An old joke but if you've never heard it, it's brand new.
The British Empire has decided to confer knighthood on a certain Jew. The day of the ceremony arrives and all those who were to be so honored with this new high status were gathered in Buckingham Palace. The ceremony consisted of each candidate for knighthood to stand before the King of England, recite an ancient formula in Latin and the King would then hold his scepter above the man's head and pronounce him a new knight of the realm. One by one each honoree appeared before the king, recited the Latin phrase and was so knighted. When it was the Jewish man's turn, he came before the sovereign of the British throne, he froze and totally forgot what he was supposed to say in Latin. He figured he better say something fast to try to cover and something in a foreign language. He says Ma nishtana halayla hazeh meekol haleylote. The king looked at this man and said "Why is this knight different from all other knights?"
I'm a little embarrassed telling or writing this joke it's so old but I just came across it again in Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's introduction to a new book I just purchased entitled The Four Questions Around the World by Ilana Kurshan. Rabbi Telushkin tells the joke a bit differently and more succinctly than my version but the punch line is the same. The point that Rabbi Telushkin makes in telling the joke is that the joke invariably works with Jewish audiences because the Ma nishtana is one of the two Hebrew phrases that are most known to Jews without need of translation. The other is the Shema. If I were to say B'raysheet barah Elokim et hashamayim v'et ha-aretz, some would and some wouldn't recognize it as the very first verse of the Torah; In the beginning G-d created the heaven and the earth. Almost everyone knows the Ma nishtana. Rabbi Telushkin remarks that it is our first public performance before family. Perhaps the adulation the family gives to the young questioner explains the large number of Jews who go into the entertainment business.
I didn't buy the book for the joke but because it contains the Four Questions in 23 different languages. Each language is from another country in which Jews lived or still live today. One of the languages I admit is Greek to me though we did learn to read Greek in Rabbinical School as it's a necessary language for Biblical scholarship.
Since I took French in high school and college I was happy to read the first question as Toutes les autres nuits, il nous est permis de manger du pain au levain comme du pain azyme; cette nuit sulement du pani azyme. Those who understand no French will still recognize one word as part of the chain Au Bon Pain.
How many times have you called a company and you receive a recorded voice that tells you for English press 1, for Spanish press 2. It feels odd to have to press a button to proceed in our native language and when you do get the recording you feel like you're communicating with someone in Chinese. Well, the second question in the language spoken south of the border, or when you press 2 at your Seder would be En otras noches comemos cualquier tipo de vegetal; esa noche se comen solo las hierbas agrias.
The book contains the Four Questions in Amharic which is the language of Ethiopian Jews, Farsi spoken by the Jews of Persia, present day Iran, Polish where the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began to fight back against the Germans on the first night of Pesach 1943 and were able to hold them off for three weeks before the entire ghetto was destroyed. They died the death of heroes. You can find the Questions in Ladino which is for Sephardic Jewry what Yiddish is for our ancestors, a combination of Hebrew and Spanish. The third question in Yiddish goes Aleh nekht for a gantz yohr tunken mir nit on afiloo ayn mohl; ober di nakht fun Pesakh tunken mir tzvey mohl.
What language should I use for the fourth question? Because I have been referring to China the past few weeks, let's end with Chinese. Actually, it's not true as some might think that in Chinese there are all together 8 questions and you can pick some from column A and some from column B. There are still just four questions. The Chinese characters are pretty and indecipherable to me but in English letters it is Mei ci wen fan women ke yi zuo zhi huw sui yi xie kao, dan jin wen women yi zhi ke yi sui yi xie kao zhe chi. The four questions are normally recited after the first cup of wine. You may get better results with this line in Chinese after the fourth cup of wine.
Amazing that we have lived in the countries of all of these languages and here we are today. Here we are today in spite of the line of the Hagadah that says, "In every generation there are those who rise up against us to destroy us." Here we are today in the United States of America and here we are today in Israel celebrating its 60th anniversary and here we are today rededicating magnificent synagogues in Berlin the seat of our intended destruction and still in the lands of many languages around the world.
What is sweet about this old joke told above is that to be appointed a knight, this Jew must have made a major contribution to England. He was most likely a cosmopolitan man of the world but when push came to shove, he couldn't locate that Latin line within him. What came out from the recesses of his memory and the depths of his soul in that moment of panic was what was with him from childhood and never left him. There is something different about that knight from all other knights. That is true of each of us.
At your Seder table, you might have fun asking people to recite a question in another language they might know. What is most important however is that come Saturday and Sunday evenings, these nights be different from all other nights; sitting at the Seder table eating only Matzah, bitter herbs, dipping twice and reclining and telling the story of our people's journey from slavery to freedom.
In any and every language, a sweet and Kosher Pesach to you and your whole family.
Shabbat
Shalom and Hag Sameach
