Short Pesach Rant
By request:
No offense everyone, but nothing else is going on my seder plate.
Orange, okay – that actually has a venerable history (I was told by a Moroccan rabbi,that Moroccans have put oranges on their seder plates for generations), but no apples, no tomatoes, no marzipan, olives, paper airplanes, tobacco, safety pins, boots to the head, old shoes, picnic tables, automobile engines, stuffed rabbits, keys, construction equipment, window glass, or used kleenex. Nothing. Else.
I’m happy to have people bring questions to the table, but the seder plate is the seder plate, and this addition of objects has gotten out of hand.
1. Charoset,
2. Chazeret
3. Beitza
4. Maror
5. Zaroa (Actually Selek, because our house is dairy)
6. Karpas
7. Orange
makes a perfect kabbalistic tree of the seven lower sefirot (which is actually why we have 6 plus the matzah, which is seven for the seven lower sefirot – bet you didn’t know that, did you?) adding anything else makes the sefirotic tree impossible, so nope, nothing else. I can talk about freedom without adding any other objects to my table
Hehe. Bravo. 🙂
I have no particular opinion on the addition of items to (or removal of items from) the Seder plate, but I’m a traditional guy at heart. And this is hilarious! Nice work.
why not rotate the added item? or do an orange first night and a tomato second night? isn’t the whole purpose of the seder to ask questions? and if you have an orange and matzah then do you have binah on your plate or something?
I’m sorry but adding an orange and not using a zeroah already make you a major shaygetz. The orange is a way of putting the toeivah agenda into your seder. And your discomfort with the zeroah just shows that your too much of a fineschmecker to even do a korban peysach. Just vomit inducing. Why not celebrate easter rather than make a joke of peysach?
Just a small correction: the Matzot represent the Mochin, the three cognitive sefirot of Chochma Binah Daat; it’s the plate itself that represents Malchut, the “lowest” of the sefirot.
And not everyone holds that the ke’ara represents the Etz Chaim as such, despite the parallels between the sefirot and the simanim.
@filbert, Did you read the post? We don’t do a korban pesach any more. In factthat’s why we’re not allowed to eat roasted lamb at the seder – because someone might think we were tryin to.
If you actually read the post – guess what, the zeroah representing the pesach is post hoc. In fact, the zeroah represents one of the two festive dishes served. Plus, if I served a zeroah on my dairy table that would be a kashrut issue.
And unless you think that the Moroccans are introducing toeivah into their seder plates for hundreds of years, it’s not, since they’ve been doing so for a good long while. I do get that you think that women are toeivah. That I have no comment on. Unless that little rant was an attempt at humor, in which case, well, you know feminists have no sense of humor, so sorry I missed it, but if you were, that was pretty good.
@Shmuel, to my understanding what the matzot represent depends upon which commentator you’re using – I believe that the mochin interp is actually chabad, but yeah, of course you’re right that the plate representing the sefirot is a mystical interpretation. Of course!
Nu – So tell us, why have the Moroccans been putting an orange on their seder plates for hundreds of years?
according to the rav who told me, “To make the children ask questions.”