Inclusiveness and Our Ability to Do Good
Not Enough Questions
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5766
John Udell’s posted the following anecdote on his weblog Friday March 4, 2005
When my son was a bit younger, we noticed that when we asked him a question, he’d answer with a question. Inevitably this led to the following exchange:
Q: Why do you always answer a question with a question?
A: Why does everybody always ask me that?
A gentile asked Reb Moshe: “Why do Jews always answer with a question?
Reb Moshe responds: Why not?
But in all seriousness, it is a Jewish trait to ask questions.
In this mornings reading we are commanded in full detail, to observe the holiday of Pesach both in the desert and in all future generations. Our Pesach celebration is replete with questions.
We ask four questions.
We read about the four sons, three of whom are asking questions.
Allusions to three of those sons we read this morning and 2 of them are asking questions:
With regard to the Pesach offerings and other holiday commandments we read:
שמות פרק יב
(כה) והיה כי תבאו אל הארץ אשר יתן יקוק לכם כאשר דבר ושמרתם את העבדה הזאת:
(כו) והיה כי יאמרו אליכם בניכם מה העבדה הזאת לכם:
(כז) ואמרתם זבח פסח הוא ליקוק אשר פסח על בתי בני ישראל במצרים בנגפו את מצרים ואת בתינו הציל ויקד העם וישתחוו:
With regard to the sanctification of the first born animals we read:
שמות פרק יג
(יא) והיה כי יבאך יקוק אל ארץ הכנעני כאשר נשבע לך ולאבתיך ונתנה לך:
(יב) והעברת כל פטר רחם ליקוק וכל פטר שגר בהמה אשר יהיה לך הזכרים ליקוק:
(יד) והיה כי ישאלך בנך מחר לאמר מה זאת ואמרת אליו בחזק יד הוציאנו יקוק ממצרים מבית עבדים:
The two paragraphs are quite similar. Each begins “when you come to the land” i.e. the next generation who did not witness it firsthand and does not know why we do these things.
Next you perform the activity, either the Pesach or the firstborn
Then comes the question – why do we do these things?
Finally the answer – because God did such and such for us in Egypt.
Two things strike me as critically important from those passages.
- Both questions are attempts to understand what it is that we are doing. The questioner wants to know why I am commanded to perform these actions and they stem from a desire to perform a meaningful spiritual act. To be very clear, we are used to reading these questions as the questions posed by 4 different sons and we read into the questions a certain persona and perspective. When the evil son asks his question it is out of spite and hatred. That is Midrashic exercise, and an important one that I hope we have an opportunity to speak about over Pesach, but it is not the literal interpretation of the Torah’s text. In the Torah these are sincere questions and represent a genuine desire to better understand the mitzvoth that we perform in order to qualitatively enhance the spiritual experience.
- Both questions stem from an activity, the performance of a mitzvah. That is important for two reasons:
a. In accordance with Naaseh venishma, first we perform the commandment and then we ask why.
- equally as important and of more interest to me this morning is that it is the activity that spurs the question. It isn’t a group of people sitting around room thinking theoretically about the meaning of the mitzvoth; rather they are questions that arise in the context of our prescribed ritual.
Why do Jews ask questions?
In our text this morning we find two answers:
- Because we want to learn, we want to know and we want to understand.
- Because we live our lives as Jews and in doing so we perform many mitzvoth and that leads us to ask questions, why are we doing these things? How should we do them? Are we doing them correctly? What happens if I am mess up? How do I correct those mistakes?
And that leads me to the point that I really want to make this morning and I hope that no one takes any offense because none is meant by it. I have been here for a little over five months and there are not that many questions that come into the shul.
That could be for a number of reasons but I will share 4 with you this morning.
- You already know all of the answers. Possible but highly unlikely.
- The questions are being directed elsewhere. Also possible.
3&4 return us to the two reasons mentioned before - If we ask because we perform mitzvoth maybe we don’t ask because we don’t perform enough mitzvoth. It is hard to imagine that a Jew attempting to keep all of the laws of Shabbat, Kashrut or Family Purity do not occasionally come across questions that they need answered.
- If we ask because we want to learn and know maybe we don’t ask because we don’t care to learn or to know and understand.
I am not sure if we can take any solace from the fact that we are not alone and that this is an issue for many modern orthodox communities.
Hopefully together we can create a spiritual environment in which we all strive to increase both our observance of the commandments and our understanding of how and why we perform them, and then I am sure that the questions will follow.
