News from Rabbinate
Passover: Asking the hard questions
There is that moment children go through, when they begin to ask “why.”
My three-year-old son has been there for almost a year now, and as a parent you quickly realize: the child is not really expecting an answer that will satisfy him. The point is simply to ask—“why?”
And I found myself wondering: why?
My three-year-old son has been there for almost a year now, and as a parent you quickly realize: the child is not really expecting an answer that will satisfy him. The point is simply to ask—“why?”
And I found myself wondering: why?
Until someone drew my attention to something quite remarkable. A word so small, barely a syllable - why - can unsettle an adult endlessly. It sets us in motion, activates us, exhausts us.
This is the extraordinary power of the simple, innocent question- one that, over time, we often learn to stop asking.
This is the extraordinary power of the simple, innocent question- one that, over time, we often learn to stop asking.
Passover is a holiday of questions. Perhaps it is the only holiday in which we are not ashamed of not knowing- on the contrary, we celebrate it.
Passover is a holiday of questions. Asking a question requires courage- to admit that we do not know, to pause, to shift our attention, to touch something unknown, perhaps even painful.
Passover is a holiday of questions. In order to ask, one must be open - truly looking at the world, at what is unfolding around us, and allowing it to touch us. A question is born of interest and attentiveness.
Passover is a holiday of questions. People, too, are a question mark - we ourselves are such. We do not always understand others, and often we do not even understand ourselves.
Passover is a holiday of questions. And a question carries almost nuclear energy. A small word, a bent exclamation mark, can open a journey that lasts a lifetime. A single question can change direction, unsettle assumptions, reshape an entire way of seeing.
Passover is a holiday of questions. And so we do not sit around a table of one answer, but read of four siblings. Not all ask the same question, not all ask in the same way, and yet the table is one. The family is one.
Passover is a holiday of questions. To ask, and to allow asking, is to give space to all of us. To linger in the gap between a worthy question and its answer. Questions are not meant to divide us. Asking together makes us a family, a community.
Passover is a holiday of questions. And the table is wide enough for all the questions in the world.
Kushiyot, questions in Hebrew, share their root with kashe: that which is hard, difficult. A real question does not comfort. It unsettles, presses, insists. It demands something of us. And yet, in asking them together, we become kasheh ourselves- not closed, but resilient. Strong enough that no question can undo us.
Passover is a holiday of questions. Let us give even the hardest questions their place- at the table, within the family. And as long as we remain seated together, we will remain steadfast, open to the movement they set in motion.
Yours,
Rabbi Avigail
