For Pesach: Listening at the Seder

Pesach is a time to tell the story to our children. It is a time to speak. But perhaps it is also a time to listen.

At the beginning of Magid, we are told a story about 5 rabbis who held a Seder together. What do we hear of their Seder proceedings? Only one teaching: Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah says that he was never able to prove to others that the exodus needed to be mentioned at night (in the nightly Shma) until Ben Zoma came and expounded it from a certain verse.

Discussing this passage with my high school students, they suggested that more than the content of the teaching, what is being taught here is the process. These rabbis, after all, are our model for a Seder. What does the conversation at their Seder look like?

The conversation involves not just saying your own ideas, but also listening and repeating what someone else has said, and really learning from them. Ben Zoma’s insight could easily have been quoted in his own name: Ben Zoma said . . . .. But no. Instead it is introduced by Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, who frames it through his appreciation of its value; “Behold I am like a man of 70 years” and I was never able to prove this point until Ben Zoma explained it. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah is humble enough to give full credit to Ben Zoma.

Interestingly enough, the sage who is quoted here, Ben Zoma, is the very same sage to have said, in Pirke Avot 4:1: “Who is wise? One who learns from every person.” Ha! Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah clearly learned both Ben Zoma’s teaching in the Haggadah and this Pirke Avot teaching – he learned from Ben Zoma how to learn from Ben Zoma.

There is more. Ben Zoma’s interpretation of the verse in the Haggadah is actually only one side of the coin. The Haggadah (also cited in Mishnah Brachot 1:5) goes on to quote the opinion of the Sages who disagreed with him. What is the content of the Sages’ opinion? That the phrase kol yemei hayekha, “all the days of your life,” which Ben Zoma understood to be teaching us to include night as well as day, according to the Sages comes to include the Messianic era in addition to the world of today.

The Messianic era? Also in Pirke Avot, we are told that a person who cites a teaching bshem omro, “in the name of the one who said it,” in other words, a person who cites his source by name, mevi geulah la’olam, “brings redemption to the world.” Citing a source by name? That is just what Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah did here in quoting Ben Zoma! Did he bring redemption into the world? His citation did bring the mention of the Messianic era into the Haggadah. It is as if there is a little hint here that acting like Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, being humble enough to learn from others and give them credit, this is what brings about redemption, the very type of redemption we once experienced in Egypt and hope to bring about and experience again.

How do we get there? How do we get to a place of redemption? By talking and telling the story, yes. But also by listening to others – by getting outside ourselves and our need to be the smart ones at the table, by being humble enough to hear the wisdom of others, take it in, celebrate it and cite it, as Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah did. May our listening bring redemption.