The (Crowded) Vegan Seder Plate
The (Crowded) Vegan Seder Plate
The Seder Plate holds elements of the Seder story. This vegan Seder plate removes animal products, and adds the orange ensuring a space for women at this table.
- Zeroa - for some a 'roasted bone', but on our plate a roasted beet that represents the Passover sacrifice offered while the Temple stood in Jerusalem (before 70 CE)
- Beitza - for some a roasted egg, but for on our plate it is an avacado seed (or olives) representing both the Passover offering and the cycle of life and death.
- Maror - A bitter herb (horseradish), which reminds us of the bitterness of enslavement.
- Charoset - A mixture of fruit, nuts, wine and spices, which represents the mortar our ancestors used to build the structures in Mitzrayim (Egypt)
- Karpas - A green vegetable (beet greens), which symbolizes hope and renewal.
- Chazeret - A second bitter vegetable (parsley), again reminding us of the harshness of slavery
- Orange - acknowledging the role of women in Jewish myths, community and society overall
- Olive -
Reader: This year, our Seder plate has a new symbol – an olive. Why an olive? Because, for slavery to be truly over, for a people to be truly free, we must know that we can feed ourselves and our children, today, tomorrow, and into the following generations.
Reader: In the lands of Israel and Palestine, olive groves provide this security. When olive groves are destroyed, the past and future is destroyed. Without economic security, a people can much more easily be conquered, or enslaved.
Reader: And so this year, we eat an olive, to make real our understanding of what it means each time a bulldozer plows up a grove. Without the taste of olives, there will be no taste of freedom.
Keep one olive on the Seder plate, and pass out olives
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