Every Pesach, the youngest child at the Seder table stands up and asks four questions. Ma Nishtana. Why is this night different from all other nights.
The questions are simple. We dip twice. We eat matzah. We eat maror. We recline.
The answers point to the same place every year. We were slaves in Egypt. God took us out. We remember.
But this year, at Seder tables across Israel, the questions that matter most will not come from the Haggadah.
They will come from the kids who already know the answers are complicated. The kids who spent Purim in bomb shelters. The kids whose schools are still closed because a cluster bomb from Iran hit a daycare in Rishon Lezion yesterday. The kids whose fathers packed a bag three weeks ago and have not come home.
These are this year’s four questions.
1. Why is Abba not at the table tonight?
On all other nights, we sit together. On this night, one chair is empty.
Seventy thousand reservists have been called up since February 28. That number is a statistic. The empty chair at the Seder table is not.
A mother in Modiin is cleaning for Pesach alone. She is scrubbing the kitchen, swapping out the dishes, managing the kids who are home because Passover camps in 18 municipalities were just canceled. Her husband got the call. Three hours to pack. Gone.
She will run the Seder. She will read the Haggadah. She will answer the Ma Nishtana from her six-year-old while trying not to look at the place setting she laid out for his father.
We knocked on a door like hers two years ago with a candy platter. Before the mother could answer, a small voice came from behind the door. “Is Abba home?”
That question started Smiles for the Kids. And that question will be asked again at hundreds of Seder tables this Pesach.
2. Why do we eat the bread of affliction when we are still afflicted?
Ha lachma anya. This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.
The Haggadah says we eat matzah because our ancestors left Egypt in such a hurry their bread did not have time to rise. They fled with whatever they could carry.
This year, that line reads differently.
Families in Israel have been living out of packed bags since October 7, 2023. Some were displaced from the north. Some from the south. Some, just weeks ago, watched their homes take direct hits from Iranian missiles and had to leave with whatever they could carry.
One family we are helping right now lost their home to a rocket strike. The walls caved in. The children’s bedrooms are exposed to the sky. They left with clothes and documents.
The bread of affliction is supposed to be a memory. A symbol of something that happened long ago. This year, the symbol and the reality are the same thing.
3. Why is this night different from all other nights?
The original question. The one every child learns to sing before they understand what it means.
Ma Nishtana Halayla Hazeh Mikol Halaylot.
The traditional answer is that on this night we remember the Exodus. We retell the story. We taste slavery in the maror and freedom in the wine.
But for Israeli families in 2026, every night has been different from all other nights since February 28.
The sirens changed everything. Schools closed. Flights stopped. The Home Front Command issued restrictions that are still in place today. Families who had planned trips, who had guests coming from America, who had been looking forward to a normal Pesach after two and a half years of war, watched those plans collapse in hours.
The Purim that was supposed to be a street party became a Megillah reading near a shelter entrance. The Passover that was supposed to feel like a return to normal will now be held under missile threat with the IDF planning operations through the holiday.
On all other nights, we eat sitting upright or reclining. On this night, we recline. The Haggadah says we recline like free people. This year, we recline because the Home Front Command told us to stay close to our safe rooms.
4. When do we stop being the ones who need saving?
This one is not in the Haggadah. But it is the question underneath every conversation in Israel right now.
The Seder tells us: in every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt. B’chol dor v’dor.
We say it every year. We mean it as a spiritual exercise. A way to connect across generations.
This year it does not feel like an exercise.
The Jewish people left Egypt with nothing. They wandered. They were vulnerable. They relied on each other and on God and on the kindness of the world around them.
Families in Israel are living that sentence right now. Fathers deployed. Mothers holding everything together. Children asking when it will be over. Communities trying to rebuild while the rockets are still falling.
The Haggadah also says: all who are hungry, let them come and eat. Kol dichfin yeitei v’yeichol.
That is not a passive line. It is a command. An obligation. The door is supposed to be open. The table is supposed to have room.
At Smiles for the Kids, we take that literally. Every dollar goes directly to families. One hundred percent. No overhead. No administrative layer between the donation and the dinner table.
This Pesach, we are delivering meals and Wolt gift cards to families of deployed reservists. We are supporting families whose homes were destroyed. We are making sure that when a mother sits down at the Seder table alone with her children, there is food on it.
Since October 2023, we have reached more than 10,000 families and 40,000 soldiers. Over $1.4 million delivered directly to recipients.
The need has not slowed down. It has intensified.
* * *
My kids will ask the Ma Nishtana this year. They will stand on their chairs and sing the words they have sung since they were three years old.
But the real questions in our house will be the ones asked quietly. At bedtime. In the car. Between sirens.
When is Abba coming home. When do we go back to school. When does this end.
I do not have answers for all of them.
But I know this. Every Seder table that has food on it because someone across the world decided to help. Every mother who does not have to worry about how to feed her kids on the most family-centered night of the Jewish year. Every family that feels, even for one evening, that they are not alone.
That is what it means to open the door for Eliyahu.
That is what it means to say Kol Dichfin.
That is what we do.
Am Yisrael Chai.