Why Karpas?
Dipping karpas in salt water is one of the things we do on the seder night to arouse the curiosity of children so they will ask, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" It is one of the two acts referred to in the question "every other night we do not dip our food at all, but tonight we will dip it twice." The other, just before the meal, is the dipping of maror in charoset.
There is symbolic significance in these two acts. The exodus began and ended with acts of dipping. It began when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery. They dipped his robe in the blood of a slaughtered goat (Gen 37:31) and brought it to Jacob to persuade him that Joseph had been attacked and killed by a wild animal. The sale of Joseph into slavery in Egypt was the beginning of the long process through which the entire family of Jacob traveled to Egypt and eventually became slaves.
The exile ended with the Israelites' taking bunches of hyssop, dipping them in the blood of the paschal offering, and daubing them on the doorframes of their houses (Ex 12:22). God "passed over" these houses during the final plague, after which they went free.
The two dippings recall these events. The karpas, itself sweet, is dipped in salt and becomes sour. The maror, itself bitter, is dipped in the sweet charoset and has some of the bitterness removed. These two acts remind us that freedom, which is sweet, becomes sour when we use it to mistreat others. Slavery, which is bitter, is sweetened when collective suffering becomes human solidarity and thus a prelude to freedom.
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