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SEDER PLATE ITEMS
Contributed by Yossi Charette

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SEDER PLATE ITEMS

We have eaten of the matzah, the maror, the chazeret and the charoset.
There are other special foods on our Seder plate:

Z’roa – a shankbone
Beitzah – an egg
Tapuz – an orange

Why are they here?

Z'ROA – SHANKBONE

This bone is the symbol of the ancient shepherd's festival of Pesah.

It was celebrated at the time of the full moon in the month lambs and goats were born. At that time, each family would sacrifice a young lamb or goat at a spring feast. In the days of the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) the lambs were brought as a gift sacrifice and shared at a communal meal with the Kohanim and Levi’im who operated the sacrificial system. Jews ended these sacrifices when the Temple was destroyed. As a continued remembrance of the loss of that old system, since that day we neither eat lamb at the Seder nor use the bone for any other purpose

In the Exodus story, the roast lamb was shared as the final meal before departing Mitzraim and the blood was brushed on the door posts to mark the home as the residence of a Hebrew family so that the so-called Angel of Death would pass over that house during the final plague. In this story, the bone represents the “mighty hand and outstretched arm of G-d” that directed the people out of Mitzraim.

BEITZAH – EGG

Beitzah is a symbol of the birth of new life in spring.

Growing life needs warmth and love and security, guidance, hope, and vision. To achieve their full potential, human beings need the support and encouragement of family and community. Beitzah symbolizes the fragility and interdependence of life.

In the days of the Beit Hamikdash in Jerusalem, the egg represented “hagigah” – a special sacrifice for “hagim”, the three annual pilgrimage festivals.

[All who so desire may now eat a roasted egg or vegetable alternative.]

TAPPUZ - ORANGE

The orange is a late 20th century addition to the seder plate.
We place this fruit among our ceremonial foods to represent marginalized people in our community – especially those of diverse gender and sexual orientation who in earlier days, and still today in many places, were or are excluded from communal life. We recognize not only their contributions to our families and communities, but celebrate their simple presence as an important part of human society and here at the center of our seder plate. In the original introduction of the orange to the seder, Susannah Heschel had the participants spit out the seeds of the orange as a vivid symbol of the rejection of people of diverse gender and sexual orientation. In our community, where all expressions of gender and sexuality are a welcome part, we do not spit out the seeds, if we can even find them in the orange anymore.

Here are Susannah’s comments about the ritual from a 2013 interview:

“At an early point in the seder… I asked each person to take a segment of the orange, make the blessing over fruit and eat the segment in recognition of gay and lesbian Jews and of widows, orphans, Jews who are adopted and all others who sometimes feel marginalized in the Jewish community.

“When we eat that orange segment, we spit out the seeds to repudiate homophobia and we recognize that in a whole orange, each segment sticks together. Oranges are sweet and juicy and remind us of the fruitfulness of gay and lesbian Jews and of the homosociality that has been such an important part of Jewish experience, whether of men in yeshivas or of women in the Ezrat Nashim.”

[All may eat a piece of orange.]
haggadah Section: Koreich

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