1. This holiday of Passover might rightly be called “The Festival of Questions.” All the ceremonials of the Seder are performed with an eye to provoking questions from our children. The Hagaddah is in answer to the Four Questions asked by the youngest child. The famous “Four Sons” are distinguished from each other by the nature of the questions they pose. The hymn Echad Mi Yodeia is in the form of a series of questions. A Festival of Questions indeed!
2. Well, then, what are the questions we must learn? The Mah Nishtanah is the series of four questions which a child asks. What about the mature adult, he who would live a rich, meaningful, spiritual Jewish life? Here too, there are questions – but they must not only be verbalized. They must be lived. They must be asked by every fiber of our being; we must experience them to our innermost core, and our entire being must partake of those questions. They are questions that must be lived if we are to attain the spiritual insights, the religious maturity, and the wholeness of life which can be ours if we ask properly.
3. One of these is: matzah zu sheanu ochlin al shum mah? – Why do we eat this Matzah? Those who know Hebrew well will recognize that the root for the word matzah means “to fight,” as in the verse shnei anashim ivrim mitzim… And with this understanding of the original root of the word – and there is a logical connection, too, for people fight others for their bread, just as milchamah is related to lechem – our question becomes: G-d, why must there always be war? Why can’t people learn to live in peace? Why is it that this world is filled with so much dissension and discord, so much strife and struggle? Why cannot the greatest war ever fought in history just evaporate after its conclusion instead of freezing into permanent hostility, into a “cold war?” Why must young lives ever be sacrificed on the altars of greed and hate? Why must an Israel, which so speaks and seeks peace, be swaddled in bloodshed, nursed in battle, and weaned in war? Why must union and management join blows with such enmity and hostility so that until very recently both parties, and especially the laborers at Westinghouse, lose so very much, some of them all their life’s savings? Why, we ask, must homes be broken by strife, and why must discord erupt to destroy the domestic peace which could be the share of all? Matzah zu al shum mah? – To what purpose is all this? And how can I do something about it?

That is more than a challenge to G-d. That is a challenge to ourselves. What can we do to establish peace in the small circles in which we travel? Matzah zu she’anu ochlim, the Matzah we eat, the scraps we get into, the battling we do almost every day, how are we to guard against these personal feuds as well as convince whole governments to sue for peace? And to answer that, we must go to R. Gamaliel’s answer. And we find many reasons for matzah, for warfare. One is ki gorshu mitzrayim, nations fall prey to inflammatory jingoism, and they exile others. Another is ve’gam tzeidah lo assu lahem, lack of food, the economic factor in warfare as its cause. But the predominant note in this passage is something else: velo yachlu le’hismahmeiha – they couldn’t wait. There was no time for the dough to rise, and so it remained Matzah. In the metaphoric sense, the same is true. Impatience and quick temper are one of the chief causes of all contention, whether international or personal. I dare say that a historian could substantiate that is true for a great number of historical crises. And anyone with experience will tell you the same of personal relations. Britain was impatient with an archbishop in Cyprus. Who knows how much blood will be shed because of this act! Imagine if our government had followed the policy of those reactionaries who were and are advocating war with Russia at the least provocation – impatience would have borne catastrophe. Who knows how often in the past unconsidered, impatient, and precipitate action has caused wars which might otherwise have been averted. And oh, how often do these small cases of quick temper and impatience detonate an explosion of a home which might otherwise have flourished in peace? What can we do then? – Be patient. One of the cardinal principles of Judaism is v’halachta bi’drachav – imitate G-d. And G-d is erech apayim, patient and long-suffering.

1. A second question is: marror zu she’anu ochlin al shum mah? Why are people so often embittered? Why so much resentment? Why are people not satisfied with their lot? Why must Israelis be embittered at Arabs? Why should Negroes feel bitter at the south? Is there any value to all this marror? Is that what G-d wants in His world? And what can be done about it?

Here again, let us look at the answer R. Gamaliel quotes. It is avodah kashah – hard and harsh work. But that, assuredly, is not a reason for bitterness. What then? – uvchol avodah ba’sadeh, it was because of the work in the fields, outside work, work that had been imposed upon them without their consent and against their will, it was degrading slavery and their resentment against and its immorality welled up in their breasts – that was that marror our ancestors experienced in Egypt.

