The Orange on the seder plate

Haggadah Section: Introduction

The Orange on the Seder Plate 

Even after one has encountered the collection of seemingly unconnected foods on the seder plate year after year, it’s fun to ask what it’s all about. Since each item is supposed to spur discussion, it makes sense that adding something new has been one way to introduce contemporary issues to a seder. 

So how was it that the orange found its place on the seder plate as a Passover symbol of feminism and women’s rights? 

The most familiar version of the story features Susannah Heschel, daughter of Abraham Joshua Heschel and scholar in her own right, giving a speech about the ordination of women clergy. From the audience, a man declared, “A woman belongs on the bima like an orange belongs on the seder plate!” However, Heschel herself tells a different story. 

During a visit to Oberlin College in the early 1980s, she read a feminist Haggadah that called for placing a piece of bread on the seder plate as a symbol of the need to include the LGBTQ-community in Jewish life. Heschel liked the idea of putting something new on the seder plate to represent suppressed voices, but she was uncomfortable with using chametz, which she felt would invalidate the very ritual it was meant to enhance. She chose instead to add an orange and to interpret it as a symbol of all marginalized populations. 

We read at the seder that in every generation, we are obligated to see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt. We read that it is our duty to retell the story of the Exodus and whosoever expands upon the telling is 'm'shubach; worthy of praise. 

What we are doing tonight connects us deeply to the mission and purpose of the Seder itself: to intertwine our own story of oppression and liberation with the experiences of others; to stand in solidarity and fight alongside them. We are fulfilling that obligation by committing to have no products of Occupation at our seder. If we understand ourselves to have personally come out of Egypt, then we know, as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes, "Any oppression of human rights opens the gate to the indiscriminate use of power and abuse of human beings that is the root of the entire abomination of [our experience in] Egypt:'

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