The Four Children (always bothered me)
This part of the seder always bothered me! Four Jewish children are discussed--a wise child, a wicked child, a simple child, and one who does not know how to ask. Modern interpretations have updated these to substitutions like "thoughtful child," "angry child," and "naive child," but it's the whole idea of categorizing a whole person as any one attribute that rankles me. When I was teaching, too often I saw kids labeled as "good" or "bad," "lazy" or "diligent," and the words were really just stand-ins for neurodiversity or teachers' biases. And these labels did a lot of harm.
I prefer the Buddhist notion that all kids (all people!) have the seeds of wisdom and naivete, kindness and wickedness, selfishness and generosity within them. We are charged to water the seeds of goodness within ourselves, and look for them and help water them in others.
The ultimate point of the four children story from the Haggadah is similar though--that the wise child cannot ignore his wicked and naive siblings, because we are all responsible for each other. The wise child should not think themself so superior to the other children, as we all have wickedness and ignorance to work on.
This is a DIFFICULT challenge when we think about some of the people in our society who are especially powerful and especially wicked.
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