Page 29 - RMBA Upper School Haggadah 2018

alludes to subduing the le er “shin” in the word rasha. Everything must have a holy founda on,
a spark of holiness, to exist. For example, falsehood must possess some truth in order to be
believable—this is the shin in sheker, falsehood. So even someone who distances themselves
from Judaism is s ll holy and important.
Is the Evil Son Really That Bad? - Akiva Levy (12th Grade)
At the beginning of Maggid we read about the famous 4 sons. We open with the wise Son,
Chacham, leading to the wicked, Rasha, then the simple son, Tam, and end with the son who
does not know how to ask, Sh’aino Yodea L’shol. The most common way to analyze the 4 sons is
that the Chacham is the best, while the Rasha is the worst. I am here to impugn that school of
thought.
We read that the Chacham astutely asks “What are the tes monials, statutes, and laws Hashem
our G-d commanded you?” A er analyzing this, it is, in fact, a fairly bland ques on that, since
he is so wise, he should be able to answer it himself. Then, the Tam simply asks “What is this?”
While this is not a bad ques on, it is dull and an elementary way of analyzing the seder,
otherwise known as simple. The final son, Sh’aino Yodea L’shol, does not even know how to ask,
so there is no ques on posed. We are le with the Rasha who asks “What does this drudgery
mean to you?” Most people have the preconcep on that this ques on is evil and the wrong
type of ques on, but, rather, it is the deepest and most challenging of all the 4 ques ons. The
other ques ons fail at penetra ng the soul at a deeper level, not requiring a deeper level of
thought and contempla on to answer. The Rasha’s ques on calls for a person to look deep
inside them self and consider what Pesach is to them.
This idea holds a deeper message, in that, some mes you have to look at something in a deeper
way to see what it really is. It is a common occurrence that when a person first sees something,
“it is just the p of the iceberg.” Meaning that, at first glance, what we see is just a ny piece
that has a much deeper meaning. Everything is not as it seems, everything holds a deeper
meaning.
The Simple Son - Eve Vaknin (9th Grade)
The Haggadah introduces four sons; “the wise one, one is wicked, the simple one and the one
who doesn’t know how to ask.” In this sec on I will be talking about the simple son. In the
Haggadah it states,” Simple One—what does he say? “What is this celebra on about?” You shall
say to him: “We are commemora ng the fact that with a strong hand G-d took us out of Egypt,
from the house of slaves” (Exodus 13:14). We are introduced to the brothers by their
characteris cs, each one perceiving Hashem in a different way. The simple one, according to R’
Yosef Yitzchak, perceives Hashem with “pure and innocent faith.” The simple son asks “what is
this?” He isn’t asking out of confusion of the pasuk, but he is asking out of curiosity. The simple
one is not so simple. He wants to learn the Torah more in depth and really understand it. We
learn from this that every person is described in one way, but in reality they can be quite the
opposite. Therefore, don’t judge a book by its cover.

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