On the spring Jewish holiday of Passover, Jews all over the world ask questions. Traditionally, we ask just four questions, and we are supplied with answers either in the Haggadah, the prayer book used during the seder, or home service conducted on Passover, or by participants at the seder. The questions – and the answers – are:
On other nights we eat leavened bread. Why do we eat only matzoh on Pesach? Matzoh reminds us that when the Jews left Egypt, they had no time to bake their bread. They took the raw dough on their journey and baked it in the hot desert sun into hard crackers called matzoh. Also, we are told that the slaves were fed matzoh; it was the “bread of affliction” or of slavery.
On other nights we eat many different vegetables and herbs. Why do we eat bitter herbs, or maror, at our seder? The bitter herbs remind us of the bitterness of slavery.
On other nights we don’t dip one food into another. Why do we dip our foods twice tonight? We dip bitter herbs into charosetto remind us how hard the Jewish slaves worked in Egypt. The chopped apples and nuts that make up the primary ingredients of charoset look like the clay the Israelites used to make the bricks for the Pharaoh’s buildings. We dip parsley into salt water as well. The parsley reminds us that spring is here and new life will grow. The salt water reminds us of the tears of the Jewish slaves. (Parsley is bitter; slavery is bitter as well.)
On other nights we eat sitting upright in our chairs. Why do we recline, leaning on pillows, on this night? We lean on a pillow to be comfortable, so we are reminded that once we were slaves, but now we are free.
These questions are about remembering past events and are meant to inspire more questions. The fact that the answers are somewhat pat, handed down from generation to generation, year to year, may not cause us to think too much about the questions or the answers, for that matter. Therefore, we want to have new questions, questions that take us deep within ourselves to really examine our own experience of slavery and liberation. These types of questions are pertinent to anyone, no matter their religion.
To find an answer to a problem, you have to know what questions to ask. Sometimes we feel as if we have an issue in our lives we’d like to solve, or we are struggling with a problem and we want to find a solution. However, we may not even know what questions to ask ourselves to get to the crux of the problem so we can find those answers or solutions. This leaves us stumped, stuck unable to move out of our “narrow place,” our “tight space” – our own personal Egypt; the Hebrew name for Egypt is Mitzraim, which means a tight or narrow place.
So, how do we find the questions to ask? I can’t answer that for all situations, however, Passover offers Jews and non-Jews alike a chance to ask ourselves a lot more than four questions that will help us get unstuck and move forward both personally and collectively.
I deliberated the questions that could be brought out of the Passover seder and its rituals and symbols. I wrote an article about it, which was published in J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. (If you found it in your local paper as well, please let me know!) I’d like to share it with you. I think you could ask these questions at any time of the year… To read the article, please follow this link:
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/37691/only-four-questionson-this-night-ask-yourself-a-lot-more/
