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Friday April 25, 1997

Hol-Hamoed Pesach: On questioning and Judaism

Rabbi Stephen Pearce

Shabbat Hol-Hamoed Pesach

Exodus 33:12-34:26

Numbers 28:16-25

Ezekiel 36:37-37:14

Any parent, teacher or observer of a preschool-age child knows all the "why" questions children ask, at times ad nauseam. And every patient response provokes further interrogation.

"Why is the sky blue, Daddy?"

"Because the way the sun shines through the air colors the sky blue."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why does it shine through?"

"Why does the rainbow have different colors when the sun shines through?

"Is black a color?"

"Why did God make colors?"

"Why did God make the rainbow?"

"Why doesn't God make them all the time?"

Some people are exasperated and try to shut off this enthusiastic, youthful form of inquiry because it can be irritating. By extension, some cultures attempt to close exploration and examination simply because it is too threatening to families, communities and sacred institutions. They develop an elaborate system of stock answers that prevent or even forbid further search.

The Passover seder, however, is a ritual that welcomes and stimulates questions. The Bible sets the tone for such questioning. In the Book of Exodus (13:14) we read:

"And when, in time to come, your son asks you, saying, `What does this mean?' you shall say to him, `It was with a mighty hand that the Lord brought us out of Egypt, the house of bondage.'"

The Mishnah (Pesachim 10:4) recommends that the recounting of Passover use a Socratic method, and that a parent should encourage inquiry. Ashley Montagu suggested that successful teaching is "the drawing out and not the pumping in."

The Passover Haggadah applies such pedagogically sound principles. Not only does the Passover seder encourage questioning through the Four Questions, but it suggests that answers should be age- and intellectually appropriate.

The account of the four sons provides us with different approaches to children with intellectual and attitudinal differences. The intellectually gifted child should be stimulated and challenged; the unlettered should be told an appealing story; the child of limited native intelligence who cannot even recognize that Passover is different from any other night should also be informed. Even the child defined as wicked must be dealt with in response to his haughty inquiry.

The song "Echad Me Yodeah" (Who Knows One?) is another example of the questioning that pervades the seder. Passover not only stimulates questioning, it evokes questions more often than it provides answers:

*Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart when He wanted him to be sympathetic and release the Israelites?

*How does a seder help us think about ourselves?

*How do we grow by ingesting the bitter and the sweet?

*Can participation in a seder enable us to free ourselves from our own personal enslavements?

*How do we come face to face with our places of origin?

*Why is Moses not mentioned even once in the Haggadah?

A stranger once annoyed me by asking me: "Why do you Jews always answer a question with a question?" I simply replied: "Who knows?" But I do know. And Jews' reputation for asking questions is positive, not pejorative, as that person tried to insinuate.

Questioning, then, is at the very heart of Jewish life, as this anecdote illustrates: The Nobel laureate in physics, Isidor Rabi, was once asked why he did not become a doctor or lawyer or businessman.

His reply: "My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: `So? Did you learn anything today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. `Izzy,' she would say, `did you ask a good question today?'

"That difference -- asking good questions -- made me become a scientist!"

Why questions? Because if a teacher does more than merely teach a lesson, if she draws out rather than pumps in, if a tradition does more than merely provide its adherents with all the answers, if you teach someone to learn by fostering curiosity rather than by requiring rote memorization, then education has been successful and lives are greatly enriched.

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