In the Hebrew language, every letter is not only a letter, but also represents a number, a word, and a concept.
For example, the letter aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, has the numerical value of one. Aleph is also a word which means to champion, or to lead.
The second letter of the alphabet, bet, has the numerical value of two and also means house ― bayit in Hebrew.
Hebrew letters, then, are far more than mere letters, but are actually linguistic repositories for numerous concepts and ideas. Words, too, become not only an amalgam of random sounds, but precise constructs of the conceptual components of the object with which the word is associated.
When we analyze the word Karpas and break it down to its four component parts ― its four letters of kaf, reish, pehand samech, ― we discover an encoded message of four words which teaches a basic lesson about how to develop our capacity for giving.
Ka Kaf Palm of hand
R Reish One who is impoverished
Pa Peh Mouth
S Samech To support
The first letter of Karpas means the palm of the hand. The second letter means a poor person. When taken together these two letter/words speak of a benevolent hand opened for the needy.
But what if you are a person of limited means, with precious little to give? Look at the second half of the word Karpas. The letter peh means mouth, while the final letter samech means to support. True, you may not be capable of giving in the material sense, but you can always give with your words. Words of kindness and concern. Words of empathy and understanding. Words that can lift an impoverished soul and provide a means of support where nothing else will do.
We dip the Karpas in saltwater. Saltwater recalls the bitter tears shed in Egypt. But there is more. The Jewish people, though awash in the tears of bondage, were able to preserve their ability to give. Rather than succumb to the morass of self-pity, they were able to maintain their dignity through giving.
Karpas (Hebrew: כַּרְפַּס) is one of the traditional rituals in the Passover Seder. It refers to the vegetable, usually parsley or celery, that is dipped in liquid (usually salt water) and eaten. Other customs are to use raw onion, or boiled potato. The word comes from the Greek 'karpos' (Greek: καρπός) meaning a fresh raw vegetable. The karpas is traditionally placed on the seder plate on the left side, below the roasted egg. The liquid may be any of the seven which make food capable of becoming ritually impure, although salt-water or wine vinegar are usually used. The idea behind the salt water is to symbolize the salty tears that the Jews shed in their slavery in Egypt.
One reason given for dipping a vegetable into saltwater is provoke children to ask about it, as per the theme of the Seder night that the story is to be recounted by way of question and answer. Dipping a vegetable prior to the main meal is not usually done at other occasions, and thus arouses the curiosity of the children.[1] There is a second ceremonial dipping later in the Seder, when maror is dipped into the charoset. Hence one of the Four Questions, traditionally sung by the youngest at the Seder table, asks why "on all other nights we do not dip vegetables even once, on this night, we dip twice."
Some have explained the dipping of the Karpas to symbolize Joseph's tunic being dipped into blood by his brothers. Karpas is therefore done at the beginning of the seder, just as Joseph's tunic being dipped into blood began the Israelites' descent to Egypt. Indeed, the Greek word 'karpos' is very similar to the Hebrew word 'karpas' meaning fine linen.
The Passover seder is one of Judaism’s most simultaneously stable and mutable traditions: There are universally agreed-upon aspects of the ritual (the four questions, the bitter herb, the four cups of wine), and yet there are many variations. At some seders, attendees whip one another with scallions during Dayenu to mimic the lashings received by Jewish slaves; at others, celebrants act out Chad Gadya with hand puppets. Into this fray enters karpas, the green vegetable of the seder plate. Is it parsley? Celery? Raw onion? Carrot? Cooked potato? It could be any one of these.
The four questions famously ask, “On all other nights we dip only once; why on this night do we dip twice?” The first dipping is karpas, the vegetable dipped into salt water; the second is the bitter herb (maror) dipped into charoset. In the earliest seders, there wasn’t much that distinguished the first dipping from the second. “Well through the Middle Ages, the first dipping had no formal name and was simply called tibul rishon (first dipping), the act of dunking being the primary point,” writes the late Gil Marks inThe Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.
What was dunked was, essentially, a matter of personal preference and what was regionally available. Amram Gaon, who compiled the basis of the now commonly accepted Haggadah in the 9th century, suggested using radish leaves, arugula, lettuce, parsley or cilantro. By the time Rabbi Joseph Caro wrote the seminal codification of Jewish law Shulchan Aruch around 1565, the vegetable course was known askarpas, which was Persian for “fine cotton” and first surfaced in a Jewish text in the Book of Esther, where it was used to describe wall hangings in the king’s palace. Though the word in Persian referred just to a kind of fabric, it may have been used in the Book of Esther to mean the color green. The Persian word karafs—not related to karpas—was used for both celery and parsley, a usage that likely transferred to Talmudic Hebrew.
