Mah Nishtanah
by R. Gidon Rothstein
Meyuchas Le-Rashi: Only Two Questions!
When we come to the famous Four Questions, only two aspects stir Meyuchas Le-Rashi’s interest. First, he wonders why we imply we do not eat other vegetables this night (we say we eat them on other nights), when we do.
His frames his answer with Mishlei 15;17, a minimal meal eaten in a loving context is better than one with the best foods surrounded by hatred. Pesach night, commemorating the bitter servitude of Egypt makes all the vegetables bitter [it’s all maror, regardless of what it actually is]. The rest of the year, even the maror we eat is not as bitter, freed from the context of Egypt.
[His idea explains two old problems. First, my father, a”h, was adamant we not say kulo maror, all maror, since we eat other vegetables, too. For Meyuchas Le-Rashi, it all tastes like maror. It also allows Romaine lettuce, despite our eating it throughout the year; on this night, it is bitter maror.]
He then rejects a textual version that had chayyavin le-tavel, we are obligated to dip (twice), because he read Pesachim 116a to tell us children do not pay attention to what’s obligatory or not.
One main question, one minor, all vegetables on Pesach night are bitter, and children aren’t legalists who investigate obligations.
Rashbatz—Explicating Five Questions
R. Shim’on b. Tzemach Duran deals withfivequestions, although he acknowledges the fourth, about roasted meat, applies only in the time of the Temple, and is not in most Haggadot today. He does point out that the question—on all other nights, we eat meat prepared in a variety of ways, this night only roasted– follows the view of Ben Tema, the chagigah sacrifice of Pesach night also had to be roasted.
He thinks the first question was two-sided, on no other night do we have bread related obligations, on this night we do. Conversely, no other night of the year has a problem with our eating leaven. A karet problem this night.
Second question, we must eat maror, regardless of how many other vegetables we eat, in contrast to the rest of the year, where we can set our diet as we wish.
Third (he calls each question a shinui, a change the child notices), on no other night do we have a specific practice to dip food into a liquid, where tonight we do it twice (we actually do it three times, he adds, in the korech as well as the maror; since the two are one right after the other, we count it as one).
Fifth (fourth was the roasted meat question), we wonder at the insistence on leaning, where the rest of the year we eat as we want (even walking, says Rashbatz).
Rashbatz points out the child asks about the dipping even though we haven’t dipped, because s/he sees the chazeret on the table; the charoset wouldn’t have stimulated a question, because people use dips throughout the year (and drink lots of wine, the reason not to ask about four cups). And, too, if there are no children, these questions will be asked by whoever, who might be wiser than the average child.
For Rashbatz, four to five questions, points to be made about each.
Aruch HaShulchan: The Four Cups
Aruch HaShulchan spends all his time for Mah Nishtanah on why the four cups aren’t mentioned. His first answer is simple, all people celebrate redemption with drinking, our drinking raises no questions.
His second answer seeks to combine perspectives from Yerushalmi Pesachim, that of R. Yochanan who attributed the four cups to the four words of redemption Hashem uses in the beginning of Shemot, Resh Lakish relating it to the four cups in Par’oh’s dreams.
Since the second seems unconnected to Pesach, Aruch HaShulchan digresses further, to our grudge against Amalek. It’s the baseless hatred, he says, starting with the attack in the desert to their having destroyed the Temple even once we were conquered (where most conquerors preserve a country, once vanquished).
Of all the tribes, only Yosef was fit to react to baseless hatred, since only he (and Binyamin, who wasn’t a factor in Egypt because he was too young, I think) had not had such hatred for Yosef. It’s why the Purim miracle happened through Mordechai and Esther, they were from the tribe of Binyamin.
Aruch HaShulchan turns to Pharaoh’s butler and baker, who are in jail, under threat of death, for what seem to him relatively minor crimes. Letting a fly into the wine, wood into the bread, these might be cause for dismissal, but prison? And death?
He argues the two were caught sabotaging each other, the butler put the wood in the bread, the baker the fly in the wine. It was the undermining, at the king’s cost, that got them in this trouble.
Whether the cups are for the four words of redemption or reflect Pharaoh’s dream, it’s all addressing baseless hatred, for Aruch HaShulchan, led by descendants of Rachel, the only ones who didn’t have any.
Who Earned the Redemption
His last piece wonders about a debate over whether there were four or five leshonot ge’ulah, whether we try to reflect the word ve-heveiti, and I will bring, in our cups of wine. I am skipping some of his proof, but he relates it to another debate, whether the Jews were redeemed in their own merits, or those of their forefathers.
In the end, he thinks everyone agrees basic redemption depended on the Patriarchs’ merits, our merits earned us having it happen directly from God, not an angel. We did not have enough to get to ve-heveiti, though, so that was through an angel.
For Aruch HaShulchan, the interesting part of Mah Nishtanah was what wasn’t there, sparking a meditation on redemption, who can lead it, and why.
How To Stimulate a Child
R. Kook, too, focuses on a side issue of the Questions, their order. Were they in the order wedothem, the question about leaning should come first (he also wondered why we don’t ask about the four Cups, but his answer to the first issue explains this one).
In his view, all these questions are for the child who does not know how to ask, seek to bring him/her to question on his/her own. The wise child doesn’t need our questions (nor the evil or tam, I think he means).
With the non-asking child, our goal isn’t the question or answer, it’s lighting the fire of his/her questions. For that reason, we start with the least surprising issues, hoping s/he will leap to the more surprising (and more obviously questionable) ones. Everyone had bread, sometimes matzah, sometimes leavened, so sticking to matzah isn’t so shocking.
For maror, he is sure people did not eat it during the rest of the year. The dipping, in his view, focused on the first one, since people didn’t generally dip before a meal.
Four Questions, an adventure in producing questions, for R. Kook.
The Mah Nishtanah, in our earlier commentators, were to consider and explain. For our later commentators, there were other fish to fry, redemption for Aruch HaShulchan, education for R. Kook.