Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
() מוזגים כוס שני ומסלקים את הקערה כאלו כבר אכלו כדי שיראו התינוקות וישאלו
() מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה. מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת: שֶׁבְּכָל-הַלֵּילוֹת אֵין אֲנַחְנוּ מְטַבְּלִין אֲפִילוּ פַּעַם אַחַת. וְהַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה שְׁתֵּי פְעָמִים: שֶׁבְּכָל-הַלֵּילוֹת אֲנַחְנוּ אוֹכְלִין חָמֵץ אוֺ מַצָּה. וְהַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה כֻּלּוֹ מַצָּה: שֶׁבְּכָל-הַלֵּילוֹת אֲנַחְנוּ אוֹכְלִין שְׁאָר יְרָקוֹת. וְהַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מָרוֹר: שֶׁבְּכָל-הַלֵּילוֹת אֲנַחְנוּ אוֹכְלִין וְשׁוֺתִין בֵּין יוֹשְׁבִין וּבֵין מְסֻבִּין. וְהַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה כֻּלָּנוּ מְסֻבִּין:
חָכָם מָה הוּא אוֹמֵר? מָה הָעֵדוֹת וְהַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יקוק אֱלֹהֵינוּ אֶתְכֶם. וְאַף אַתָּה אֱמוֹר לוֹ כְּהִלְכוֹת הַפֶּסַח: אֵין מַפְטִירִין אַחַר הַפֶּסַח אֲפִיקוֹמָן:
רָשָׁע מָה הוּא אוֹמֵר? מָה הָעֲבוֹדָה הַזּאֹת לָכֶם. לָכֶם - וְלֹא לוֹ. וּלְפִי שֶׁהוֹצִיא אֶת עַצְמוֹ מִן הַכְּלָל כָּפַר בְּעִקָּר. וְאַף אַתָּה הַקְהֵה אֶת שִׁנָּיו וֶאֱמוֹר לוֹ: "בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה יקוק לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם". לִי וְלֹא-לוֹ. אִלּוּ הָיָה שָׁם, לֹא הָיָה נִגְאָל:
What does the wise [son] say? "'What are these testimonies, statutes and judgments that the Lord our God commanded you?' (Deuteronomy 20:6)" And accordingly you will say to him, as per the laws of the Pesach sacrifice, "We may not eat an afikoman [a dessert or other foods eaten after the meal] after [we are finished eating] the Pesach sacrifice. (Mishnah Pesachim 10:8)"
What does the evil [son] say? "'What is this worship to you?' (Exodus 12:26)" 'To you' and not 'to him.' And since he excluded himself from the collective, he denied a principle [of the Jewish faith]. And accordingly, you will blunt his teeth and say to him, "'For the sake of this, did the Lord do [this] for me in my going out of Egypt' (Exodus 13:8)." 'For me' and not 'for him.' If he had been there, he would not have been saved.
פחד יצחק של הרב יצחק הוטנר זצ״ל
פסח ד
ואף ברשע אין בה בתשובה על שאלתו קיום הענין של דרך שאלה ותשובה דבודאי אין שאלתו של הרשע מצטרפת לקיום מצות סיפור דרך שאלה ותשובה, דרק דרך שאלה דנתנה לשאול מתקיים דין זה מה שאין כן שאלה של כפירה שאינה אלא חוצפה של אפיקורסות גרידא, באופן דלענין דין שאלה ותשובה שאלתו של הרשע הוי כמאן דליתא, והגדה לאחרים יש כאן, דרך שאלה ותשובה אין כאן.
Pachad Yitzhak Pesach No. 4
In the case of the Rasha, the father’s answer to him does not fulfill the requirement of question-and-answer, for the question of the Rasha certainly does not contribute to fulfillment of the mitzvah by means of question-and-answer. Only a question genuinely asked as a question contributes to fulfillment of the mitzvah. Such is not the case with a question of kefirah, which is nothing more than the hutzpah of apikorsut. Thus the Rasha fails to satisfy the definition of a question for the purpose of the question-and-answer requirement, though the aspect of telling others is still fulfilled.