There is, of course, a childish, immature, and unproductive kind of marror – it is the bitterness and resentment of selfish, pampered people who must have things their own way. But when this marror is the result of a powerful protest against injustice, when it is the inner expression of indignation against avodah she’basadeh, against degradation imposed forcibly from without, then that marror is one of the most valuable things in the world. The late Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Kook, calls this bitterness oss ha’cheirus ha’pnimis shelanu, she’hi muchrachas la’tzeis el ha’poeil lefi etzem tiveinu she’nata banu adon kol ha’masim, that bitterness and resentment is the authoritative sign of our inner will to freedom, which by our very nature seeks expression in real life and which was implanted in us by the Almighty. So that this kind of marror is a gift of the Divine, that which assures us that we will not accommodate ourselves to injustice and indecency and unrighteousness. The slave who is content with his lot is a degraded shell of a human being. The slave who is bitter because he detests the whole idea of slavery, he is a human in the fullest sense, one created in the image of G-d and one endowed with an inner nobleness, an inner spark. Jews were bitter after the last war. And that marror, when brought out from potential to real, led them to found the State of Israel. Negroes are bitter at the conditions imposed upon them in the South. The expression of that marror, despite its violent overtones, will cleanse this country of ours of one of its greatest blemishes of downright immorality. That kind of marror is mature and valuable and desirable. That kind of bitterness can sweeten life. And so when we ask, as we must, marror zu al shum mah, the answer is that it comes from righteous resentment of avodah she’ba’sadeh, of enforced degradation, and when you ask, “What can I do about it?” The answer is, as Rabbi Kook maintains, develop it!

1. Now these first two questions, those concerning matzah and marror, strife and bitterness, are comparatively easy to ask. We see, without difficulty, the tragic condition of the world about us. We are so painfully aware of our own difficulties and wants. To complain does not require great wisdom. One needn’t be a philosopher to be a pessimist. How much more difficult to ask the third question, how much more wisdom is required to perceive that we are heir to so much goodness in life! And that is embodied in the phrase of R. Gamaliel, pesach… al shum mah? – Why the Passover Sacrifice? Both the Jerusalem Aramaic translator and Rashi point out that the word pesach originally means mercy and goodness – upasachti – vechamalti. Why, O God, asks the intelligent, enlightened, and wise person, why are You so good to me? Why do I deserve all Your favor and kindness?

Occasionally, we ought to take a step back and take a good, long look at ourselves. Then we will notice that those things we complain about are really so small and insignificant, and by and large, we are a blessed people who have so very much to be thankful for. We make a sufficient living. Think of the millions who are starving. We have good children. Think of the brokenhearted parents of juvenile delinquents who are in serious trouble. We have enough to eat, enough to wear, and enough shelter. Think of the Jews of Morocco and their miserable existence in the degrading mellah. And that which is so very important: our health. We have our sight – how wonderful! We have use of our limbs – how fortunate we are! In Russia today, in the provinces, hardly a synagogue exists in a country which was once the greatest center of Jewish life in all the world. There is one exception – the synagogue in Moscow, which the Communists keep as their “showcase” for Western visitors, in order to impress them with the “freedom of religion” in Russia. The synagogue is comparatively well attended. But – a writer in the most recent issue of “Orthodox Jewish Life” points out – at every service, 4 MVD men are present to check on the Rabbi’s sermon and record the names of those attending. G-d Almighty, pesach al shum mah – how can I be deserving of so much goodness, how can I thank you that there is no secret police to check and censor my sermons! And you too, my friends, must ask that happy question – pesach… how can we thank G-d that when we come to Kodimoh, there is no one to enter our names on the list of “enemies of the state!” And Life itself – shouldn’t we constantly thank G-d for that, and wonder that He has mercifully granted it to us? Just think: it was the fathers or grandfathers of most of us who emigrated to this country while so many of their brothers and sisters remained in Europe. Most of their children and grandchildren – our cousins – are unfortunately no longer here, massacred in the greatest holocaust in human history. We, because of a fortunate quirk of circumstance, are thriving and flourishing and happy. How easily it might have been reversed! O G-d, pesach al shum mah, how good and merciful and kind You have been to us!

And if we ask, “How can we continue to deserve this pesach, this mercy of G-d?” The answer is again available in the passage quoted by R. Gamaliel, in the very last words of that paragraph: va’yikod ha’am va’yishtachu, the people bowed down and worshipped – that is, bow your heads before this G-d of Goodness, accept upon yourselves the duties and obligations He has imposed upon you, and understanding how fortunate you really are, do not complain that Torah with its obligations and duties is too heavy a load and that it is too strenuous to bow before G-d; and finally, “worship” – come with us, be with us, make shul-going not only a rare experience, but a weekly event and even a daily one.

These then are the three questions which we must ask, and live. Ve’ili hein, and they are, pesach, matzah, marror. Let us ask and attempt to answer the questions of matzah and marror, and may G-d, in turn, provide us with everlasting pesach, with eternal mercy and goodness as we bow in acknowledgement and worship in gratitude.