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The Four Hundred Questions

'Why,' the child said. It wasn't a question; it was a stage of life.

    "Daddy, gimme Bamba."
    "What's the magic word?"
    "Please gimme Bamba."
    "No."
    "Mummeeeeee!"
    The woman was in the fridge, where she had cornered the last rogue crumb mere hours before we were all to be sacrificed to the God of the Jews. Jeez, how I hate Pessah.
    "Mummeeeeee!," the progeny wailed, a three-year-old prolonging her Terrible Twos until she's old enough to have pubescent excuses. "Daddy's bad."
    Mummeeeeee sighed. "Why?"
    "Because I'm a hungry little girl, and I won't grow if Daddy eats all the Bamba."
    The woman struggled out of the vegetable bin and came looking for me.
    "There he is," the short one said, standing akimbo like she learned from her mother to express disgust at men.
    "And just what are you doing?" My wife learned that from my mother.
    Clearly, I was ridding our household of the sin of owning junkfood on the Festival of Freedom. I couldn't share it, I explained to my womenfolk, because of the kabbalistic injunction I had learned from my rebbe in my yeshiva days, tilus marivus u'gestalt. "It's Middle Aramaic. Too complicated to translate. You'll just have to trust me on this," I said, stuffing in another load of puffed peanut butter.
    In His wisdom, the Creator gave all children large, baleful eyes so they should always look hungry. What could I do? I surrendered a nugget. "But eat it quickly, before Pessah starts."
    And then the child started it. "Why." It wasn't a question; it was a stage of life.
    I glowered at her creator. "Now look what you've started."
    "She's a child. Inquisitive. Curious. And you're the father. So learn 'er something. Tell her the story of Pessah. Just keep her out of my hair while I finish the cleaning."
    The darling closed in on me. "Why," she repeated.
    "Because a long time ago the Israelites had to show God they weren't Egyptians so they bled and that's how they were saved but nowadays blood is not something we do in public and anyway all the Egyptians are now in Egypt so to remember the olden days now every year on Pessah the Sephardim eat Bamba, and we don't, and that's how God can tell who's an Ashkenazi. Now you understand?"
    "Yes, daddy. Daddy?"
    "What, sweetheart?"
    "Why can't I have Bamba?"
    "I just told you. Because it's soon Pessah. We eat matza instead, to remind us of the terrible plague our ancestors suffered, wandering in the desert for 40 years with constipation."
    "Why."
    "As I recall, it was a punishment. They had this calf, see, and then Moses came down from Mount Sinai to remind them they're fleishig but it was too late and they were already eating milk and honey. So there was thunder and a Voice told them: 'What goeth in must not cometh out.' So they had to eat only matza, but I fill up with Bamba because by a miracle the peanut oil lasts for eight days and so I don't have to eat any matza at all."
    "Why."
    "Cuz I hate the stuff."
    "Why."

    WHAT is it with three-year-old children? A problem with their Y chromosomes? Why do they think they have to know more than I know? Why do they try to prove there's something I don't know?
    "Because, uh, it's yucky."
    "Why don't you eat cake instead?"
     "Because the Israelites didn't know how to make cake, only bricks, so when they quit their jobs the Egyptians stopped feeding them, so they cooked matza from their brick recipe but they didn't have leaven and that's why we're called Levantines."
    The strategy was working. I was not agitated, so this was not fun. Elementary child psychology. She edged away, finding better company in Mister Potato Head.
     "Why," she said mindlessly.
    I locked myself in the bathroom.
    She knocked on the door and wanted to know why I was in there.
    "I come here every year. I'm Pessah-cleaning myself."
    "Why."
    "Ask your mother."
    "Mummeeeeee!"
    "No, wait! I'm coming out. I'll tell you." I didn't want her getting her mother involved in asking questions I couldn't answer. I gave her a lofty discourse on my philosophy of personal purity, which she couldn't possibly understand because it's not something I really believe in anyway. I was right.
    "Why," she said.
    I told her she had the kind of anti-authoritarian attitude that got God mad at Moses. "As the Haggada tells us, that's specifically why He gave the commandment to honor thy father."
    "Why."
    "Because I say so, and I am descended from the forefathers, and you are descended from the Children of Israel, and that's why --"
    "-- Why I can't have any Bamba. Right, Daddy?"
    "Exactly."
    She scooted off to the kitchen, where the married help was blowtorching the egg tray, vaporizing all traces of hometzdik ovum. "Mummeeeeee! You know why I can't have any Bamba? Because God says so."

