Yontev-bletlekh: “Why Is This Night Different (Ma nishtanah)?”

Passover is coming soon and I ask you to invite me to the seder. Let me in!

I won’t cost you very much. I don’t eat kneydlekh!¹ Don’t serve me maror, the bitter herbs—I was born with them!

Do not ask me to count the Plagues—I forgave the Egyptians a long time ago. It is nothing more than a wasted prayer. Nobody has fallen ill from a written or printed plague.

Free me also from the shfoykh khamoskho² prayer! I am still too young; do not poison my blood with vengeance. . . . I hope for better times and do not wish to curse even an idolator.

I do not even want to say “Next Year in Jerusalem,” because “no one gets pregnant from talking.”

My wish for you is that next year you will have forgotten the whole mah nishtanah and avodim hoinu . . .³

And that when you open the door and sincerely call out—not as we do now in the Aramaic tongue—Kol dikhfin yeysi ve-yeykhol! “Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat!”—no one comes in. No one will need to come in!

The Bletl [“From the Editor of the Yontev Bletlekh”—Peretz]

[ . . . ]

Mah nishtanah?

The Mah nishtanah questions are childish. They were written so that children should ask them and their father should be able to call out confidently, “Avodim hoinu! We were slaves!” And then tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, enumerate how many plagues Pharaoh and the Egyptians received and the dayenus (“it is sufficient for us”) with which God favored us. . . . And yet it is typical that the whole Haggadah and the kneydlekh come from the Mah nishtanah because of changes in custom.⁴

The power of custom is known to all. We know how it rules us with all its might, in everyday things, over ourselves and those around us. From the bed to the table, from getting undressed to getting dressed, we find ourselves in the hands of custom. One person cannot sleep until he has been titillated by poetic verses, another must have a highly interesting novel. One person becomes accustomed to a dish which another cannot bear to look at. Another cannot eat if he has quarreled with his household at the table. If someone departs from his customs he cannot shut an eye and his digestion is ruined.

“Mah nishtanah?” asks the child when his father, who eats dry potatoes all year long, suddenly feels the urge to dip the potatoes in salt water. “Mah nishtanah? Why is it that our everyday horseradish is called maror and we eat it without vinegar and without beet juice? Ma nishtanah? Why is it that today we do not eat black bread, but blackish matzo instead?”

These are not our customs and the little Jewish boy is asking questions. He argues. He can’t stand it. For him all days have to be alike. No new day can bring him anything new! If it is different—it’s a problem and the answer is “avodim hoinu, we were slaves.”

But if avodim hoinu means not to have a say over one’s own self, to do everything according to someone else’s wish, to ask for the opinions of others, not to live according to one’s own understanding, if that is slavery, then custom is the greatest despot and has more slaves than all the despots put together. You serve the despots yourselves!

“We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,” but even greater slaves to custom—the custom of being slaves. We could barely be torn away from there, barely led away. Hardly had a few steps been taken than we yearned to go back. The Negroes in America also struggle with their liberators. Our peasants also yearn for the good old days [of serfdom]. . . . The prisoner sometimes has tears in his eyes when he is freed—it is hard for him to part with the dark cell where he has wasted many years, perhaps the best years of his life!

Custom is the greatest of despots, and our will and understanding are enslaved to it. Under its rule you stop thinking and contemplating—you don’t want to and you aren’t able to.

We were slaves, and we are slaves to this day, to custom. It has shackled us to a terribly heavy iron yoke laden with thousand-year-old weights. Every now and then custom throws something else in and smiles and flatters us, “It’s light, isn’t it?” And we believe it and continue hauling without cease. The yoke becomes heavier and we—weaker. And custom smiles and flatters all the more and we believe all the more firmly!

In its smile lies the same witchcraft as in the eyes of the snake. Enchantingly, it inserts its venom and poisons the blood. It is impossible to move at that moment—it is so pleasant to look into the bewitching eyes!

People want time to stand still. No century should add anything to the previous one. People want their present lives to be similar to those of their great-grandfathers thousands of years ago!

If slaves knew that they became slaves unwillingly, that no one is born a slave, slavery would have ceased to exist long ago. If people knew that custom is a big, shapeless mass of foolishness, they would have renounced it long ago. The more this is understood, the smaller the number of slaves, the weaker the force of custom.

And yet it is not so easy. Right away there will be endless questions. “Mah nishtanah—why is it different?” And not everyone will be asking this with childish innocence, like the children from the Haggadah.

It is not so easy, because for every wise child, there is a wicked child, a simple child, and a child who does not even know how to ask a question. . . .

Dovid Pinski