And when your children ask you, what does this ceremony mean to you? The anticipation of the child's question is one of the most pedagogically sophisticated elements of the Passover institution. The feast is designed to provoke curiosity — the strange foods, the posture, the story told at night are calculated to make a child ask why. Deuteronomy 6:7 commands teaching the commandments diligently to children, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. The Passover anticipates this by creating the conditions for the question: the child asks, the parent answers, and the testimony is transmitted. Jesus in Matthew 18:3 says unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven — the Passover's child who asks is the model of the inquiring faith that receives the testimony of redemption.

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