WATERMELON, OLIVES OR WALNUTS: THIS YEAR'S ALTERNATIVE PASSOVER SEDER PLATE HAS SHADES OF OCTOBER 7

Watermelon, Olives or Walnuts: This Year's Alternative Passover Seder Plate Has Shades of October 7

Over the decades, the seder plate has undergone tweaks that honor modern liberation struggles. This Passover, the Israeli hostages in Gaza and the enclave's suffering Palestinian civilians take pride of place

April 19th, 00AM April 19th, 00AM

As anyone with even a cursory understanding of Jewish law can tell you, rabbis, both past and present, rarely agree on the "right" way of doing things Jewish.

Lighting the Hanukkah candles? The Talmud tells of sages who believed in starting with eight candles and decreasing by one each night, while others instructed their disciples to start with one and add another every night.

Some kosher-keeping Jews wait an hour between consuming meat and dairy, others three hours, and sticklers six (or five hours and one minute, but that's a discussion for another time).

Yes, when it comes to observing Jewish law, the old saying certainly rings true: two Jews, three opinions.

And so too with the seder plate, the centerpiece of the ritual meal(s) for Passover, which begins Monday evening. Even seder plate purists disagree over how many symbolic foods belong on the plate – five, which includes a shank bone (zeroa), egg (beitzah), bitter herbs (maror), vegetable (karpas) and a sweet paste called haroset, or six, with the addition of hazeret (a form of bitter herbs, often romaine lettuce).

And that's before we delve into variations based on local food customs and availability. For example, haroset recipes, which typically start with an apple/wine/nut combination, may also include pomegranates, figs, dates, cinnamon, almonds or raisins, depending on country of origin.

But in the last half century or so, the seder plate has undergone another round of transformations, this time as a vehicle for honoring modern liberation struggles. And this year's additions take on special significance in light of Hamas' brutal attack on October 7 that left over 1,400 people dead or taken hostage, followed by the war in Gaza and its humanitarian crisis.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, author of the book "Trouble-Making Judaism," has been adding meaningful additions to their seder plate for years. Speaking from Brighton, England, where they serve as rabbi emeritus of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, Sarah explained the significance of adding unique foods to the seder plate.

I don't want to have a separate seder with minority voices who all think like me. I want to bring minority voices to a seder where all are welcome. Adding a symbol to the plate is a way to do that.

"At the seder, we read the line, 'In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he left Egypt.' And in the past people were able to do that. They were able to put themselves into the biblical story of the Exodus," they said.

"But nowadays I see that young people especially feel more disconnected from the original story. And we want the seder to be personal. It's really important that people come to the seder with an experience that speaks to them, one they can identify with."

Sarah also sees these symbols as a powerful act of inclusion. "Sometimes, in an effort to amplify marginal voices, we end up creating seders that promote exclusion. We gather together in small like-minded groups around a certain cause. A Black Lives Matter seder, for example," they said.

"But I don't want to just have a separate seder with minority voices who all think like me. I want to bring these minority voices into a seder where all are welcome. Adding a symbol to the seder plate is a way to do that.

"Besides, we Jews tend to be very wordy. These symbolic foods speak for themselves."

The most famous contemporary addition to the seder plate is generally thought to be the first: an orange. The tradition was started by Prof. Susannah Heschel, a Jewish feminist scholar and daughter of the legendary Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. As the story goes, Heschel decided to place an orange on her seder plate after being told that a woman belongs on the rabbinic pulpit like an orange belongs on the seder plate. But, as Heschel herself has confirmed, this version is a bubba meise (Yiddish for "grandmother story," the Jewish equivalent of an old wives' tale).

Instead, Heschel's idea to add the orange came after a visit to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she saw students putting bread crusts on the seder plate as a symbol of protest against the exclusion of LGBTQ people from Jewish communal life. The bread originated from the story of a young girl who asked a Hasidic rebbe what room there was in Judaism for a lesbian. She was told: "There's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate." (Bubba meises usually contain a grain of truth, it seems.)

Heschel was uncomfortable breaking Passover's central prohibition against eating leavened foods, and she worried that a piece of bread on the seder plate might imply that homosexuality violated Judaism. So she came up with her own twist.

"I chose an orange because it suggests the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life," Heschel has said.

In her book "The Women's Passover Companion," she notes the irony of the well-meaning urban legend. She writes that "the typical patriarchal maneuver occurred: my idea of an orange and my intention of affirming lesbians and gay men were transformed. Now the story circulates that a man said to me that a woman belongs on the bimah [synagogue podium] as an orange on the seder plate. A woman's words are attributed to a man, and the affirmation of lesbians and gay men is erased. Isn't that precisely what's happened over the centuries to women's ideas?"

Sometimes, alternative seder plate ideas represent an ongoing struggle. There's the red chili, whose heat is meant to reflect the catastrophic effects of climate change, and the tomato, in recognition of the brutal conditions forced on migrant workers.

Nearly 40 years later, you can still find an orange on seder plates around the world. And Heschel blazed a trail. In the early '90s, after Israel launched a covert operation to bring Ethiopian Jews to the Holy Land, many Jews began adding a potato to their ritual plate, in remembrance of the simple diet of rice and boiled potatoes that Israeli doctors gave the new immigrants until their systems could handle more substantial food.

