Mah Nishtana: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

Mah Nishtana is named for the words that begin the questions a child asks the father in the Passover Haggadah.[1] The questions already appear in the Mishnah (Pesachim 10:4), which places them at the pouring of the second cup of wine, has the son ask his father, and directs the father to teach them to a son who lacks the understanding to ask on his own.[2] In present-day practice the youngest person at the seder usually takes the part.[3]

Engraving of a household gathered around a table in a room, preparing a roast lamb for the Passover meal

Johann Sadeler I, Preparation for the Passover, from "The Story of Moses, before the Exodus", engraving, 1585. It shows the first Passover of the Exodus story rather than a seder, and appears here in part.

The wording has not stayed fixed over the centuries.[4] The Mishnah’s list includes a question about eating only roasted meat, which the William Davidson translation on Sefaria explains as the meat of the paschal lamb, asked while the Temple stood.[2] Rabbi Ronald H. Isaacs writes that in the geonic period, which he dates to the sixth through eleventh centuries, the roast-meat question was dropped because there was no longer a paschal lamb, and a question about reclining took its place so that the count stayed at four.[4]

The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that the questions were often intoned in the chant students used for studying Talmud.[1] Ruth Abusch-Magder writes that Ashkenazi Jews who spoke Yiddish traditionally sang the questions in that language, whereas Sephardi and Mizrahi custom kept them in Hebrew rather than Ladino or Judeo-Arabic.[5] The melody nearly everyone sings today is, in her words, “a modern invention.”[5] Cantor Alane Simons Katzew, citing musicologist Eliyahu Schleifer, attributes the melody to the Russia-born composer Ephraim Abileah and gives 1936 as the year Schleifer says it was written; she adds that a children’s chorus singing it in Abileah’s oratorio Chag Hacherut, staged only once, in Haifa, introduced the tune, though most notated versions label it simply as Israeli or traditional.[6] Abusch-Magder likewise names Abileah as the composer and dates his oratorio, which she spells Chag Ha-Cherut, to 1936; she notes that it had just one complete performance, while its Mah Nishtana tune became a standard throughout the Jewish world.[5] Judy House includes Mah Nishtana in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a book of Passover and Chanukah songs, Israeli folk songs, prayers, psalms and rounds in DAD tuning, with a page on each song’s history and meaning and a pronunciation key for the Hebrew lyrics.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Mah Nishtana"

Sources

  1. Jewish Encyclopedia: "Mah Nishtannah".
  2. Sefaria: "Mishnah Pesachim 10:4".
  3. ReformJudaism.org: "The Four Questions".
  4. My Jewish Learning: "From Three to Four Questions".
  5. My Jewish Learning: "The Global History of Ma Nishtana".
  6. ReformJudaism.org: "The Melodies of the Four Questions: Mah Nishtanah Tunes for Passover".
  7. Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  8. Image: Johann Sadeler I, Preparation for the Passover, from "The Story of Moses, before the Exodus", engraving, 1585. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song