Renewal in Tears
Eating the Karpas, the parsley or other vegetable, is a symbol of spring. Yet why the salt water? Why tears at this moment of renewal and celebration of life?
The rebirth of the Israelites, so crushed and reduced to dust by generations of slavery, required the revival of the dry wellsprings of their bodies no less than their souls. A midrash, rabbinic elaboration, teaches that when the men and women would return from the fields and brickyards weary and caked in mud there was scarcely energy to move, let alone to be moved by desire for each other. Yet one would show the other their reflection in a little mirror and say "I am more beautiful than you" and the other would be drawn in and respond "no I am more beautiful than you" and their bodies would awaken, flowing with love stronger than death.
Rebirth is not dry. The spring awakening symbolized by the karpas cannot be dry either. Salt water may taste a little bitter and too much salt will poison, but salt is also the source of life, the source of flavor. Not the strangely sterile idea of birth symbolized by a raw vegetable barely felt on the tongue, but the tanginess of life.
Returning to Egypt, when Pharaoh declared the boys be drowned in the waters of the Nile, Amram, the leader of the Israelite community told his people to separate from each other, to no longer come together to bring new children into the world just to have them drowned. Amram's daughter stood in her father's face and said "You are worse than Pharaoh! He has condemned the boys but you have condemned any future child." Amram relented and returned to his wife Yocheved. And their defiant daughter Miriam had a younger brother, Moses.
Miriam would help lead her people across the sea and become the keeper of the well of living water.
So salt water for the tears we cried. And salt water for the tears of birth.
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