WHO WILL WE BE?

Every year at the Seder, we arrive at one of the most familiar passages in the Haggadah: כנגד ארבעה בנים דיברה תורה. Four sons, four personalities, four ways of asking — or not asking — about the story of the Exodus.

We’ve heard it since we were children, explained it to our own children, sat through countless Sedarim where it’s presented as an educational framework.

It’s familiar and comfortable, and that’s exactly the problem. Because the Haggadah is not just a cute pedagogical tool designed to keep the kids entertained until the meal. It is a deeply subversive, profoundly challenging text — one that is trying to teach us how to think about the world, how to respond to it, and how to define ourselves within it.

So, this year, let’s read the ארבעה בנים not as four children sitting around your Seder table, but as four voices in the world around us — four attitudes, four ideologies, four ways that people and institutions respond to truth, to morality, to Jewish identity.

When you read the רשע not as a difficult child but as a worldview, when you read the חכם not as a bright student but as a moral voice, when you read the תם and the שאינו יודע לשאול as reflections of confusion or silence in the face of events — you realize that the Haggadah is describing an existential battlefield, literally a struggle over truth and values.

And this year, in particular, these ideas have come into very sharp focus.

Let’s begin with the most uncomfortable one. The Haggadah doesn’t introduce him gently: רשע — the wicked one. He’s not presented as mistaken, he’s not confused, he’s not “coming from a different perspective.”

And his question is telling: מה העבודה הזאת לכם? “What is this service to you?” לכם — ולא לו …  He removes himself. He stands outside. He looks at everything — at Jewish identity, at Jewish suffering, at Jewish destiny — and says: that’s your story, it’s not mine.

The Haggadah’s response is startling: ואף אתה הקהה את שיניו. Blunt his teeth. Confront him. No appeasement, no soft language. Because the Haggadah understands something modern thinking has tried very hard to forget or at least to mitigate: do you know what, not every position deserves validation, not every voice deserves accommodation, and not every claim is made in good faith.

The רשע is someone who takes the moral framework itself and begins to bend it, until things that should be obvious are no longer obvious, and things that should be condemned are suddenly explained away.

So who is a modern-day rasha? I have the answer: Francesca Albanese. On paper, her role sounds like the kind of thing you would associate with the חכם — she’s a UN representative appointed to investigate human rights issues relating to the Palestinian territories.

But when you listen carefully to how she frames events, something begins to feel off. Acts of terror are placed into broader narratives – read: brazen apologetics – that soften their brutality. Responsibility is shifted in ways that leave you wondering whether the basic categories of right and wrong are being preserved at all.

What makes this more troubling is that for a long time such voices have been taken seriously, even elevated. But something has changed. When Albanese appeared this week in Germany, protesters challenged her openly and directly.

There is a growing sense that endlessly accommodating voices that blur moral lines is not sophistication, but confusion. The Haggadah’s idea: ואף אתה הקהה את שיניו – is not a call for aggression, but a call for firmness.

Which brings us to Iran. For decades, Iran has operated with exactly that same posture of the רשע — an ideological certainty that places itself outside the normal framework of accountability. It speaks in absolutes and has never really hidden the fact that as far as they are concerned, only Iran occupies the moral high ground.

What Iran does is almost a perfect expression of לכם — ולא לו. We – the normal people – talk, we negotiate, we try to build frameworks of cooperation. And the רשע stands outside and says: that’s your system, not mine.

For years, the world responded by trying to accommodate Iran, convinced that the right incentives would change things. But the רשע is not looking for common ground. He has already decided where the ground is. The Haggadah is telling you that there comes a point where the response cannot be endless accommodation. ואף אתה הקהה את שיניו — it’s time to draw a line.

But if the רשע represents certainty that excludes everyone else, the חכם represents something much more difficult to achieve.

The חכם is not simply someone who is right. He is someone who thinks before he speaks, who takes complexity seriously, who understands that the world is not made up of slogans – the world is comprised of ideas that have to be examined carefully.

So the Chacham asks: מה העדות והחוקים והמשפטים אשר צוה ה׳ אלקינו אתכם? It’s a layered question. Let me understand every detail. I really want to know what’s going on.