Understanding is always more than merely re-creating someone else’s meaning. Questioning opens up possibilities of meaning, and thus what is meaningful passes into one’s own thinking on the subject. Only in an inauthentic sense can we talk about understanding questions that one does not pose oneself—e.g., questions that are outdated or empty… To understand a question means to ask it. To understand meaning is to understand it as the answer to a question…
This is not an external matter of simply adjusting our tools; nor is it even right to say that the partners adapt themselves to one another but, rather, in a successful conversation they both come under the influence of the truth of the object and are thus bound to one another in a new community. To reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were.
Read the book of Exodus and you will see that the early chapters are all about the politics of freedom. They tell of slavery, oppression, the mission of Moses to Pharaoh, the ten plagues, liberation, the division of the Red Sea and the revelation at Mount Sinai. All of this is a sequential story about liberty. But the last part of Exodus—roughly a third of the book as a whole, is taken up with an apparently minor and irrelevant episode told and retold in exhaustive detail: the construction of the Tabernacle.
This was the first house of worship made by the Israelites. It was a modest affair, made of poles, beams, skins and drapes that could be taken apart, carried on their journeys, and re-assembled at their next encampment. It had, or so it seems, no lasting significance. Once the Israelites had entered the land, the Tabernacle was left in Shilo for several centuries until King David established Jerusalem as the capital of the newly united kingdom, and his son Solomon built the Temple. So why is the story of the Tabernacle told at such length?...
A nation—at least, the kind of nation the Israelites were called on to become—is created through the act of creation itself. Not all the miracles of Exodus combined, not the plagues, the division of the sea, manna from heaven or water from a rock, not even the revelation at Sinai itself, turned the Israelites into a nation. In commanding Moses to get the people to make the Tabernacle, God was in effect saying: To turn a group of individuals into a covenantal nation, they must build something together…
A people is made by making. A nation is built by building. What they built was a ‘home’ for the Divine presence. The Tabernacle, placed at the center of the camp with the tribes arrayed around it, symbolized the public square, the common good, the voice that had summoned them to collective freedom. It was a visible emblem of community. Within the Tabernacle was the ark, within the ark were the tablets of stone, and on the tablets of stone were written the details of the covenant. It was the home of their constitution of liberty. Here, then, is the source of the title of this book. Society is the home, the Tabernacle, we build together.
It was built out of difference and diversity. That too is the point of the narrative. Each of the Israelites brought his or her own distinctive contribution. Some brought gold, others silver, others bronze. Some gave jewels, others animal skins, and others drapes. Some gave of their skills and time. The point is not what they gave but that each was valued equally… The Tabernacle was built out of the differential contributions of the various groups and tribes. It represented orchestrated diversity, or in social terms, integration without assimilation. That is the dignity of difference. Because we are not the same, we each have something unique to contribute, something only we can give.
I advocate talking to strangers as a healthy path to political majority and seek to cultivate modes of citizenship that provide citizens with the security and self-confidence of full-fledged political agency. I have offered only a sketch of political friendship as a timely mode of citizenship, but in the process I have tried to undo two notions currently credited as common sense. First, citizenship is not, fundamentally, a matter of institutional duties but of how one learns to negotiate loss and reciprocity. Second, unrestrained self-interest does not make the world go round but corrodes the bases of trust. In fact, self-interest ranges through a myriad of forms from rivalrous to equitable. The ability to adopt equitable self-interest in one’s interactions with strangers is the only mark of a truly democratic citizen, and to employ the techniques of political friendship would be to transform our daily habits and so our political culture. Can we devise an education that, rather than teaching citizens not to talk to strangers, instead teaches them how to interact with them self-confidently?
