The Four Children

Jewish Calendar

“The Four Children” refers to a rabbinic text incorporated into the maggid section of many haggadahs. The text presents four types of children who ask different kinds of questions, from different perspectives, at the Passover seder. Each child is given a unique answer, built by weaving together different biblical verses. Variations of the text abound.

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Tomorrow, tomorrow

TALMUD

The Maggid section of the Haggadah tells of four children asking four questions and receiving four different answers based on verses in the Torah. Follow the rabbinic analysis upon which the children are based from this 3rd-century legal interpretation of the Book of Exodus.

HALAKHAH: Rebbi Ḥiyya stated “The Torah spoke about Four Children, a wise child, a wicked child, a stupid child, and a child who does not know how to ask. What does the wise child say? What are the testimonials, the ordinances, and the laws, that the Eternal, our God, commanded us? Also you shall tell him, with a strong hand did the Eternal lead us out of Egypt, the house of slaves. What does the wicked son say? What does this service mean to you? What is this exertion which you impose on us every (moment) [year]? Since he excluded…

Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 10:4:2

Expanded Consciousness

CHASIDUT

What is the purpose of asking so many questions with so many different answers? Though the original manuscript of this teaching by the Chasidic Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (18th century, Ukraine) is incomplete, it presents the four children as a symbol of each person striving to understand to the best of their ability.

Blessed be the Omnipresent, Blessed be He [...] Corresponding to four sons did the Torah speak: The ARI (R. Yitzchak Luria), may his memory be blessed, wrote on the verse (Isaiah 6:2), "with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly": That principle that it is forbidden for a person to investigate what his intellect cannot grasp about the service of the divine, God forbid - and that it is like heresy about a fundamental principle, like the statement of our Sages, may their memory be blessed, (Hagigah 11b), "It is forbidden, etc…

Kedushat Levi, Leviticus, Homily for Pesach 4

Blessed is the Omnipresent

MISHNAH

The Passover Haggadah introduces the four children with the words “Blessed is the Omnipresent, blessed is He,” a phrase first found in this seemingly unrelated Mishnah.

On the south were the wood chamber, the chamber of the exile and the chamber of hewn stones. The wood chamber: Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob says: I forget what it was used for. Abba Shaul says: It was the chamber of the high priest, and it was behind the two of them, and one roof covered all three. In the chamber of the exile there was a fixed cistern, with a wheel over it, and from there water was provided for all of the courtyard. In the chamber of hewn stone the great Sanhedrin of Israel used to sit and judge the priesthood…

Mishnah Middot 5:4

The Haggadah. The Four Sons, Arthur Szyk (1934), Łódź, Poland

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Remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt

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