You can hear that him trying to understand the system, not dismiss it. But at the same time, he says ה׳ אלקינו. He knows that what happens in the world serves a higher purpose.

The chacham is invested in what’s going, he’s committed to it. He has that combination — of intellectual seriousness and moral commitment — and that combination is very rare.

When I think of a contemporary chacham, the person who comes to mind is my friend Douglas Murray. What’s striking about him is not just the positions he takes, but the way he arrives at them. He spends time in the places most people prefer to talk about from a distance.

He listens, he observes, he reads widely. He doesn’t pretend things are simple. But having done that work, he is not afraid to draw conclusions. He asks questions like a חכם — and he answers those questions like a חכם.

And the thing is this: when the חכם asks his questions, the response is not to shut him down, or to dismiss him, but to answer him in detail, to give him structure, to bring him into the depth of the system.

Now let’s consider the תם. We usually translate תם as “simple,” but the תם is not an innocent simpleton — he is more like deliberately unformed. The reason he doesn’t ask a complex question is not because he can’t, but because he can’t be bothered.

We live in an age where people have access to more information than ever before, but most people avoid real information – because they can’t be bothered. Opinions are formed quickly, shared instantly, reinforced constantly — not through careful thinking, but through repetition.

Scroll, watch, react. People see a clip on TikTok, they read through a thread on X — and that becomes their “knowledge.” What a joke!

The תם is not trying to distort reality like the רשע. He’s just not engaging deeply like the חכם. He’s just absorbing whatever comes his way. The Haggadah’s response is this: ואמרת אליו בחוזק יד הוציאנו ה׳ ממצרים. Anchor him. Give him the correct information. Inform him correctly. Because the תם doesn’t need to be defeated — he needs to be guided.

The last one is: שאינו יודע לשאול. He’s the one who doesn’t know how to ask. In many ways, this is the most unsettling category of all. The guy is not asking any questions. Do you know why? It’s not because he has a bad framework; it’s that he has no framework at all.

There are deep conversations to be had: about morality, about truth, about Israel, about the world — and guess what: for a huge number of people, none of it registers.

They have their lives, their routines, their distractions. They don’t care to engage their brains about anything outside their bubble. And once a person opts out, they become incredibly easy to shape – or to exploit. When they finally encounter something important, they have no tools, no context, and no habits of thought to fall back on.

That’s why the Haggadah places the responsibility on us: את פתח לו. You open it for him. Don’t wait for the question, because the question isn’t coming. You have to initiate, you have to provoke curiosity, you have to create the space in which a question can begin to form.

When you step back and look at all four together, you see that the Haggadah is describing the world we live in.

There is the רשע — certain, dismissive, convinced of his own righteousness.

There is the חכם — thoughtful, grounded, willing to wrestle with complexity without losing sight of truth.

There is the תם — absorbing nonsense, and reacting to it without the tools to separate what is real from what only feels real.

And there is the שאינו יודע לשאול — silent, disengaged, unaware that there is even a conversation to be had.

Each of these requires a different response.

You confront the רשע.

You engage the חכם.

You guide the תם.

And you awaken the שאינו יודע לשאול.

But here’s the part that matters most. These are not just four people out there. They are also four tendencies within us.

There are moments when we are tempted to be dismissive, to retreat into our own certainty — and that’s the רשע speaking.

There are moments when we rise to the challenge, when we seek truth with humility and clarity — and that’s the חכם.

There are moments when we take things at face value, when we don’t go deep enough — and that’s the תם.

And there are moments when we would rather not know at all, when it feels easier not to engage — and that’s the שאינו יודע לשאול.

Pesach, at its core, is about refusing to stay stuck in any of those places. It is about becoming someone who remembers, who asks, who thinks, and who responds.

If you know that truth is not something you stumble into accidentally — it is something you have to pursue – then you are on the right track. Because that is what יציאת מצרים was about. Not just leaving a place. But becoming a people capable of asking the right questions, and giving the right answers.

So that when we sit at the Seder and tell the story again, we are not just remembering who we were. We are deciding who we are going to be.