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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Devil’s Arithmetic, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory
Sacrifice
Jewish Culture and Identity
Hope
Summary
Analysis
During that night’s Seder dinner, Hannah is bored by Grandpa Will’s long retelling of the plagues of Egypt. She prefers her other grandfather, Grandpa Dan, who is good natured and doesn’t have fits like Grandpa Will. Aaron struggles a little with the Four Questions but manages to get them mostly correct.
Hannah does not like to face the difficult truths that come with her Jewish identity. Because she doesn’t understand concentration camps and what her Grandpa Will endured, she doesn’t have empathy for his peculiarities. By contrast, Grandpa Dan didn’t suffer the same fate, and so he is less haunted by his past—allowing Hannah to ignore the past as well.
Themes
Grandpa Will decides that at 12, Hannah is old enough to have a little bit of watered-down wine at the Seder, rather than the grape juice that children get. Aaron whispers to Hannah that it’s time to go steal the afikoman (a type of matzoh that is traditionally hidden during a Seder). Aaron finds the afikoman first, then goes to hide it in the bathroom like he always does.
Wine and unleavened bread (like matzoh) are both a traditional part of the Seder dinner. By choosing to give Hannah wine instead of grape juice, Grandpa Will is suggesting that he thinks Hannah is finally old enough to start participating in the ceremony like an adult. Wine is less sweet than grape juice, and so it represents how Hannah will learn to face the bitter parts of life and history.
Themes
After a while, Hannah says her head hurts, and her mother says they never should’ve given Hannah wine when she was still just 12. According to tradition, everyone pours their wine into a glass for the prophet Elijah, and because Hannah pours in the most wine (since she didn’t drink hers), Grandpa Will says that Hannah gets to go to the door to greet the prophet.
Hannah’s mother wants to protect Hannah from the dark parts of Jewish history for as long as possible. Like Grandpa Dan, she did not experience the Holocaust directly, and so she has a different perspective from Grandpa Will, who was forced to see horrifying things at a young age whether he was ready or not and who wants Hannah to be prepared.
Themes
Grandpa Will explains the significance of the door ceremony: it used to be a way for Jewish people to prove to Christians that they weren’t conducting blood rituals in their homes. Hannah goes to open the door, even though she doesn’t believe the prophet Elijah will actually come through it. But when she opens the door, expecting to see a hallway in an apartment building, instead she sees an open field on a cloudy night, with a farmer singing a song.
The superstition about Jewish people committing blood rituals shows how far back in history anti-Semitism goes. Elijah was a messenger and a prophet who advocated for worshipping Yahweh, the Hebrew God, over other local deities. Doors are an important part of the symbolism of Passover. In this passage, Yolen incorporates that symbolism into the plot of the book, with the door being the portal through which Hannah accesses the past.
Themes
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