The four questions are actually one question, to which there are four traditional answers and many additional possible answers. The youngest person at the table asks:

"Why is this night different from all other nights?"

The traditional answers discuss elements of the Seder ritual:

  • We eat matzah to remember the bread our ancestors baked in haste.
  • We eat bitter herbs to relive the bitterness of slavery.
  • We dip our food in salt water for tears and charoset for the mortar and bricks made by the Jewish slaves in Egypt.
  • We recline in comfortable chairs to savor our freedom and remember not to take it for granted.

With these answers, we deconstruct what Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi called ritual technology, the carefully crafted physical metaphors that permit us to come as close as possible to feeling as though we ourselves really have suffered enslavement and can understand the true joy of liberation. Explaining these elements of the Seder, especially to the youngest at the table, takes the mystery out of the technology and passes along the tools and knowledge for reconstructing, repairing, and improving upon it (as people do with additions to the symbol plate such as oranges for inclusivity and olives for peace). This is crucial for continuing the transmission of Jewish custom through the generations, as it has been transmitted to us, and is also a valuable reminder that ritual must be understood if it's going to be meaningful.

Reb Zalman also encouraged tinkering with ritual technology to deepen one's personal connection to it: "With a store-bought solution," he wrote, "I lose an opportunity for personal transformation." So let us ask a more personal question, and share our own answers to it:

Why is this night, this particular Passover here and now with this group of people, different not only from the other 364 nights of the year but from all the Passovers of the past and future?


haggadah Section: -- Four Questions