The Questions We Don’t Ask
The art of asking difficult questions is one of the most powerful pedagogical tools we have—both in general, and at Hillel in particular. Anyone who has facilitated a Jewish Learning Fellowship (JLF) knows that choosing the right “essential question” can transform a session from informative to truly engaging.
The Passover Seder—an educational experience par excellence—places questions at its very core. It uses them to draw in the next generation, spark curiosity, and fulfill the mitzvah of “והגדת לבנך ולבתך”—to tell and retell the story of our people, our journey from slavery to freedom.
We all know to ask the Four Questions—Ma Nishtana. But have you ever wondered: how many of the Seder’s questions are actually answered? How many remain unanswered? And perhaps most intriguingly—which questions are answered without ever being asked?
In one of the most familiar passages of the Haggadah, Rabban Gamliel teaches that anyone who has not explained three things—Pesach, Matzah, and Maror—has not fulfilled their obligation. Two of these—Matzah and Maror—correspond directly to questions raised in Ma Nishtana. Straightforward enough.
But the third—Pesach—answers a question the Haggadah never asks.
That missing question appears in the Mishnah – “On all other nights we eat roasted, stewed, or boiled meat; on this night, only roasted” – yet it was omitted from the Haggadah.
Why?
Some suggest historical explanations: the Haggadah was shaped after the destruction of the Temple, when sacrifices were no longer possible; perhaps the Rabbis sought to avoid reopening the wounds of loss, or to sidestep halachic disputes that could divide rather than unite.
But I wonder if something deeper is at play.
Perhaps the Rabbis were not only omitting a technical question—but avoiding a far more unsettling one: Why Pesach at all? Why did freedom require centuries of slavery, ten plagues, and decades in the wilderness? Why must a people suffer in order to become free?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers one powerful response: “Israel had to lose its freedom before it could cherish it. Israel had to suffer the experience of slavery and degradation before it could learn, know, feel intuitively that there is something morally wrong about oppression. Nor could it, or any other people, carry this message in perpetuity without reliving it every year, tasting the harsh tang of the bread of affliction and the bitterness of slavery. Thus was created, at the birth of the nation, a longing for freedom that was at the very core of its memory and identity.”
And yet, perhaps there is another layer. Perhaps the Rabbis removed the question because it leads to the kinds of existential questions we still struggle to ask today: Why do we continue to suffer? Why does violence return in cycles? When will this war end? Why war—and not peace?
Pesach is, at its heart, a holiday of questions. We ask, we answer, we debate, we remember. But some of the most powerful insights may lie not in the questions we raise—but in those we silence.
This year especially, perhaps its deepest invitation is not only to ask—but to notice which questions we avoid, and to find the courage to sit with them together.
