As we prepare for Pesach, we often focus on the rituals and the story. But the Haggadah quietly asks a deeper question—one we may read past without noticing.

I want to begin with a simple exchange.

In a 1989 interview, jazz legend Miles Davis was asked questions that sounded straightforward:

“Are you happy?” “Do you have enough money?”

Each time, he answered the same way:

“Happy about what?” “Enough… for what?”

He wasn’t being evasive. He was exposing something deeper.

Words like happy and enough sound meaningful, but they don’t mean much until you ask: What are they for?

Then Miles Davis was asked something different:

“If you couldn’t perform for people, would you still be a musician?”

He answered without hesitation:

“Sure. I hear music all the time. I’m hearing it right now.”

He didn’t need a Carnegie Hall performance. He didn’t need an audience or recognition. Music was who he was.

He added something even more revealing: he’s happy when he learns something new. He described something he had just discovered the night before. At that point, his face lit up, and he spoke about how he couldn’t wait to try it out.

Happiness, for him, was being connected to what was essential.

So, when he asked the interviewer, “For what?”, he wasn’t trying to be glib. He was saying, in his way, that happiness, success, and wealth don’t mean much unless they’re connected to something real.

I was reminded of these questions by a story I recently heard.

A Chabad rabbi was on a flight and offered a fellow Jew the opportunity to put on tefillin.

He knew what tefillin were and what they meant. In fact, he said his father would have been proud.

He declined because there were people around. They might see it. He was afraid.

The rabbi gently challenged him: “Look at me. It’s obvious who I am. If I’m not afraid, why should you be?”

But the man did not move. His fear was real.

If you had asked that man, “Are you free?,” he would almost certainly have said yes.

And yet, in that moment, something was missing.

He wasn’t able to live as who he really was.

And that brings us to the Seder.

We say that the Jewish people left Egypt and became free.

The Haggadah then quietly asks a question we often rush past:

“על שום מה” (Al Shum Mah) — What is this for?

We ask it about the Pesach offering, the matzah, and the maror.

And we answer historically:

The Pesach is because G-d passed over the houses

The matzah is because the dough did not rise

The maror is because life was bitter

But these answers don’t fully explain why we’re doing this now. What is this for?

Throughout the Haggadah, questions abound.

The children ask questions, each in their own way. The rabbis debate the plagues, expanding and re-examining the experience. We all sing Dayenu, “it would have been enough.”

The Haggadah tells us:

“In every generation, a person must see themselves as if they left Egypt.”

This is more than historical memory. It’s a lived experience.

And if that is the goal, then everything changes. It becomes a story about uncovering something within us.

We remove what constrains us and ask:

What is essential? Who am I at my core? What is this all for?

If freedom simply means that no one is forcing you, then many people are free.

But if freedom means the ability to live openly, honestly, and fully as who you are, then the question “Al Shum Mah” is much deeper.

That is why the Seder does not end with more explanations and Talmudic discourse. It ends with singing Hallel.

When the Jewish people experienced Exodus and miraculously crossed through the sea, it was a time to sing.

So, too, when we really experience the Seder and attach ourselves to prior generations, we are ready to sing.

And that may be the final answer to the question:

“Al Shum Mah?” — What is this for?

It is for the moment when the story becomes real enough to reconnect us to who we are.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)