What is the difference between the wise son and the wicked son in the Haggadah?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains that there is no real difference in their questions. “It’s not about what the child asks.” The only difference is how each one was answered.
Answer a child with shame, anger and rejection, and a weakness can turn him into a rebel. Keep telling him he is the rebellious one, and he will eventually accept that title. Sometimes the act was wrong, he says, but the way it was handled made the person much worse.
The Haggadah’s lesson, then, is about the one answering. “A hard moment does not destroy a soul. The loss of belief does.”
Related concepts: Parenting · Kids
In A Soul at Peace: Blunting His Teeth
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
The wise son and the wicked son differ not in their questions but in how they were answered.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes: “We called him ‘wicked,’ and now he believes that this is who he is.”
Deepest human truth
A hard moment does not destroy a soul; losing belief in that soul does.
More questions from this teaching
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