Last week, I sat down with my young children and many nieces and nephews to lead an in-person Seder for the first time in years. I had hoped that everyone would be excited to ask the Four Questions and play their respective roles in the Seder, but I had no idea that I would end up teaching so many about viewpoint diversity and its import as well. As we read through the Haggadah and told the story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, it became apparent that a central lesson of the Passover holiday, and perhaps the primary goal of the festival meal itself, is to recognize the need to consider a multitude of views and the plethora of perspectives that should be engaged with and discussed when exploring the past.

The Passover Seder is one of the oldest continuously observed religious rituals in the world. The Jewish tradition of a Seder meal presents the drama of both slavery and liberation by telling the story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, taking place at home and not in a house of worship. The Seder is, at its very core, in the words of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “designed to engage and enthrall the mind of a child” and thus fulfill the biblical command mentioned in Exodus 13:8: “And on that day you shall tell your child, for this God has taken me out of the Land of Egypt.”

In the lead-up to the Exodus story, children are explicitly instructed to ask questions about the holiday, after which they encounter a story about Four Children who ask questions about the Passover Seder in notably diverse ways. The Four Children—the wise, wicked, simple, and one who doesn’t know how to ask—approach the world through vastly different lenses and ask questions about understanding the Exodus with varied dispositions. The so-called “wise child” inquires about the specific meaning of the laws of Passover observance: “What are the testimonies, the statutes, and laws which Adonai our God has commanded you?” We then respond with a summary of the very specific laws of the Passover Seder. The “simple child” asks a far broader question about the evening. The simple child queries “What does this mean?” to which we are shown that a straightforward summary of the story and answer should be given to the child directly from the Torah: “It was with a mighty hand that God brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage.” (Ex 13:14).

While the Seder does not expand beyond providing these short answers to the questions of the Four Children, upon reading and presenting this part of the Seder to my children, I realized that this allegory of Four Children explicitly demonstrates that the Seder tradition is about embracing and promoting a multitude of views and disagreements about how to make sense of the past.

The Four Children come to the Passover story with vastly different views and understandings about faith, religious traditions, and the world. The Seder participants are taught not to reject or condemn those who hold views that are aggressive or disinterested in understanding the Passover story. Rather, participants are shown that we should engage with all types of thinkers at varied levels and embrace viewpoint diversity. The Four Children teach us that we cannot be dogmatic or narrow about ideas; instead, we must welcome varied views about faith and the world and, like the Seder itself, be open to teaching all at their respective levels and needs.

The Seder ritual shows with the Four Children allegory that difference should be present at the table and through varied questions and observations, as Rabbi Sandi Intraub notes:

“We get a sense of different kinds of people as individuals and learners. There are those who are interested and find meaning in all the details and specific rules of Passover—and perhaps, too, of life in general. Others don’t connect to these rituals, while some want to understand the basics, and still, others who might be overwhelmed or not interested enough to participate.”

For almost two decades as a professor, I have taught my students that it is through difference, dissent, disagreement, and debate that we can better understand our history as well as ourselves. It was only last week, as I was joyously leading the Seder, that I recognized that my faith has been promoting this very lesson to me for decades. The Four Children story told at the Seder is a clear statement that we must respect and be open to differences in the ways each one learns, thinks, and interacts with the world, and respond with compassion and respect. We should welcome those we disagree with around the table, for we can learn and benefit from disagreement and diversity.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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