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I have always asked questions. As I was growing up, my parents were more likely to ask “did you ask good questions?” than “how was school today?” when I came home from school. I remember being eager to be the one to ask the Four Questions at the Seder. It didn’t take long before I figured out that the answers to my questions would be determined to some extent by who I asked or to notice that some people always answer a question with a question. As a teacher, I have tried to encourage my students to ask questions.

When we think about questions rather than answers, we approach learning and knowledge differently. An emphasis on questions is part of Jewish text study. When we study Jewish texts, we begin with our own questions of the text in front of us. We then move to the commentaries, where the answers to these questions may be, along with the answers to questions that we hadn’t even considered. When we are examining the commentaries themselves, a suggested approach is to ask – what is the question that this commentator is answering? By emphasizing questions rather than answers, we begin to value the journey more than the destination and soon
see that we learn more in looking for an answer than in learning the answer.

Each year at Passover, an emphasis on questions is formalized and made part of the Seder as the Four Questions. We spend time at our Seders with questions, formal and informal, but there is a fifth question built into the Seder, and it arises from our Torah portion this week, Parashat Va’era.
Besides the Four Questions and the Four Children, another “four” in the Seder is the four cups of wine that we drink to correspond with the four promises that God makes to us in Exodus 6:6 – 8.

1. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians
2. I will deliver you from their bondage
3. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements
4.  I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.
5 I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and I will give it to you as a possession.

Just as the Four Questions don’t really seem to be four questions, but one question with four statements, this series of four promises seems to be different than advertised. How many promises are there? Five? Seven, which would be one for each verb? For the rabbis, the promises numbered five, four of which were fulfilled and one of which would be fulfilled in the future. The problem was that the question of the number of cups of wine to drink at Seder couldn’t be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. So how many cups of wine are there at the Seder? Four and a question. Four cups we drink, and the fifth cup is in the center for Elijah the Prophet and to
function as a string around our finger.

Elijah is the one who will bring advance word of the Messiah, and the final redemption. That is why we invite him to every Seder and every bris, and sing about him at the end of Shabbat. We are looking to the day when the final promise will be fulfilled. Elijah is also the one who will answer the questions that we can’t. When the rabbis at the time of the Talmud came up against a whopper of a problem that they were unable to solve, they would record the discussion and then say Teiku, which is an acronym for “Elijah will solve such puzzles and problems”. So Elijah’s cup is not just there for him to drink from, but to remind us of the first question we want to ask him when he arrives. 

It is vital to us as Jews to question and wrestle with problems and it is inevitable that we will face insoluble questions. But we need to remember that there is nothing beyond questioning, not even God. We are Israel, which comes from the Hebrew word meaning “he will wrestle with God”. Our questions about God and about our relationship with God as individuals and as Jews are part of our wrestling and therefore part of who we are. We may not get the answers to our questions until Elijah comes, but until then there is much to learn from the process of questioning. Because the journey is more important than the destination and we gain more in looking for an answer than in learning the answer. Besides, who knows when Elijah will come?

Watch the entirety of Friday’s service here. 

Watch just the Sermon portion here. 

Temple Talk is a recap of sermons given from the Bimah for those who missed a Sermon or who wanted to revisit the words spoken at a previous sermon.