When I was a little girl, Ashkenazim regularly explained my family’s “difference” with the following refrain: “Oh, you’re from Iraq. You were under Arab influence. That’s why you don’t do things the normal way.”  I remember trying to wrap my brain around that statement – assuming the adults should know more than me. I thought that rabbis – and teachers were aware that Sarah and Abraham came from Iraq, that the first yeshivas were in Iraq, and that the Talmud was written in Iraq. I thought they knew that Passover took place in Egypt and that Purim took place in Iran. I thought it was obvious to them that the Jewish holiday cycle was based on a Middle Eastern calendar and that Mizrahi and Sephardi communities predated Ashkenazi communities by thousands of years. So why, I wondered, do they see our traditions as being the result of Arab influence? If anything, why don’t they see their traditions as being the result of European influence?
As we bless the parsley and dip it in lemon juice, let us notice if we wonder, “Why lemon juice instead of salt water?” And if we do, let us begin to ask the question, “Why salt water instead of lemon juice?” As my mother always answers, “It’s because they didn’t have lemon trees in Poland!”


haggadah Section: Karpas
Source: Loolwa Khazzoom (from The Women's Seder Sourcebook)