seder, the most apropos time of year. For the word Haggada itself comes from the pasuk ‘vehigidata levincha bayom hahu’ ‘tell your children on that day.’ Each step we traverse on this holy night is encoded in a book which means ‘tell over.’ A seder night is not meant to be locked away in the Pesach cabinet, it is meant to be discussed, retold and relived, every generation.

Specifically, we are meant to address all types of children. ‘Kneged arba banim dibra Torah’ the Torah speaks to all types: the chacham, the wise son, the rasha, the wicked son, the tam, the simple son and the sheina yodea lishol, the son who does not know how to ask. Each child with their own approach, their own personality and interests. For each son, the Haggada writes “echad” one, because we approach each child as an individual, and as if they are our only child.

Even adults are considered children in a certain sense for they host an inner child. The Haggada writes by Mah Nishtana ‘kan haben shoel’ ‘here the son asks.’ If there is no child present at the table, the person asks themselves. They tap into their inner child. The questions of a child are the most pure because they have untainted souls. An adult on Seder night can clear away their cynicism, their weariness and blemishes and focus on their untarnished inner child who just seeks emet.²

There is a poignant song called “The last Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto”. It tells the story of a young boy Moishele having Seder with his father during the frightening war. The son asks his father the perennial questions of the Mah Nishtana but adds in his own. He asks his father if he will be alive next year for Seder night, if his father will be alive, and if there will be any Jewish children left next Seder night. The father admits that he does not know if he or his son will survive for the next Seder night. But he guarantees his son that there will be a Moishele ‘somewhere, somewhere’ asking the Mah Nishtana. Because Hashem promised that the Jewish people are an eternal people, and the key to our eternity is our continuity: through our children. As long as there is a child at the Seder table, there is hope for the Jewish people to continue. Even when it looked like the Hamans and the Hitlers of the world were intent on ridding the world of all Jews, there would always be one more Moishele to ask.

There is a beautiful letter penned by Rav Aharon Lopiansky addressed to his child on Seder night. I feel that he expresses the unsaid words dwelling inside every parent’s heart and I will conclude with his powerful language. He writes that the goal of Seder night is to pass on the torch and much like Yom Kippur, we don a white kittel to represent that we stand in judgement – of how well we have received our tradition and how well we are passing it on. He explains that it has been 3300 years since the Exodus and that being the case, (if we approximate the age of a child as 25 with each century having 4 generations) 132 generations have passed from our Egyptian Exodus until now. Each of those 132 have fought to pass on the torch; through Crusades and Inquisitions, Cossacks and Nazis, burning at the stake and freezing in Siberia. Rav Lopiansky writes:

132 fathers, each with his own story. Each with his own test of faith. And each with one overriding and burning desire: that this legacy be passed unscathed to me. And one request of me: that I pass this on to you, my sweet child.

I am the 133rd person in this holy chain… Try to remember that this is the treasure that I have passed on to you. And then it will be your turn, you will be the 134th with the sacred duty to pass on our legacy to number 135³.