On the Table

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Each food on the seder plate is symbolic of an aspect of Passover. Tonight we celebrate our own version of Passover – one that honors everyone at tonight’s seder who, hopefully, feels the comfort and safety to have come as they are; and one that also honors all people, who may also know the freedom to come to the table as they are.

Egg

The hard-boiled egg symbolizes the hagigah sacrifice, which would be offered on every holiday, including Passover. The roundness of the egg represents the cycle of life and the knowledge that even in the most painful of times, there is always hope for a new beginning.

Karpas ( Parsley)

Parsley represents the initial flourishing of the Jews during their first years in Egypt. At the end of the Book of Genesis, Joseph moves his family to Egypt, where he becomes second-in-command to the Pharaoh. His family lives safely for several generations and create a great nation for the Jews in Egypt. The size of this flourishing population is what frightens the new Pharaoh, who enslaves the Jews.

The parsley also represents the new spring. One of the names for Passover is Hag Ha-Aviv or “the holiday of Spring.” Around Passover is when winter turns to Spring and the first buds of the new season emerge. Tonight we look to the past, to the flourishing of our people before and after their enslavement; and to the future, to the warmth and possibility of Spring.

Charoset

This mix of fruits, honey, and nuts symbolizes the mortar that the Jewish slaves used to construct buildings for the Pharaoh in Egypt. The name comes from the Hebrew word cheres, or clay.

Zeroa (Shank Bone)
A roasted lamb shank bone that symbolizes the lamb that Jews sacrificed as the special Passover offering when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. The zeroa does not play an active role in the seder, but serves as a visual reminder of the sacrifice that the Israelites offered immediately before leaving Egypt and that Jews continued to offer until the destruction of the Temple.

Maror (Bitter Herb)

The bitter herb traditionally allows us to taste the bitterness of enslavement. Tonight we celebrate in addition with a less bitter herb – one that reminds us to create without boundaries and laugh without reserve.

Reproductive Justice Pin

Though the Jews have long been freed from enslavement, we are constantly reminded of the ways in which people and entities with power are still working hard to override the choices and autonomy of those with less power. As policies around the world are being created and implemented to undermine the reproductive and personal choices of people with uteruses and other marginalized communities, the pin on tonight’s seder plate reminds us to continue fighting for a world in which all people have the right to choose if, when, and how to raise a family – free from coercion or discrimination.

Today’s policies and practices that challenge the right to plan one’s own family are not as removed as we may think from the story of Passover. One of the tactics that the Pharoah used to control the Jews in Egypt was to separate partners from one another to prevent reproduction, and of course, to demand the sacrifices of newborn Jews. This, too, was an afront to reproductive freedom. Like the Pharaoh did in ancient Egypt, today’s leaders are going to great lengths to plan for a world in which our bodies and our futures are not our own. This is a world that our ancestors refused to accept. The fact that we must take up their fight, centuries later, is at once empowering and maddening.

Tonight, let us choose to make the fight empowering. Our bodies and our futures are our own, and Ron DeSantis can eat rocks.

Orange

Legend has it that Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, was lecturing to a Jewish congregation when a man denounced her, saying that a woman belongs on the bimah as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate. Today, we include an orange on the seder plate to make clear that women belong on bimahs and anywhere else where decisions and history are being made. As all of us know, there is no true revolution without the liberation of women.

Flag

The true story of Susannah Heschel is that she included an orange on her seder plate as a recognition of queer Jews and others marginalized within the Jewish community. In her ritual, each person takes a segment of the orange to celebrate the ways in which each individual member of the Jewish community is needed to comprise the whole. They spit out the seeds as a rejection of homophobia and discrimination. This important piece of queer Jewish history has largely been erased from the seder plate, in favor of the perhaps more palatable story of white women’s representation.

While we honor the orange as a symbol of women’s strength, we include a flag on tonight’s plate to celebrate the inclusion of queer Jews in our culture and our movement for liberation. The absence of such a symbol from traditional seder plates reminds us of the urgency for intersectionality in our work to make Judaism reflective of the world in which we live, for none of us are free unless all of us are free.

Key

Tonight’s seder plate also includes a key to commemorate Jews and others who are currently incarcerated or otherwise living in chains. As a people once enslaved and oppressed based solely on animus and prejudice, it is our duty to acknowledge the unfortunate longevity of the same ethnic- and racially-based hatred. Here at home, rates of incarceration soar far above what is truly necessary for public safety and public good, as the criminal legal infrastructure is deployed as a means of coercion, surveillance, and control – particularly against Black and Latinx folks who are disproportionately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated, often for non-violent and minor offenses.

Abroad, there is also, unfortunately, no shortage of vestiges of the past to remind us of our own enslavement and oppression in Egypt. Whether prisoners of literal prisons or of state-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and discriminatory policies and practices that create mass displacement and caste, people all across the globe who may wish to celebrate liberation with us tonight are unable to do so because for them, unlike for us, liberation remains a distant dream. Tonight’s key is for those people – may the freedom we honor tonight soon be universal.

haggadah Section: Introduction

Source: Lily Milwit