Greenness was an important component of the vegetable, in keeping with the linguistic heritage of the word. But more essentially, karpas must be a vegetable that’s sanctified with the blessing for the fruit of the earth, generally recited over vegetables. Halachically, this blessing must be made on a vegetable eaten in its ideal form—in other words, a vegetable that is generally eaten raw must be served raw in order to receive the blessing, and a vegetable that is normally eaten cooked must be served cooked. A raw potato, for example, would not receive the fruit of the earth blessing. Likewise a boiled watermelon. Some debate whether parsley is really appropriate for karpas, given that it’s often cooked into dishes. “For this reason, my father uses parsley (as, supposedly, the literal meaning of karpas) with some cooked potato,” writes one commenter on an online message board. (The potato, along with turnips and white radishes, likely emerged as an option in northern Europe, where parsley and celery were rare; the justification for using these for the green vegetable is that their leaves are green.) Others even suggest using a banana, which, despite being a fruit, receives the fruit of the earth blessing.
The other crucial component of karpas is the substance into which it is dipped. Salt water is common among Ashkenazi Jews—many Sephardic Jews use vinegar—and both are widely believed to represent the tears Jewish slaves shed in Egypt. This, however, is a new idea, historically speaking. Traditionally, the dipping was more culinary than spiritual. “Originally this was a normal appetizer course, and over many centuries it devolved from a real appetizer to something totally symbolic and not particularly nourishing,” says Joshua Kulp, co-founder of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and author of The Schechter Haggadah. “Normal people, when they come to your house, want to eat. Originally the seder really was like that—they’d eat a normal amount of food, a real appetizer course” in order to sustain themselves for the lengthy ceremony to follow.
Like other elements of the seder, karpas is nowadays often imbued with new meaning to make it relevant to today’s culture. In many ways, it’s one of the most naturally symbolic components of the seder—the green vegetable is an apt emblem of the renewal of springtime and the importance of the environment. In the Haggadah for Jews & Buddhists, attendees are urged to think of karpas as a reminder to “move beyond the narrow place in our thinking and seek creative solutions to the planet’s needs in order to survive and flourish.” The GLBT Passover Haggadah says of karpas, “At this season, when Mother Earth arrays herself new, the human spirit rises, and we renew our faith in a world where freedom and justice will prevail.” Other haggadahs are even more political. “Intellectual property laws make it possible for corporations to buy the rights to the genetic information contained within a plant, copyright the plant and seeds and then sell them back to indigenous people,” says the International Jewish Solidarity Network’s Liberation Seder Haggadah. “This is the theft of centuries of collective labor and wisdom.”
But not everyone takes karpas so seriously. Rob Corwin and Danny Jacobs, “cocktail enthusiasts” from San Francisco, have created The Sipping Seder, drinks inspired by elements of the seder. Made of gin, balsamic vinegar and parsley, the karpas concoction may not be kosher for Passover, strictly speaking, but it certainly elevates the humble herb.
Have you heard about putting an orange on the Seder Plate? Even if you have, I'm sure it's not the true story of how it came to be, so to do my part to put rumors to rest, I present you here with the real story of why people put an orange on the Seder plate.
It started with Dr. Susannah Heschel. The story you may have heard goes something like this: After a lecture given in Miami Beach, a man (usually Orthodox) stood up and angrily denounced feminism, saying that a woman belongs on a bima (pulpit) the way an orange belongs on a Seder plate. To support women's rightful place in Jewish life, people put an orange on their Passover tables.
It's a powerful story. Nice story ,
Heshchel herself tells the story of the genesis of this new ritual in the 2003 book, The Women's Passover Companion (JPL). It all started with a story from Oberlin College in the early 1980's. Heschel was speaking at the Hillel, and while there, she came across a haggadah written by some Oberlin students to bring a feminist voice into the holiday. In it, a story is told about a young girl who asks a Rebbe what room there is in Judaism for a lesbian. The Rebbe rises in anger and shouts, "There's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate."
Though Heschel was inspired by the idea behind the story, she couldn't follow it literally. Besides the fact that it would make everything-the dish, the table, the meal, the house-unkosher for Passover, it carried a message that lesbians were a violation of Judaism itself, that these women were infecting the community with something impure.
So, the next year, Heschel put an orange on the family seder plate, "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."
The symbolism grew to include people who feel marginalized from the Jewish community: the widow, the orphan, women's issues in general, but solidarity with the gay and lesbian Jewish community was at the core. It wasn't a navel orange; it had to have seeds to symbolize rebirth, renewal. And spitting out the seeds reminds us to spit out the hatred and ostracization of homosexuals in our community, and others who feel prejudice's sting. The orange is segmented, not fragmented. Our community has discrete segments, but they form a whole. The symbolism of the orange may have expanded, but its origins are clearly from a desire to liberate an entire segment of our community from their painful mitzrayim-narrow place.
Passover is a holiday of liberation, and in thanking God for our own national liberation, we must also take notice of those around us who are not free, but still in chains either seen or felt. There are so many Haggadot on the market today. Each has a different perspective, perhaps, but each tells the same story. There was a people enslaved by others, and they were freed with God's outstretched arm. But God didn't act alone. God needed human partners to make the liberation a reality. Who are we reaching out to today? Who needs that outstretched arm and open hand? And what new symbols or rituals can you bring into your Seder to deepen the meaning of this most fundamental gathering?
There are many beautiful colors in our community, and the orange reminds us to keep our hearts and hands open. And for this year, may you reach out to someone new, may you sit at a full table, may your songs and your wine be sweet, and may your Passover be filled with love and joy.
Chag kasher v'sameach.
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