Children and the Seder

OK, so the instructions were to share our favorite short D'var Torah, and link to longer ones, so here does. This truly is a favorite of mine, as many of you have heard it from me over the years. If you have, chazara is always a good idea.

Many of our practices at the seder, most notably כרפס, are done "so that the children will ask". In fact, we are told not to waste time before the seder, so that the children don't fall asleep. This is striking. (שבכל הלילות...)All other nights of the year, children are halachik non-entities. Parents are obligated to train them in the way of Torah and mitzvos, but (at least regarding ritual mitzvos) they are halachikly irrelevant. Why all of a sudden, for one (or two) nights a year are they suddenly the focal point of the night most loaded with mitzvos, that the children themselves need not perform?

Of course the simple answer is that the Torah tells us that סיפור יציאת מצרים is to be done by way of teaching your children (...כי ישאלך בנך...; והגדת לבנך), but why did the Torah say that?

The answer is that on seder night, with all the mitzvos we have, there is one that is so overarching as to include all the others. We read in the Hagada: "בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים". In every generation everyone is obligated to envision himself as though he himself heft Egypt. To me, this might be the hardest mitzvah in the Torah - I don't think I've ever been יוצא. To really feel that we are leaving מצרים? How can we? We are real people with real lives and real problems, we don't go around playing make-believe, and probably couldn't if we tried.

There is one group of people though who do this all the time. Children constantly live in their imaginations; in worlds that exist only in their minds. And the only time any of us ever come close to that is when we are playing with and engaged with children.

So we are commanded to keep the children active and interested in our seder not because they need the mitzvah, but because they are our best chance for us to fulfill our obligation. For the evening, they become our lulav almost; the object we need to do our mitzvah.

For a different but related point about how Jewish education is ruining the seder, see Rabbi Eytan Mayer's excellent essay on the subject.