What Are the 6 Items on The Seder Plate? | Aish (2024)

FAQs

What Are the 6 Items on The Seder Plate? | Aish? ›

The seder plate 7 ingredients include Beitzah, Maror, Charoset, Karpas, Chazeret, Zeroah, and Matzo.

The seder plate 7 ingredients include Beitzah, Maror, Charoset, Karpas, Chazeret, Zeroah, and Matzo.

Whether it is an ornate silver dish or a humble napkin, it bears the ceremonial foods around which the Seder is based. Here is the order: matzah, the zeroa (shankbone), egg, bitter herbs, charoset paste and karpas vegetable.

The Seder plate contains six different foods: matzo, a green vegetable, a lamb shank bone and haroset, which is a mixture of apples and cinnamon, bitter herbs and an egg. Helfand said the foods on the Seder plate are “pieces of the Exodus story.” “In the Seder plate, each food is meant to tell the story.

There are at least five foods that go on the seder plate: shank bone (zeroa), egg (beitzah), bitter herbs (maror), vegetable (karpas) and a sweet paste called haroset. Many seder plates also have room for a sixth, hazeret (another form of the bitter herbs).

At first glance the answer seems obvious: of course it was, notwithstanding the fact that it would have been very different from the seder we know today and would not have been called a "seder" at the time. The Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—unequivocally assert that the Last Supper was a Passover meal.

During Passover, Ashkenazi Jews traditionally stay away from not only leavened foods like bread, namely barley, oats, rye, spelt, and wheat, but also legumes, rice, seeds, and corn. The ban has been in place since the 13th century, but it's always been controversial.

Chazeret (lettuce)

Chazeret is simply used as an additional bitter herb. The Haggadah (the book read during Passover) instructs us to eat matzo with “bitter herbs.” Taking this commandment extremely literally, we add a second source of bitterness – usually romaine lettuce or endive ⁠— to the Seder plate.

“For vegetarians, who may object to using a lamb bone on the seder plate (as a remembrance of the paschal sacrifice): it is halakhically [legally] acceptable to use a broiled beet as a replacement.” Those who use a beet refer to Pesachim 114b as their prooftext.

Why is an orange on the Seder plate? ›

Many seder plates include an orange, which is attributed to Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College. Heschel included an orange in recognition of gay and lesbian Jews, and others who are marginalized in the Jewish community.

The shank bone represents the Passover sacrifice that was offered before the Jewish people left Egypt and subsequently each year on the day before Passover in the Temple.

There are a lot of potential answers to that question. Some believe Passover was only for the Jews. Some believe celebrating it undermines the idea that Jesus is our Passover. Some believe any celebration of Passover is a return to a law-based pursuit of righteousness and contradicts grace.

A Potato for Ethiopian Jewry

To commemorate them at your seder, eat small red potatoes alongside the karpas (green spring vegetable). Announce to those present that this addition honors a wondrous exodus in our own time, from Ethiopia to Israel.

The Babylonian Talmud quotes four questions; why matzah is eaten, why maror is eaten, why meat that is eaten is exclusively roasted, and why food is dipped twice. The version in the Jerusalem Talmud is also the one most commonly found in manuscripts.