Search Library

Karpas
Contributed by Jessica & Peter

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Like many of our holidays, Passover combines a celebration of an event from our Jewish memory with a recognition of the cycles of nature. As we remember the liberation from Egypt, we also recognize the stirrings of spring and rebirth happening in the world around us. To symbolize this awakening, we now take a green vegetable, like parsley, and dip it twice into salt water.

If the vegetable represents new life and growth, then the salt water we dip it in reminds us of the tears our ancestors shed in the land of Egypt--as well as the tears of all people who have been and are still enslaved. Though the Jewish people may have left Egypt, many people around the world are still waiting to be freed, both literally and metaphorically.

The symbolism of the karpas feels especially meaningful this year. Many of us are stuck inside, and the few moments we are able to spend outdoors, or feel the fresh spring air coming through our open windows, are revitalizing. Yet we also can't forget how dire our circumstances are, and how high the stakes. The karpas gives us this tension, between the aliveness of spring and the weight of suffering. Just like the Passover story, there is no denying we are a society on the cusp of seismic change. It is up to all of us to determine the direction of the change we know is coming.

Pass the green vegetable to each person at your table, and dip it twice in salt water. 

Here's what we know about change. It starts small. It starts like a seed: self-protection cracks, roots reach down and grab hold. The seed swells, and tender shoots push up toward light.

This is karpas: spring awakening growth. A force so tough it can even break stone.

Eat the karpas as the blessing is recited / *NARROW DOWN TO ONE POEM:

surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar,
poems about nature and landscape
surely     but whenever i begin
"the trees wave their knotted branches
and . . ."     why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?

—Lucille Clifton

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

—Adrienne Rich

I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there’s a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves’
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals’
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

—Barbara Crooker
haggadah Section: Karpas

Featured clips


More clips from Jessica & Peter