The Wisdom of the Simple Child

“What is the meaning of this?”

As we are preparing for 200 Jewish students, families, and friends at the University of Vermont Hillel on Saturday evening, I find myself drawn to the wisdom of the simple child and what the third of the four questions they ask can teach us as we enter this Passover season.

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday. Not just because of the gefilte fish with extra horseradish but because of the immutable values that adapt to each and every generation as we retell the story of our Jewish people as they fled from a narrow place into freedom. If I lost you at gefilte fish, bear with me.

This year at one of our staff meetings, we decided that every staff member and by extension, every student, should have the singular thing that makes Passover, well, Passover for them. For me it’s gefilte fish and not the sweet kind but the jarred blob of carp, pike, and whitefish in amorphous jelly with maybe a carrot or two and a personal jar of horseradish. For our Jewish staffer born in Mumbai, it was Medjool dates. For others it was the candy fruit slices, matzo brie, or a particular prayer that held a resonance with their family’s traditions. We committed that every person could have the food that resonated most with them to help their holiday feel special, personal, and meaningful.

I hope that our students have their personal communal food in our robust menu of brisket, salmon, kugels, charoset, salads, dessert, so many table appetizers, vegan jackfruit, and matzo ball soup. It’s the first time we’re offering matzo ball soup at our massive seder because one person mentioned simply, “it’s just not Passover without matzo ball soup.” I won’t bore you with the logistical details of schlepping mega gallons of soup from the Vermont Kosher kitchen to the Davis Student Center, how we are reheating it and serving it to minimize spillage and burns, but we are making it happen because that’s what it takes to make Passover in Burlington really special for these students who may be experiencing Seder away from their families for the first time in their adult lives.  That’s a big deal.

Can you recall your first Seder away from home? Did you call your parents to ask for the trick to ensuring the brisket was just like bubbe used to make? Did you wonder where you were going to source a shankbone at the last minute? Did you invite your Jewish and non-Jewish friends to your home where you laid out a tablecloth for the first time while fretting if the spoon goes on the inside or outside of the plate? I’m willing to bet that even as you tried to replicate those things that made your first solo Seder special, there were still new prayers or foods or activities that have since become revered traditions in your own families.

I love Passover because in every generation at every table across the world, Jewish people make it their own. There is so much focus on the four questions that oftentimes the four children and their questions are overlooked. We revere the wise child for their commitment to the laws and practices of the Seder while we revile the wicked child whose caustic question earns a rebuke from elders. Even the child who does not know how to ask is treated with the kindness and unconditional love that is shown to babies still forming language and a spirit of inquiry of their own. But this year, I’m connected to the simple son.

What is the meaning of this?

Our young adults and Jewish students ask this question in every generation.

Think about all of the additions to the Seder plate that have become more commonplace over the year. Even a single addition to the Seder plate could seem a radical act of forcing modern meaning on ancient traditions. After all, Seder means order and introducing other items into order could be seen as chaotic or even heretical, and yet…the Seder becomes as adaptable as the Jewish people have been throughout the centuries.

For example,  the orange on the Seder plate was a response to a Jewish feminist Haggadah from Oberlin Hillel that placed bread on their Seder plate to forcefully state that lesbians have a place in Judaism. Rabbi Susanah Heschel felt this violated the commandment of separating chametz from Passover and adapted this to the orange to include in her words, “in recognition of gay and lesbian Jews and of widows, orphans, Jews who are adopted and all others who sometimes feel marginalized in the Jewish community.”

Other modern additions to the Seder plate include olives to represent the hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, something at the forefront of the mind of many college students today especially after the heartache and pain of last year’s campus activism in the wake of October 7th, 2023. Some interfaith families and allies add thorny artichokes to their seder plate in the words of Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, “stand for the wisdom of God’s creation in making the Jewish people a population able to absorb many elements and cultures throughout the centuries–yet still remain Jewish. Let the thistles protecting our hearts soften so that we may notice the petals around us.” Vegans and vegetarians like Kohenet Sarah Chandler of Shamir Collective have added a “paschal yam” to their seder plate to eliminate meat from their ritual observance.

This year I learned of Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s exhortation of adding a yellow lemon to the Seder plate to represent the hostages still being held in captivity; to recall those unable to celebrate or observe the Pesach rituals in the freedom we pray for. This was formalized into ritual by the Melbourne Shteibel and you can find downloadable versions for your Seder here. My friend and colleague Rabbi Evan Schultz of Congegation B’nai Israel in Connecticut has suggested we add 59 pieces of broken matzo to our seder tables to evoke those 59 people still being held apart from freedom and the love and warm embrace of family.

What is the meaning of this?

What is the meaning of Passover today in 2025/5785?

What will the meaning of Passover be in the generations of Jewish life that will follow ours?

In every generation, in every year, we adapt and we survive and we thrive. To paraphrase comedian and actor Alan King about nearly every Jewish holiday, “they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” We find ways to thrive and make sometimes inscrutable Jewish meaning our own in the hopes that our children, our friends, our families, and friends too can find personal meaning in these times that evoke the narrow darkness of Mitrazyim.

This is the meaning of Passover that is shared from the wisdom of the simple child. The simple child calls upon us to make Judaism our own and share it with others to inspire and collectively think about the world we want to create together.

I know that today’s Jewish college students will do exactly that as they join with hundreds of their peers tomorrow night in Hillels, their own communities, and across the world and throughout the week to come. I find my own personal inspiration through the creativity, adaptation, and burgeoning confidence of these young adults as they make Judaism their own.

It is my Pesach wish for you that you find inspiration and meaning in your Seder, however you practice, whatever you sing and listen to, or whatever you eat, even if it’s gefilte fish with extra horseradish like me.

From the conclusion of our new student-designed and compiled UVM Hillel Haggadah, “Next year in Jerusalem. Next year, may all people, everywhere, be free!”