[Avodah] Who First Said it? 2

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 03:04 +0000, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
> Rashi/Rashbam are commenting on the Mishna
> Ra"Ch here is AFAIK paraphrasing the tannu rabbanan in the g'mara
> which starts with a ben chacham and moves along 
> At no point is the YOUNGEST son recommended - neither in Mishnah nor
> in that Braisso.

I guess I did misunderstand your question, so here's another source.

The Shulchan Aruch (OC 173:7) connects the dots from what's already given
in the gemara (he concludes that "kan haben shoel" refers to a tinok,
and he gives an order of priority for what to do if there's no son).

In the Shulchan Aruch's view, it's clear that a young child is the best
choice -- we're trying to get him to ask something by changing things in
the meal. If he doesn't ask something, his father prompts him with the
four questions. What if you don't have a young son? Then you would have
older son ask as a second choice, a wife is a third choice, or you'd ask
yourself as a fourth choice. (And Ra"Ch would say they ask each other
the 4 questions, though it seems from the gemara that having them ask
each other the 4 questions is not me'akev, and any question will do.)

When you think about it after reading what the Shulchan Aruch had to
say, the two ways in which he clarified the gemara aren't really such
a big leap.

I guess we're left with a different question: "when did it become the
custom to teach the child to ask all of these four questions in school
before the seder, rather than prompting him at the seder?" (And it's not
entirely true that we don't prompt him at the seder, because with young
children still frequently need to prompting even though they learned it
in school.)

There's another issue: what happens if the child does ask about the
karpas -- do you still need to ask the 4 questions? The Rema brings the
Maharil that you don't. (But I imagine many people do so anyway.)

--Ken