[Avodah] On the Four Sons

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, May 08, 2011 at 11:33:56AM +0300, R Danny Schoemann wrote on
Areivim:
: SBA wrote:
:: Talking of the 4 sons, I was wondering how come that the Chochom who asks
:: questions which your average 12 year old could answer is given this title?
:: Shouldn't he rather be called the "Yode'a lishol"?

: I've been trying to work through a novel approach. Try this:

: The 4 sons are not 2 sets of 2 opposites.

: The Chochom is actually in contrast to the other 3:

: - He's not purposely rebelling / doing the wrong thing
: - He's not naive / unwilling to ask
: - He's not clueless / unable to ask

: He's doing the right thing even though he has 1,000 questions about
: it, he's willing to ask and eager to find answers, and not too lazy /
: uninterested to do so.

: This makes him a wise son.

I am enamored on a different take on the four sons, but one which
requires seeing the tam as an ideal. This is actually very defensible,
given "veYaaqov ish tam yosheiv ohalim".

The four sons involve two contrasts: the intellectual vs the experiential,
and good vs lacking. If you get this in a fixed-width font (eg the web
archive), here is the table I'm envisioning:

         | intellectual | experiential
---------+--------------+--------------
positive |   chakham    |     tam
---------+--------------+--------------
lacking  |   rasha      |   shyl"sh

The chakham is the steretype of the ideal Litvak. He wants to know the
dinim and the sevaros. His encouter with Yahadus is on an intellectual
plane.

The rasha thinks he knows it all already, it makes no sense, and is worth
dumping. Rejects Yahadus, and lives with himself by invoking intellectual
or pseudo-intellectual buttressing.

The tam's "Mah zos?" is asking what is it all /about/. It's not a
trivial question, it's one asking for the aggadita, the kavanah behind
the actions. If he didn't know what it was, then the question would also
be pragmatic, telling him what a seder is. It would be a pre-1A version
of the chakham's answer. But instead he is told the "why" of the seder --
"bechozeq yad hotzianu" both from Mitzrayim and from a beis avadim. And he
spends the seder trying to unify that implied duality, HQBH uShechintei,
sheim Y-K beV-K, in true stereotypical Chassidic fashion.

The she'eino yodei'ah lish'ol needs the experience brought to him. "At
pethach lo" (*). He isn't trying to squeeze every morsel kavanah out of
the seder. And notice he gets the same answer as the rasha, but without
the blunted teeth (or is that creating a craving for chazarah?).

(* Sorry for "pethach", but I couldn't think of another transliteration
that wouldn't look like I was trying for the name of the holiday.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 21st day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        3 weeks in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Malchus sheb'Tifferes: What is the unifying
Fax: (270) 514-1507                             factor in harmony?