We have just said the blessing for foods that grow in the ground. Most of us traditionally have celery or parsley in salt water. We are having an Adama Salad comprised of foods for which borei p'ri hadama is the correct blessing - potato, carrots, lettuce, artichokes, hearts of palm (although there is some debate about whether it should be). Our appetizer represents the mixing of different cultural identities. We say America is a melting pot, like foods cooking together mixing flavors and changing consistency, people from many different places and cultures come here and give up some of their particularism to become more American (whatever that means), more like the others in their schools and neighborhoods. Israelis describe their country as being more of a salad - each item is able to be distinguished from another and yet, all are in the same bowl (boat). Both analogies describe a type of unification of identity and may be exaggerations or myths, yet would we prefer to live in one more than the other? 


haggadah Section: Karpas