The Four Sons in Ascending Order
Blessed is the Omnipresent One, blessed be He! Blessed is He who gave the Torah to His people Israel, blessed be He! The Torah speaks of four children: One is wise, one is wicked, one is simple and one does not know how to ask.
Conventional Wisdom
Who has not heard of the four sons (more accurately, the four children) who come to the Seder?
The first is the chacham, the wise son (or daughter), then the rasha, the wicked or rebellious child, then the tam, the simple child, and finally the she’aino yo’deah lishol, the child who does not know how to ask questions.
Conventional wisdom has it that the four sons are listed in descending order. Yet if that was the case why is the rebellious child placed immediately after the wise son? And why are the simple children placed last?
Only the Chacham can Influence the Rasha
The classic answer given by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe is that while the rebellious child is certainly not above the simple child, he needs to be placed next to the chacham because only the chacham can influence him and bring him back into the fold.
There is another system in which the four sons are indeed listed in descending order. In this approach, the simple son and the one who does not know how to ask questions are indeed inferior to the rasha because their lack of knowledge derives not from their sincere simplicity but, rather, from indifference. Rebellion is preferable to indifference.
The Chacham: The Lowest Rung
One may suggest, incredibly, a third approach in which the four sons do indeed go in ascending order, however with the chacham on the lowest rung of the ladder, followed by the rasha. The two highest levels are occupied by the simple son and the one who does not know how to ask questions. In this system the one who cannot ask questions is on the highest rung!
This is not meant to disparage the chacham. It is intended to show that even with the exalted position of the chacham one can and must go even higher.
Let us examine the chacham, about what is good about him and what is lacking in his attitude.
The chacham is an intellectual and takes an exclusively academic approach to Passover. The chacham is blessed with a sharp mind and healthy intellectual curiosity. He or she is obsessed with a thirst for knowledge. “Tell me everything” he demands. “I want to know it all.”
And we respond in kind. We tell him all of the laws and even the finest nuances of the laws. We withhold nothing from the studious and inquisitive child. We don’t push him off by saying, “When you get older you will understand.” To quote the Talmud in the context of educating your child with Jewish knowledge, “stuff him like an ox!”
But, surprisingly, as great as this thirst for knowledge is, it is just the first rung of the ladder. It is but the first step to escaping from bondage. Intellectual and academic achievement, in and of itself, is far from the goal, though it makes for a good beginning. This must be followed with step number two, the rebellious son.
Potential Energy
To be sure, we are not lauding the rebellious son for his antagonistic attitude towards Passover and Judaism. We are acknowledging, approvingly, his energy with which he fights and resists. It is a sign that he or she is not detached from Judaism. He or she is struggling with it and is currently in the mode of opposing it. It is also a sign that he or she possesses incredible spiritual energy that when harnessed for the good instead of rebellion will make him or her far superior to the chacham. In the words of the Talmud and of Maimonides, “the place where Ba’al Teshuvah, the returnee to G-d and Torah stands, even a completely righteous person cannot stand.”
Even before he or she returns to Judaism, we must look deeper into his soul to see how his or her negative energy is actually potential superior spiritual energy. In that respect, the rasha is superior to the chacham.
Our response is to use harsh language to break the rebellious crust, as a way of revealing his or her true connection to G-d, a connection far superior to that of the chacham.
Being Whole
On a still higher rung is the simple son. This is the child (or the adult who attains this superior juvenile level) who is endowed with a simple but pure soul. These are the people who simply want to do G-d’s bidding and do it with sincerity and love. This approach is quite unlike the chacham whose question is dispassionate and academically inclined. There is no warmth and love, just intellectual curiosity, which can be very cold and detached. The chacham with all of his accomplishments is still very far from being whole. He lacks spirit and soul.
The simple child, by contrast, is warm to Judaism and his question is motivated by a sincere desire to be part of the experience, not just to understand it theoretically. The word “simple” that is employed here is tam, which also means sincere and whole. What he lacks in brain power he makes up a hundred fold in soul power.
Our response to the tam is not an extensive and intricate exposition of all the laws of Passover, but, instead, a simple penetrating and poignant description of what happened to us. G-d with His mighty hand took us out of Egypt, we tell him or her. These few words suffice to ignite his spark and bring excitement to his soul.
Transcending
But the highest place is reserved for the child who does not ask questions because he is so unified with the Seder and all that it represents that he transcends the need to ask. He is not ignorant or rebellious. But his attachment to the Passover experience transcends knowledge. He or she is a person for whom Judaism is his or her most essential identity.
To be sure, this lofty soul who transcends knowledge does engage in study and has an interest in learning. It is just that his or her connection to Judaism does not hinge on nor is limited to understanding it, just like our love for our children is not limited to our understanding of their qualities.
All in One
In truth, these four children are not mutually exclusive personalities. The true chacham does not stay in one place. After or while satisfying his curiosity, he starts to rebel, not against the Passover experience itself but against the coldness with which he approaches it. He rebels against the stiffness of the intellectual and academic approach and so seeks to acquire more passion.
The Chacham realizes that he will be more whole if he acquires the sincere simplicity and humility of the tam, and he aspires to that level. But it doesn’t come easy. The ego that has just been fed and stoked by his ability to quench his thirst for and accumulation of knowledge feels content where it is. One needs to rebel against one’s own complacency to reach the level of the tam.
But the tam whose soul is passionate is not satisfied with his or her level of attachment. The tam seeks to transcend himself and to reach the level where his or her attachment to G-d, Torah, and the Passover experience of spiritual freedom becomes an inseparable part of his or her personality.
The Four Sons of the Future
The Passover experience—more than any other—is the paradigm for the final Redemption.
The Talmud states that Moshiach comes when we are distracted from his coming. At face value this flies in the face of numerous exhortations of our sages, including our daily prayers in which we are told to anticipate his coming every day. How do we reconcile these two statements?
The Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the founder of Chabad known as the Alter Rebbe) in his classic Tanya explains that it does not mean that we should, G-d forbid, distract ourselves from Moshiach. Rather it means that our connection to Moshiach should transcend logic.
In truth, the goal of Moshiach is to become all four of the sons.
In the Messianic Age we will all be imbued with all of the knowledge that eludes us today. We will all reach the ultimate level of chacham.
In the Messianic Age even the tzadik, the completely righteous individual, will experience the heightened level of the Ba’al Teshuvah, the one who rebelled and transferred his passion into the realm of holiness.
In the Messianic Age, we will all realize sincere wholeness that today is expressed in the simple Jew who serves G-d with sincerity. This simplicity is an expression and manifestation of the “simplicity” of G-d, in the sense that G-d is beyond description and definition. He is utterly simple and the simple Jew captures this Divine simplicity as the Ba’al Shem Tov taught us.
Only in the Messianic Age will we all be conduits of that “beyond-description” aspect of G-d that will endow us with Divine simplicity.
And, finally, in the Messianic Age we will all reach the level where we will have no need to ask questions because we will have become one with G-d and His Torah.
From the book Light from the Future: Haggadah Shel Pesach by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
