The whole reason for having a seder is to fulfill the Torah’s commandment to teach our children about the exodus and the Israelites’ miraculous path from slavery to freedom. Presumably, this commandment could be carried out in a sentence or two, but our tradition is to recount the events in some detail. For this purpose a special booklet, the Haggadah (“the narration”), came to be compiled and read on the first night of Pesah (two nights outside of Israel). The Haggadah did not have any one author; it was apparently put together in stages by different people. Parts of it are based on the Mishnah, other parts on the Talmud and various bits of biblical interpretation, and so forth.
The actual format of the seder night (or the haggadah, as it is called by Sephardim) came about in an interesting way. As a result of with Alexander the Great’s wave of conquests (including Judea) in the latter part of fourth century BCE, Jews came into close contact with Greek institutions, customs, and ideas. One of these was the Greek symposium. The symposium was originally an aristocratic gathering in which celebrants would recline on pillowed couches and discuss a chosen topic or be entertained by singers and other performers, all the while eating and—especially— drinking liberally from the wine that was provided (hence the name: sym+posion, “together-drinking”).
Since Pesah also featured a festive meal eaten at night, and one that likewise involved some discussion (because of the commandment to talk about the exodus), it did bear a potential resemblance to a symposium. Indeed, what better way to symbolize this “festival of freedom” than to recast the originally Greek institution as a ritual in which we are the aristocratic discussants? Therefore, “even the poorest Jew,” the Mishnah says (Pesahim 10:1), “must eat while reclining” like an aristocrat, and he must also be provided with “no fewer than four glasses of wine.”
Some elements of the symposium are still clearly visible in today’s seder. We start our evening, as the Greeks did, with a course of tasty herbs. Then, when we recline, it is specified that we do so on our left side, because someone reclining at a Greek-style feast had have his right hand free to eat and drink with. The Mishnah’s stipulation that each participant is to have no fewer than four cups of wine, and above all the narration and analytical discussion of the events of the exodus from Egypt—these too reinforce the symposium connection.
Here’s a tip from my own family’s tradition. If you have a decent-sized coffee table in your living room, cover it with a table cloth and sit everyone around it on cushions, pillows, or low chairs for the first part of the seder, until it is time to move to the dinner table for the meal itself. This is always fun for the children, and given enough pillows, it does provide a comfortable and fairly authentic representation of the original symposium setting. If you want, you can also go back to this low table for the conclusion of the evening; by then, a pillow may be just the thing for a sleepy child.
The Four Questions: The Torah says: “And when your children say to you, ‘What is this service to you?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for He passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt’” (Exod 12:26-27). This is, as mentioned, the whole reason for the seder. But what happens if your children don’t ask—because, for example, they are still too young? In that case, says the Mishnah (Pesahim 10:4), the father should take the initiative and teach the child, [saying] mah nishtanah ha-laila ha-zeh, and so forth. If so, it would seem that these Hebrew words, along those that follow, are really not questions at all, but expressions of surprise (or feigned surprise) on the part of the parent to the child. They should be translated as an exclamation, “How different is this night from all other nights!” The parent then follows this opening exclamation with a series of examples, all of which begin, “Since [or “Insofar as”] on all [other] nights…” we usually do such-and-such, but tonight is different.
As others have suggested, if mah nishtanah were truly intended to be a question, it would have been more clearly worded in Mishnaic Hebrew as bammeh nishtanah or some similar formulation. There are, I know, exceptions, but especially in light of what follows—namely a series of statements that all begin, “Since on all other nights…”—this would seem the most logical way to construe this sentence. After all, what would be the point of the parent asking a question and then immediately providing the answer? The whole point is to get the child to ask and the parent to answer, thereby fulfilling the Torah’s commandment. Indeed, the Mishnah may be suggesting a series of steps to coax the child into asking: the parent starts off with the general exclamation, “How different is this night!” and then moves on to Example #1; if that doesn’t get the child to notice anything different, then try Example #2, and so forth.
Of course, with time—as the sources make clear—these assertions did indeed turn into questions to be asked by the child, and in that way the biblical commandment was still fulfilled. But this does not seem to have been the original intention of this part of the Mishnah.
So here are two cases—the symposium and the Four Questions—where the original significance of things changed somewhat over time. There are other instances as well: the question posed by Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah; the midrash that begins, “What did Laban the Aramean seek to do to our father Jacob?”; some of the exegetical questions that follow this; and so on, right down to the afikoman. But time is short, so
Mo‘adim le-simhah, Happy Passover!