The Good the Bad and the Simple

( Sorry about the title - I couldn't resist )

I saw a fantastic shtickle from the Sefas Emes as explained by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Rabbi Reuven Boshnack.

The Sefas Emes begins his thought by pointing out that our sons ( Banayich ) are also viewed as our builders ( Bonayich ) - which in and of itself is a fantastic thought - that the greatest achievements that we can aspire to involve building future generations by our example and our legacy. And so, the four sons are in fact, four approaches to build ourselves as better servants of the King.

To the wise son in all of us the Sefas Emes points out that we should exhort ourselves to remember that for all the logical reasons in the world and all the wisdom that lies behind the mitzva observances - what is paramount in our service of Hashem is devotion - the kind of devotion that leads us to want the sweet taste of the mitzva of afikoman in our mouths long after we discharged the technical obligation. In a play on words, the Sefas Emes says that the 'taam' hamitzva ( or 'taste' of the mitzva ) is more important than the 'taam' hamitzva ( reason for the mitzva ).

To the wicked son who questions the point of the fanatical attention to detail, who casts doubt as to why Hashem, King of the entire universe, would possibly care if we found every last crumb that was stuffed into the outlets and behind the refrigerator - we say "Because of this Hashem took us out of Egypt". Our neurotic attention to detail does not mark us as those who have deteriorated in their service of G-d into worrying about trivialities ( as the rasha claims ) quite the contrary, it is exactly this nitpickiness which is our most valuable service to G-d. This is what we are able to do for Him - to finely concentrate on every little detail - and it was with this in mind that He took us out of Egypt - to serve Him - the way we know how, with attention / devotion / obsession with the details.