[Avodah] Hagada's response to the rasha

Akiva Miller via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Mon Apr 18 16:04:26 PDT 2016


I asked why the Hagada uses the words "v'af atah" to introduce the answer
to the rasha. R' Zev Sero responded:

> How else should the baal hagada transition from what your wicked
> son says to how you, the father, should respond? He explains that
> your son is saying something harsh to you, so you should also say
> something harsh to him.

Interesting thought. But if so, then for the other

OOPS! I hadn't noticed that these exact same words introduce the Hagada's
answer to the chacham. And rightly so - Your child is asking a detailed
question, and you too should respond with a detailed answer. My bad. Thanks!

But now my question is about the Tam, who asks a very simple question, and
gets a very simple answer. So he too should get the "v'af atah [...] emar
lo" like the the chacham and rasha. But instead, the answer to the tam is
introduced with "v'amarta aylav". This brings three questions, where the
tam differs from both the chacham and rasha:

1) Why no "v'af" for the tam?
2) Why "amarta" instead of "atah [...] emar"?
3) Why "aylav" instead of "lo"?

(The She'eino Yodea Lish'ol never asks anything at all, so there is no
congruency to invoke RZS's suggestion.)

Akiva Miller
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20160418/d4ddebd1/attachment-0008.html>


More information about the Avodah mailing list