Pesach

The Torah Addresses itself to four sons – one is wise, one is wicked, one is naïve, and one is unable to ask.

The four children represent the four generations of the American experience. The Wise child represents the European roots, the generation of the grandparents who came to America with beard and earlocks, dressed in streimel and kapote, steeped in piety, with a love for learning and profound knowledge of the Jewish tradition. Their progeny, brought up within the American melting pot, rejected his parent’s customs and ways of thought. He thought of himself as being in a new country with new ways of thinking and acting…The third generation, the Simple Child is confused. He watched his grandfather making Kaddush on Friday night and his father standing by silently, perhaps resentfully, impatient to prepare for fussiness on Saturday morning…The fourth generation, the Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask, offspring of the Simple Child, is the greatest tragedy of all. He was born after his great grandparents had died. He knows only his totally assimilated grandfather…and his religiously confused father…

Joseph Isaac Schneerson (20^th Century)

The Torah is telling us that we should rejoice; for as long as the wicked child still asks questions, there is hope that he will eventually accept direction, as opposed to a situation where there is no communication whatsoever. Likewise with the simple c hild, even though his question may be simple, be happy that he is asking, for that means that there is hope of his being trained to think deeper.

Moshe Emanuel (Contemporary)

We can view the discussion of the four sons as an introduction to the Mitzvah of recounting the Exodus, in that it tells us that this recounting should not be a mere recapitulation of the facts as they are presented in the Torah, but rather, a meaningful discussion adapted to the needs of the company present at the Seder…We can say that the sons are, in fact, two symmetric pairs. The wise son is obviously countered by the one who is unable to ask. The wicked so is also countered by the naïve son….The word for naivete in Hebrew also connotes perfection. It implies a person in a state of serene simplicity...It follows from this that the sons appear in the Haggadah in the order of their degree of wisdom. The wise son, steeped in Torah knowledge, comes first. The wicked son with his cunning comes next. He is followed by the less intelligent naïve son. Finally, the one who is not even able to ask is mentioned.

Abravanel (15^th Century)

I instinctively recoil from static stereotypes that label persons simplistically. Therefore I choose to interpret the Midrash of the four children as a diverse set of strategies for addressing four different facets of each and every child. Each personality combines these facets in different ways. For example, the wise and the rebellious facets can be combined for evil. Then the cunning mind is used to inflict pain on one’s parents.

Yaariv Ben Aharon (20^th Century)