The formal telling of the story of Passover is framed as a discussion with lots of questions and answers. The tradition that the youngest person asks the questions reflects the centrality of involving everyone in the seder. The rabbis who created the set format for the seder gave us the Four Questions to help break the ice in case no one had their own questions. Asking questions is a core tradition in Jewish life. If everyone at your seder is around the same age, perhaps the person with the least seder experience can ask them – or everyone can sing them all together.

Four Questions:

  1. How is this night different from all other nights?
    1. On all nights we eat sitting upright or reclining, and on this night we all recline!
  2. On all other nights, we eat challah and matzah, why on this night only matzah?
    1. Matzah was the bread of slaves and poor, it was cheap to produce and easy to make.
    2. Matzah also commemorates the fact that the bread did not have enough time to rise when the Jews hastily left Egypt.
  3. On all other nights, we eat all vegetables. Why, on this night, maror?
    1. The bitter herbs (maror) reminds us of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.
  4. On all other nights, we don’t dip even once, why on this night do we dip twice?
    1. The salt water into which we dip the karpas represents the tears we cried while in Egypt. Similarly, the charoset into which the bitter herbs are dipped reminds us of the cement we used to create the bricks in Egypt.

haggadah Section: -- Four Questions