The depressing song to end the Seder
Maybe I’m only speaking for myself, but I doubt it. By the time we get to the final song at the Seder, Ḥad Gadya, we’re somewhat checked out. Sure, I sing it with full gusto (a few years ago, my niece in Manchester brought home from school an absolutely epic tune that we have sung ever since) but I’m not really focusing too much on any resonance the song may have.
Indeed, its origins are murky. It’s the most recent inclusion into the Haggadah but figuring out exactly when it was developed is trickier. The best guesses assume its origins are Europe in the 15th- or 16th-century, given the earliest copy we have (though that version also includes a mouse). And whether or not it’s a reappropriated German folk song is also up for debate.
But, generally speaking, we just assume it’s a children’s song – the Haggadah’s attempt at matching Cocomelon – and that we’re past the point in the Seder where we need to interpret significance into what we say.
Yet, throughout the past few centuries, rabbis have seen within Ḥad Gadya a tremendous amount of significance. So much so, that the 18th-century Rabbi Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulai (better known by his acronym, Ḥida) legitimized a community’s decision to excommunicate someone who was mocking Ḥad Gadya (Responsa Ḥayyim Sha’al I §28)!
And this year, I think that one specific interpretation of Ḥad Gadya has particular resonance. Because, according to the Ḥatam Sofer, Ḥad Gadya is not a happy, cheerful children’s song but is written be-lashon kinah, “as a lament” – it belongs more to the atmosphere of Tisha be-Av than Pesaḥ (Derashot Ḥatam Sofer IV, p. 317).
And while the Ḥatam Sofer explains how all the stanzas of Ḥad Gadya fit his thesis, I only want to focus on its opening – which is also its refrain:
One little goat, one little goat, which my father bought for two zuzim – one little goat, one little goat.
The repetition of the phrase ḥad gadya, the Ḥatam Sofer argues, is not just a cutesy way to sing the song. It’s a reference to the Mishnah (Pesaḥim 6:3), which tells us that the Jewish people brought, not just one goat for the korban pesaḥ, but a second for the korban ḥagigah. The song references two goats to correspond to the two goats brought by the Jewish people on erev Pesaḥ.
And the price paid here is also key – because Ḥazal stress that sacrificial offerings typical cost two talents of silver (Ḥagigah 6a). The purchase price of two zuzim, says the Ḥatam Sofer, is because the father is buying the korbanot for erev Pesaḥ.
Understood this way, then, our singing of Ḥad Gadya is a poetic retelling of how things used to take place in the times of the Beit ha-Mikdash, with the animals described in the song being references to specific stages of the korban pesaḥ. All of this was until the Angel of Death came, Rome – and destroyed the Temple and exiled us.
As we go through each stanza, per the Ḥatam Sofer, we recall the joy with which our ancestors celebrated Pesaḥ in Temple times and thus channel our own mourning for the fact that that is no longer our experience. Ḥad Gadya becomes a lament, a kinah, for this.
It ends, however, on a positive. Just as God comes along to destroy the Angel of Death – so, too, is our hope that God vanquishes those who have placed us in exile. The lament transforms into a prayer at the close of the Seder.