RABBI GREG ALEXANDER
If I asked you, “Who Knows Four?”
I am guessing you would answer, “Four are the mothers!”.
That’s because of the rousing song “Who knows one?” (or Echad Mi Yodea, depending on whether you do it in English or Hebrew – or both!) which is usually sung loudly and out of tune at the end of the Pesach seder after everyone has downed their four cups of wine. However, there are a series of important fours that come up at Pesach, each of which gives us another insight to the festival of Freedom.
The first two fours are the ones that I referred to now: the four matriarchs and the four cups. The matriarchs refer back to Genesis, to Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, who were the founding family of the Jewish people. The four cups are connected to the four promises of redemption that G-d made to the Israelites while they were still slaves in Mitzrayim. “I will bring you out”, “I will deliver you”, “I will redeem you” and “I will take you to be Mine”. (Exodus 6:6-7)
Moving from our ancestors in Canaan to our journey out of Egypt recalls the tumultuous beginnings of the Jewish story and reminds us that we are not just randomly here, but a people with a proud history going back 4000 years. Remembering our matriarchs along with our patriarchs foregrounds the role of women in our history, and especially at Pesach when without Miriam, Yocheved, Shifra and Puah and the daughter of Pharaoh, we would have no Exodus story to tell. And remembering our slavery in Egypt reminds us that we are created to serve only our Creator, not material things or human leaders.
But there is a deeper connection to the four that evokes the four Kabbalistic worlds. There is the physical world we encounter with our senses, called Assiyah (Action). Then there is a higher level of consciousness, termed the world of Yetzirah (Formation), perceived in our emotions and non-physical senses. Beyond that is the world of B’riyah (Creation), the world of Divine Intellect beyond shape and form, and finally Atzilut (Emanation), an eternal spiritual realm, characterised by infinity and unity. These four worlds represent a chain of emanation, or an ascending understanding of the Divine. Seen in this way, the Four Cups are drunk to move those at the seder from a physical and spiritual state of bondage to a state of complete spiritual freedom.
In Jewish numerology, every number has a corresponding letter, and the number for four is the letter Dalet, which means ‘door’. Of course, it makes us think of the blood on the doorposts in Egypt, without which the angel of death would have killed Israel’s firstborn sons along with the Egyptians during the tenth plague. The letter Dalet even looks like a doorpost. It is this door that we open physically and internally, seeking freedom from whatever it is that keeps us from fully being who we are meant to be.
There are lots more fours – like the four special Shabbatot leading up to Pesach, the four children, and the four matzot at the seder. (Yes, you are right, there are technically three matzot (and a bonus point for spotting that), but when we break the middle one we end up with four, as one becomes the afikoman.)
To sum up all the fours, Pesach is there to give us the feeling that we ourselves are actively leaving Mitzrayim, our place of restraint and narrowness and we use all those tools to shift us from a mindset of slavery to one of freedom. ●
May your seder be liberating! Chag sameach.
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