If it wasn’t for the “wicked son,” religion would not exist.

I’m talking about the “four sons” of the Passover Seder. Each one has a different question about what’s going on.

There’s the wise son, who wants to know all about the Passover laws.

There’s the wicked son, who asks: “What is this service to you?”

There’s the simple son, who simply asks: “What is this?”

And then, there’s the son who doesn’t even know what (or how) to ask.

As Rodney Dangerfield might have said, the wicked son don’t get no respect.

I intend to change that.

First,  a better translation of “wicked” would be “rebellious.” This is the kid who asks pointed questions — not because he or she wants to be obnoxious, but because there is a higher religious truth out there, and that kid wants to find it.

The wicked/rebellious son asks: “What is this service to you?”  Let’s face it: that’s the ultimate Jewish question. What does this Passover thing (actually, all of Judaism) mean to you, my parents? Because if it means nothing to you, how is it supposed to mean anything to me? I want a Judaism of intellectual depth; what do you got?

So, here is my list of the top seven greatest wicked (i.e., rebellious) children in Jewish history. Each one has something valuable to teach us.

1. Abraham. Abraham, a wicked, rebellious child? You bet. How do you think that the Jewish people got started? The ancient rabbis invented a legend in which the young Abraham broke his father’s idols. The Jews of Djerba, Tunisia, include this story in their seder. With that act, Abraham “invents” monotheism, and becomes the world’s first iconoclast. At that moment, he gives birth not only to the Jewish people, but to the Jewish tradition of challenging accepted truths.
2. The daughters of Zelophchad. In Numbers 27, we read that Zelophchad had died in the desert, leaving five daughters, but no sons, behind. The daughters were about to get cheated out of their inheritance – just because they were girls. They ask that they receive the portion of the land belonging to their father. God accepts their claim, and incorporates it into the Torah’s laws of inheritance. How cool — God’s sense of justice and fairness can grow. You go, girls.
3. Elisa Ben Avuyah. He was a second century sage, and the subject of  As A Driven Leaf  by Milton Steinberg. Here’s what ruined his faith. A boy’s father had told him to climb a tree to gather some eggs, and to send the mother bird away. The Torah says that whoever does those mitzvot — sending the mother bird away from the nest, and honoring parents — gets rewarded with long life. And yet, the child falls out of the tree, and dies. Elisha sees this, and he declares that there was no justice in the world, and there is no God, either. Elisha’s colleagues called him acher, the other, the heretic. But his questions and his struggles endure.
4. Maimonides. Are you kidding me — Maimonides as a rebellious son? Yup. During his time (the twelfth century) almost everyone believed that God had a body, because the Bible refers to God’s bodily parts. In perhaps the greatest move in all of Jewish philosophy, Maimonides said that if something has parts, then it can’t be “one.” God is one, so God can’t have bodily parts, That means that all that biblical talk about God seeing, hearing, and feeling (which means using bodily parts) must mean something else. Congratulations — that was the “express version” (the really express version) of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. Maimonides is the model of the intellectually curious Jew. Check out this new interpretation of Maimonides by my teacher, Micah Goodman.
5. Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. As my teacher David Sperling once said: “Spinoza skipped synagogue once in a while.” That’s an understatement. Spinoza, of 1600s Amsterdam, was a world-class mathematician. He was also a pantheist; God and nature are one. He taught that the laws of the Torah were only valid in their time. In that sense, he “invented” modern Biblical criticism. For his trouble, the Dutch Jewish authorities excommunicated him. Spinoza is the quintessential “bad boy” of Jewish history.
6. Mordecai Kaplan. Kaplan (1881-1983) “reconstructed” Judaism, thus founding the Reconstructionist movement. God, being an impersonal force, couldn’t choose anything — especially not the Jews. No chosen people concept. Kaplan taught that Judaism was the ongoing, developing civilization of the Jewish people. He invented bat mitzvah and the Jewish Community Center. Exactly seventy years ago this June, his opponents excommunicated him and burnt his prayer book. Nice. On the other hand, can you name one of the rabbis who did that? I didn’t think so.
7. Stav Shafir. She is the youngest female Knesset member in Israel’s history. She actually accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of being anti-Zionist. Why? Because communities within the Green Line have been left to languish, while West Bank settlements get most of the funding. “Real Zionism means dividing the budget equally among all the citizens of the country. Real Zionism is taking care of the weak.” Stav rocks.

Who’s your favorite wicked/rebellious “child” in Jewish history — or in your own religious culture?

Find those people, and embrace them.

Religion would be a lot more boring without them.