I am way too satiated with homemade sufganiyot to be overly cynical about Hanukah. Hag sameah to all!

Now here's a bit on Barukh ha-Makom which precedes the baraita of the Four Sons in the Haggadah.

Blessed is God (ha-Makom). Blessed be He . Blessed is the One Who gave the Torah to His people Israel. Blessed be He.

G-d is referred to as "ha-Makom", the place. This is explained in Bereshit Rabbah LXVIII:9 "He is the Place of the world and the world is not His place" (Schocken) Guggenheimer believes that ha-Makom originally meant the Bet ha-Mikdash and later came to mean G-d as He is worshipped in the Temple. Kasher and Greenbaum prefer the translation "Blessed is He" rather than "Blessed be He", the latter implying deficiency in G-d. "Blessed" is a description.


Now for the homiletics: The Netsiv relates Barukh ha-Makom to the 4 sons. Barukh ha-Makom relates to the Wise Son. He understands that “He is the Place of the world and the world is not His place". Barukh Hu corresponds to the Wicked Son. We do not mention G-d's name because we do not understand why we are praising Him. Nevertheless, we praise Him for evil as we do for good. Barukh she-natan Torah represents the Tam (Simple Son). He follows the Torah simply because it is G-d's word and requires no further explanation. We repeat Barukh Hu for the She-eno yodea li-she'ol (the one who is unable to ask) for the same reason as the Wicked Son. We don't understand the benefit, but we praise G-d anyway. (Toras Emes)