In the early 1980s, while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel (the campus Jewish organization), Susannah Heschel, a well-known Jewish feminist scholar (and daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel), was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (which was intended to convey the idea that there’s as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). 

Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate [leavened food] violates Passover. So at her next seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. 

See more at: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/an-orange-on-the-seder-plate/


haggadah Section: Introduction