Next came the humble beet. Rather than honor a marginalized voice, the beet's arrival on the seder plate was actually a practical solution to a common problem: What could vegetarian and vegan seder-goers use instead of the shank bone? Originally, the zeroa is meant to symbolize the lamb sacrifice that Jews brought as a special Passover offering when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. But many vegetarians and vegans don't feel comfortable with an animal bone at their seder.

Rabbi David Rosen, a former chief rabbi of Ireland and a member of Jewish Vegan Life's executive council, explains why beets are a good substitute. "Beets are great because their deep red color represents the blood of the Passover sacrifice," Rosen said. "Additionally, the tractate of the Talmud which discusses the rules of the holiday also mentions beets being served as a dish on Passover."

According to Jewish Vegan Life's website, an estimated 500,000 Jews around the world will replace the shank bone with a beet this year. Vegans, who also have to substitute the egg, typically go with an avocado or a potato.

Sometimes, as with the orange, alternative seder plate ideas represent an ongoing struggle. There's the red chili, whose heat is meant to reflect the catastrophic effects of climate change, and the tomato, in recognition of the brutal conditions forced on migrant workers in the United States who, according to the Jewish human rights group T'ruah, are paid on average 50 cents per bucket of tomatoes. That wage that hasn't changed in over 30 years.

Back in 2011, the group Fair Trade Judaica launched a campaign to shine a light on forced child labor in the chocolate and coffee industries by suggesting that people add a coffee or cocoa bean to their seder plate.

In 2019, the Progressive Jewish Alliance scrapped the traditional seder plate altogether. Literally. Its "Food Desert" seder plate uses food scraps to symbolize the lack of access to fresh, healthy food in low-income neighborhoods. For example, haroset is swapped out for rotten lettuce to represent the spoiled produce available in inner-city grocery stores. And a potato chip takes the place of bitter herbs to illustrate how much easier it is to access greasy junk food than fruits and vegetables.

The Progressive Jewish Alliance also leaves out the egg. "Fresh eggs are one of the luxuries lacking in these neighborhoods so we do not include them," the group says on its website.

Other times, seder plate additions are meant to commemorate a specific date or event. In 2014, the year of Russia's first invasion of Ukraine, some Jews placed sunflower seeds on their seder plate, a nod to Ukraine's role as a leading exporter of sunflower oil. Others used a beet to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people, who, like many East Europeans, consider borscht a national food.

In 2015, the photograph of a young boy lying face down on a Turkish beach sent shock waves around the world. The Syrian Kurdish toddler Aylan Kurdi and his brother Galip drowned during their family's attempt to reach the Greek island of Kos from Syria. The photograph of Aylan's lifeless body became a symbol of the Syrian refugee crisis and the extraordinary risks some refugees are forced to take to reach the West.

The following Passover, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Vancouver, Canada, recommended a banana for the seder plate; the boys' father would bring them a banana to share every day. "Tonight, we place a banana on our seder table and tell this story to remind us of Aylan, Galip and children everywhere who are caught up in this modern-day exodus," Moskovitz told Hadassah Magazine in 2020.

All this brings us to this year. For many Jews, the idea of celebrating a holiday of freedom and rebirth as 134 hostages are still being held in Gaza might feel impossible. Then there's Israel's military campaign that continues to claim civilian lives.

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber will be adding a watermelon slice, a symbol of Palestinian resistance, to the plate, as a reminder of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and in memory of those killed in Israel's war with Hamas.

Mikhael Kesher of the Jewish Education Project thus suggests adding a whole carob or anything that comes in pods. This highlights the plight of the hostages still trapped in Gaza.

Rabbi Sarah's colleague, Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber, will place a walnut on his seder plate in honor of the hostages. "The Jewish people are likened to a pile of walnuts. If one is removed, each and every walnut in the pile is disturbed," he said, adding: "When a single Jew is distressed, every Jew is shaken and disturbed."

Kanter-Webber will also be adding a watermelon slice to the plate as a reminder of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and in memory of those killed in Israel's war with Hamas. The watermelon, whose colors match the red, white and green of the Palestinian flag, became a symbol of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation in the late 1960s after the Israeli government banned any display of the flag in Israel or the Palestinian territories.

The watermelon has made a resurgence as a pro-Palestinian symbol during the current war, particularly as an emoji on social media, where it circumvents a shadow ban: censoring a user's social media content without their knowledge. The watermelon substitutes for a Palestinian flag.

The olive, another popular symbol of Palestinian solidarity that will feature this year, dates back to the '90s when American Jews working to end the occupation added an olive to their seder plates. This represents the economic insecurity caused by the Israeli army and settlers' practice of burning or otherwise destroying Palestinian farmers' olive trees.

Sarah has included an olive on the seder plate for nearly 15 years. "After visiting with Palestinians and seeing not only how deeply connected they are to the olive tree, but really understanding this idea of the Palestinian people as being uprooted like their beloved olive trees, I decided I needed to do something that enabled people to 'get it,' and the olive felt like the most poignant way to do that," they said.

"And then of course there's the biblical connection to the olive with the story of Noah as a symbol of peace. So I loved the idea of being able to integrate the two together."

But this year, Sarah will be adding something totally different: an empty space on the plate. "I asked myself, 'What symbol could possibly represent the place where we are right now?'" they said.

"And I decided that only silence felt appropriate. I wanted to leave an empty space on the seder plate as an invitation for every person who attends to bring what they need to the holiday."

2024-04-18T21:09:05Z dg43tfdfdgfd