One of the main things you learn as an adult is that yomim tovim are not super relaxing. This is also what your non-Jewish co-workers learn when they ask afterwards how you enjoyed your vacation, and you stare at them with half-closed eyes, wondering how to answer them in as few words as possible.
Shabbos is the day of rest. No other yom tov bills itself that way. Even Shavuos, which is in a way the easiest yom tov, there’s a minhag not to sleep. Yomim tovim are not about sleep. And with no other yom tov is this more true than Pesach. The average adult is more tired at the Seder than they are any other night of the year.
That’s our Mah Nishtanah.
And the kids are at their most excited BECAUSE they get to stay up late.
Kids actually look forward to how late they get to stay up. They brag about it to their friends: “We stayed up until 3!” and their friends are so jealous. Meanwhile, the adults are like, “We stayed up until 3…” and their friends are like, “Ha! We were done by 1.”
I am at a significant disadvantage, being asked questions by my kids that I was sure I knew the answers to at some point—I’m pretty sure I had multiple answers—that for the life of me I now cannot remember.
“Why do you think we do that?” I ask them. And then they tell me whatever their rebbi said.
Not to mention trying to remember—at any given point in the Seder that it comes up—what we did last year. 90% of Pesach is, “What did we do last year?” We need to remember so we can pass it on to our kids. And the kids, who are more awake, are the ones more likely to remember and tell us.
Chazal knew we’d be tired, though, which may be why they included pillows. Any other night of the year, we don’t bring pillows to the table. Our wives wouldn’t allow it.
“Dinner is for family conversation,” they’d say.
But at the Seder, we have pillows to facilitate the conversation. Try using that as an argument on a Friday night.
The Haggadah is also the only sefer wherein we actually sing the table of contents first, so we can remember what’s next in case we get tired and forget.
And it’s even evident by what we call certain parts of the Seder. For example, Shulchan Orech just means, “set table.” It’s just about setting the table. You don’t actually have to eat. You can just stare at the food and go, “Why are we eating now? I’m not hungry this late. I have to save room for the Afikoman!” And someone says, “Well, at least we set the table. That’s what the Haggadah says to do. We can move on.”
It’s all the prep, obviously. How many nights were you up in preparation for Pesach just this week? Not to mention spending a week cooking all of erev Pesach in a kitchen whose temperature is constantly rising because all the walls are covered in a thick layer of foil, so that by the time yom tov started, you were basically in the oven with the food.
That’s why these weird Pesach products exist, I think. Like pre-made salt water. Why would you buy salt water? At first, I thought maybe they had a great recipe. Like you could make your own, but this is the best salt water. They know the exact amount of salt. Also, that way you have a label you can read to get the sodium content. Also, maybe someone in your house is tired of getting made fun of every year because of the one time they forgot to add salt. But now I think it’s because you’re so tired on erev Pesach that maybe salt water is the thing that pushes you over the edge. You thought you made everything you needed for the Seder plate, but wait—salt water isn’t on the Seder plate.
And it’s not just cooking and kashering that we have to do last minute. We’re also running around and taping cabinets shut, and then after we do that, we still have to remember all the things in there that we need to take out for Pesach. We can’t very well go eight days without our prescription meds, for example. And what about band-aids? Matzah is sharp.
And then we have to bring our garbage cans to the park so we can dump them in the dumpsters that the city sets out, or, if it’s a trash-collection day, put the cans at the curb and keep peeking out hopefully until ten minutes before the zman, and then we hightail it to the park. We have to hightail it carefully, though, because garbage cans do not like standing upright in the back of a van.
And you need to make sure the Shabbos clocks are set for a later time than they are on a typical Shabbos. Because if the light goes out in the middle of the Seder, there won’t be much keeping you awake.
Not to mention cleaning off all the stuff that came out of the Pesach cabinets.
And this is besides for how often we have to get up during Maggid to check on the food no one’s gonna eat.
And then you have to get up to look for the afikoman. All over the house that you just looked all over last night. And the night before Pesach you had a candle at least. You just ate chicken that you had no room for, you’re trying to digest it, and your wife goes, “Nu? Get up and start looking for the afikoman!”
In fact, the Seder goes to great lengths to make a big deal about people not getting up. Someone brings me water for Urchatz, they bring me water for Rachtzah, but they can’t bring me the afikoman?
So I haven’t been getting up so much in recent years. Afikoman has become less about me paying them to give back the matzah, and more about me paying them to not make me get up. I don’t want to have to get up. In fact, at some point they’ll realize that they can just casually put it in the other room, and I will not find it. They can probably just put it at the other end of the table, in full view.
“Please pass the matzah.”
“Not unless you give us something.”
“Fine… Here’s the salt.”
Why am I getting up? I’m buying them a present either way. There has not been a year that I didn’t buy them a present. I can spend four days of chol hamoed figuring out where to go, or I can spend one of those days saying, “How about we buy presents today?” and everyone will say, “Yay!” and I’ll get away cheaper.
So why am I getting up and making a half effort to look all over the house for an afikoman I don’t want to find? So I can accidentally find it and then the rest of the Seder the kids will all be upset at whoever suggested the hiding place?
We’re at a disadvantage in the first place. Kids have time to plan afikoman strategies. Any adult who had a moment to breathe before Pesach would say, “Wait a minute. Why don’t I just buy a second identical afikoman bag and let the kids steal the decoy?”
Our kids are definitely more awake than we are, because they had a nap. We make our kids nap on erev Pesach because we wish we could nap on erev Pesach. If they’re not bouncing around at the Seder and asking questions, we’re all going to fall asleep. Chazal designed it that way. I am literally wearing a nightshirt to the table that I plan to be buried in and leaning back on pillows and drinking wine and reading a story. What is keeping me awake?
All the things that we do so the kids shouldn’t fall asleep—what about so the parents shouldn’t fall asleep?
I posit that Chazal knew we’d be tired. That’s why there are all these parts of the Seder designed to keep the parents awake: taking the ke’arah off the table and uncovering the matzos and stopping in the middle of Maggid so everyone can refill the 16 droplets of wine they poured out of their kosos and finding the afikoman and staying on guard so your kids don’t steal it but also trying not to crack it more than it already is—it’s all to keep the parents awake. As is having the kids keep asking questions. I know that whenever I fall asleep when my kids are still awake, they keep knocking on my bedroom door to ask random questions they would never ask under normal circumstances. And they ask them really low, through the door, so as not to wake me up all the way.
It’s all so the parents won’t fall asleep. It’s connected. The same mitzvah that tells us to tell the story to them tells us to tell the story to them. We both need to be awake. We don’t mention it, because of psychology. If we said that’s what we were doing, we’d be more tired. So we say we’re trying to keep the kids awake.
Though I guess if the kids are awake, the parents aren’t falling asleep. n
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.