    IF ELIJAH the Prophet was going to walk through any front door that night, it was going to be ours, the house was so clean. I mean, she scrubbed the wiring, for goodness sake. Boiled the ice cubes. Wiped out my computer disk. Everything in the place gleamed: the floors, the roof, the bedsprings, my loose change, the cockroaches. I was even made to blow my nose before the holiday. We were in fine shape as we sat down to the seder: the wife was watching her blisters bubble, the child was wondering why all of a sudden we were allowed to read at the table, and I was dying for a beer.
    I signified the commencement of the proceedings by clanging a crystal glass with a plastic teaspoon. (I used to clang with the traditional silver knife, but sliced through a set of six glasses in my first seven seders.)
    I arose. "Let us imbibe the first cup," I announced, and a voice from below said:
    "Why."
    I glared at her. "Because that's what the book says, dammit!"
    She of everlasting patience cut in. "So explain. Your child wants to know."
    "No, she wants to annoy."
    "Get on with it or you'll be eating cold turkey."
    I swore to myself that this would be my last seder with a three-year-old. "Because, um, it symbolizes the ripe vines the panicked Israelites trampled on the way to the Red Sea crossing." I quickly downed the wine.
    "Why did they cross the sea?"
    "To get to the other side."
    "Why."
    "Cuz it was nearly Shabbos and they were afraid that God would stop working which at that moment entailed splitting the sea for them. That's why. Next, 'U'rehatz,' the washing of the hands --"
    "Why."
    "Because the Israelites washed their hands of enslavement."
    "Why."
    "After 400 years of doing manual labor for Arab masters, the Jews got fed up and moved to the Promised Land where it's the other way around. Do you mind if we carry on? Good. 'Karpas.' We dip the greens in salt water. Why, you ask? As it says here, somewhere, it's to remember the greening of the desert and the draining of the swamps when the Israelites made their trek in nomad's land." 
    "Why."
    I ignored the taunt. "In fact, that's why we pour an extra cup of wine and leave the door open. We symbolically let a malarial mosquito come in and drink our blood."
    "Why?" The question startled me, because it was from my wife. "Why are you filling the child's mind with lies?"
    Lies? What should I tell her, the truth? That we open the door so a ghost can come in and drink its four millionth sip of syrupy sweet sacramental wine of the night? I should teach my little girl to believe in the paranormal, to accept alcohol abuse, that it's okay to let strangers in the house?
    "Next," I barked man-of-the-housefully, "'Yahatz.' This is where we break off a piece of matza and symbolically hide it from the tax collector." According to tradition, it is the breadwinner and taxcheater who is also the matzahider. I took it straight to the place where I hide the girly magazines. Nobody would ever find it there.
     Back at the table, I was asked why we couldn't eat supper already, and why I got up without permission, and why I was allowed to take food away from the table and why we couldn't just have Bamba and chocolate milk in front of the TV like on every other night.
    "Because tonight is Pessah, and we do things differently, to commemorate the civil disobedience of our ancestors. That's what the next part of the seder tells us, 'Maggid,' which relates --"
    "But why."
    I snapped. "Why WHAT?," I bellowed. "For crying out loud, we're in the middle of the seder, this is no time for stupid questions."
    "Why," she asked defiantly, "is this night different?"