RAV KOOK ON Passover Part 1: Answering the Wise Child

The Haggadah speaks of four children. Each one asks his own question, and each one receives a personal response. Education, the Sages taught, is not something that can be mass-produced like a Model-T. The first child, the wise son, is troubled by the Torah’s abundance of rituals and minutiae. For the intelligent and rational, everything should be logical. What meaning can there be in these myriad details and rules? “What is the meaning of the rituals, rules, and laws that the Eternal our God has commanded you?” (Deut. 6:20)