דרך המלך של רבי קלונומוס קלמן שפירא זצ״ל פסח תרפ״ז
מה שבכלל צריכים לעבדו צריך כל איש בפרטיות להשתדל שיהיה קרוב אליו להֿ' וה' אליו, והכל רק בהשתדלות ובעבודה, ואפילו בפסח שד' מאיר את לבות ישראל יותר מכפי מצבם ולפי שרואים, אבל הכל בדרך שאלה, ושאילה אם אינה בבעלים חייב על נזקה, וצריכים להשתדל שיהיה שאילה בבעלים, שיהיה גם בעליו עמו, כי כמו שרואים שיש איש שזכה לחכמה מד' מ״מ הוא נשאר איש נמוך, ועוד בחכמתו הוא בבחינת חכמים המה להרע כן הוא בכל דבר, רואים לפעמים איש מישראל מתפלל טוב בהתפעלות דחילו ורחימו ולומד טוב מ״מ הוא שוכב בנמיכיותו כמו שהיה, וזהו יען שכל אלה רק בשאלה היו לו שד' השאילו, וכיון שלא הגביה את עצמו ולא נתרומם בחי' ולו אנחנו וה' לנו שיהיה שאילה בבעלים, רק נשאר רחוק מד' כמו הכתיב ח״ו ולא אנחנו, בכל דבר קל מן יצה״ר נופל ח״ו וחייב בנזקו.
Derekh Hamelekh of R' Kalonymous Kalman Shapira zt”l Pesach 5687 (1927)
Within the idea that we must serve Hashem, each person must strive to be close to God, and that God should be close to him/her, in all the details of his/her life. All of this depends on striving and service. Even on Pesach, when Hashem illuminates the hearts of Israel beyond their immediate circumstance or even what is visible to them--[still] everything must be done by means of questioning [she'eila]. And she'ilah [borrowing] done in the absence of the owner makes one liable for damage. We must therefore strive to make our she'eilah the kind done with the Owner, that the Owner should be with the object.
For we see that there is the kind of person who has merited wisdom from Hashem, but nevertheless remains on a low level; and just as with his intellect he remains the kind of mind that is put to bad use, so too is he with everything! We sometimes witness a Jew who prays well, with enthusiasm and moving his whole body, and who learns well—but nevertheless remains on the same low level. This is because all these things [can only be effective if they are] questions, namely that Hashem will be his lender. Since he does not raise himself up to the level of “we are Hashem's,” and “Hashem is ours,” which would be the level of borrowing with the owner, he remains far from Hashem, like what is written, “We are not his.” In every small thing, the yetzer hara will find it easy to enter, and he will stumble and be liable for damage.
The ability to ask questions may be taken for granted by highly educated people, just as asking questions as a democratic habit of mind may be taken for granted by people who have lived their entire lives in societies where they have the freedom to ask questions. but, the profound significance of being able to ask questions is not missed by people who have suffered from the absence of democracy. For example, Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi and scholar who was a refugee from Nazi Germany, asserted at a White House Conference on Children and Youth in 1960 that in a democratic society we should be assessing our students less on their ability to answer our questions and more on their ability to ask their own questions.
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
() מחזירים הקערה למקומה על השולחן ואומר ההגדה, ותהיה המצה מגולה בשעת אמירת ההגדה. ורק בעת שאוחז הכוס בידו יכסנה
() עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ לְפַרְעֹה בְּמִצְרָיִם. וַיּוֹצִיאֵנוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מִשָּׁם. בְּיָד חֲזָקָה. וּבִזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה. וְאִלּוּ לֹא הוֹצִיא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם עֲדַיִין אֲנַחְנוּ וּבָנֵינוּ וּבְנֵי בָנֵינוּ. מְשֻׁעְבָּדִים הָיִינוּ לְפַרְעֹה בְמִצְרָיִם. וַאֲפִלּוּ כֻּלָּנוּ חֲכָמִים. כֻּלָּנוּ נְבוֹנִים. כֻּלָּנוּ יוֹדְעִים אֶת הַתּוֹרָה. מִצְוָה עָלֵינוּ לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם. וְכָל-הַמַּרְבֶּה לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם הֲרֵי זֶה מְשֻׁבָּח: