The Wise Son and the Wicked Son: Exploring the Values of Community and Individual

To see himself (atzmo) as if he went forth from Egypt: The statement here could have been, "To imagine that he went forth from Egypt;" the word atzmo was unnecessary. Why was it necessary to say, "himself?" We learn in the Talmud that if one's father experienced a miracle, his children and offspring must continue to give thanks. The redemption from Egypt goes much farther than that. We are grateful not just because of our ancestors but because we ourselves benefited from God's redemption. We are the direct recipients of God's goodness in the Exodus (otherwise we might still be slaves). We are commanded to give thanks not because it affected our forefathers but because we directly benefit from God's redemption.

(Marbeh Lisaper)

We can now understand the meaning of the verse: "It shall come to pass, in the future, when your child asks, 'what is this service to you?'" [This is what the Wicked Son asks at the seder.] The child asks, "I understand why you must eat matzah and maror since they are symbols of subjugation and redemption. God performed this for our ancestors so that we would not be enslaved. But the Pesach offering was merely a local miracle for our ancestors. Why must we recall this miracle? To this we answer: "And our houses He saved." God not only saved our ancestors but He saved us - therefore for this we give thanks.

The wicked child, what does he say? The wicked child is criticized for excluding himself from the community by saying “What does this service mean to YOU (not to me)?” Yet the wise child seems to do the same thing when he says, “Which the Lord our God commanded YOU.” Why do we criticize the wicked child for using exclusionary language but not the wise child? When the wise child asks, “What is the meaning of these laws…which the Lord commanded you,” he does not exclude himself from the community. Rather, as one who was born in after the events at Sinai, he did not experience the Revelation first hand. God did not directly command him to observe the commandments but he wants to know what God told his elders to do so that he can faithfully observe them. The Wicked child, on the other hand, witnesses the celebration of Passover (“What is this service to you?”) Rather than joining in, he says, “What does this mean to you,” excluding himself from the celebration. The wise child’s question is a response to hearing the commandment and wanting to understand it while the wicked child’s question is a response to witnessing the act and stepping away from participation. (Maase Nissim)

The Ba'al Shem Tov, an eighteenth-century rabbi and founder of the Hasidic movement, famously noted that the Jewish people are like a living Torah scroll, and every individual Jew is a letter within it. If a single letter is damaged or missing or incorrectly drawn, a Torah scroll is considered invalid. So too, in Judaism, each individual is considered a crucial part of the people, without whom the entire religion would suffer.