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I am here for one reason and one reason alone
Contributed by Serena Jake

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

...and that is to advocate for the wicked child. 

and of course, i do this because, well who are we to designate? who are we to call any kids good or evil, when the origin of evil is mysterious and inexplicable, and anyway, if kids know what good and evil is when they’re called one or the other it’s because they found out from some grown-up or something that a grown-up made or did? who are we to give them an essence that is one thing or another? i recall from a childhood that grows further and further away, that good and evil were mutable categories: my sister was good when she shared and evil when she stole my pretzels and lied about it and the distance between good and evil could be traversed back and forth in minutes. i digress. the origin of evil is not the point.

the point is, i stand in defense of the child who asks, what does this mean to you?

because the wicked child knows that every human is a planet, vast and fundamentally unknowable, and even those human beings who are a part of communities with rules and systems and structures.

because instead of speaking the language of strictures and commandments, the wicked child is asking about the kind of meaning unique to each person’s unmappable planet, is humbled by the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone else, and wouldn’t dare presume that what is yours is the same theirs, that your reasons are the same as theirs, and asks from a desire to understand what is so core to you that it can only be yours.

i say: hear the wicked child because it is easier to cite laws, to feed someone else’s language for purpose and meaning making back and forth, to parrot those people who are so very good and so very fluent in rightness, than to answer a question spoken to the molten hot core of what matters.

how scary it is to be asked such things. it is protective, of course, this impulse to anger and defensiveness. it is far easier to deny someone’s right to redemption than to hear what they are actually asking.

i would like to hope that if i found myself sitting opposite the wicked child, i would attempt to answer honestly, weaving through all of my i don’t knows and ums and pauses, doing my best arrive at something fundamental and honest, even if the only thing i could find to offer the wicked child was a quiet, hesitant question in response to a question.

and then i would ask, in turn:

what does this mean to you?

haggadah Section: -- Four Children
Source: Shara Feit

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