Four Questions

(Heb. Arba Kushiyot). Traditional formula recited during the Passover Seder. The Four Questions, usually asked by the youngest child or participant, have acquired a popular, alternative designation from the opening words: Mah Nishtannah, "How different [this night is from all other nights!]" The inquiries deal with the eating of unleavened bread (Matzah) and a bitter herb (Maror), and with the ceremonies of dipping two vegetables and reclining at the Seder table. The purpose is to enable the father to fulfill the biblical injunctions to tell his son about Israel's deliverance from Egyptian bondage (Ex. 13:8, 14-15), and the answer comes in a lengthy exposition that concludes just before the meal. This procedure has evolved from the more spontaneous table talk of the Second Temple period, when the Seder ceremony took shape. At that time, no set formula had as yet been devised and questions were asked at a later point in the ceremony to elicit fuller discussion of the Seder customs. Since children often began to fall asleep at this stage, the questions and answers were transferred to a point in the Seder shortly after its commencement.

Three specific questions first became popular within the family circle: one related to the eating of unleavened bread exclusively on Passover, another to seasoning food not once (as was the custom) but twice, a third to the practice of eating only roasted (not stewed or cooked) meat at the Seder table. This last inquiry, about the paschal lamb, became superfluous following the Temple's destruction and was subsequently replaced by an allusion to the custom of reclining which had gone out of fashion at the time. A fourth question, about eating the bitter herb, expanded the original text.

The present-day text of the Four Questions, varying in some particulars from that of the Talmud (Pes. 116a), dates from the geonic era, when a different order was introduced. This places the reference to dipping first, followed by the unleavened bread, bitter herb, and reclining; the Sephardi and Oriental rituals follow that order, while ashkenazim retain the talmudic sequence. From Mishnaic times until the later Middle Ages, the father---or some adult---posed the Four Questions, but in recent centuries this privilege has again been given to a youngster. When a man and his wife are the sole participants, she asks the questions; but in the absence of both children and women, even scholarly men have to ask each other. In some Israeli kibbutzim, new answers were introduced, e.g., "This night is different from all other nights because parents and children eat separately during the year, but on Passover night they eat together."

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