Against four sons the Torah spoke, and against four peculiar holiday customs we speak.
Like every holiday and festival, Passover and Seder are divided between the universal customs, which Jews all over the world observe as one, and unusual local customs. Even among the local ones, there are some that we have heard of and know well, such as the Moroccan mimuna for example; And even if you don’t touch those present on the head with the Seder bowl on the eve of the holiday, you must have had the chance to be hosted once in the order in which they did it. This is all well and good, but there are also strange and more esoteric customs, from all over the world. Here are four Pesach customs that we, at least, did not know until now.
India: Dip your hands in blood
Holiday customs usually undergo some kind of sublimation over the generations. Instead of doing “the thing itself” – as it is written or as they once did – they do some symbolic act whose purpose is to remind and symbolize that thing. But here and there, there are communities that treat things completely literally.
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Passover ceremony for sick Jewish soldiers in the Austrian army, Poland, 1919 Photo: The Austrian Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People / Courtesy of Menachem Berger, Israel
Passover ceremony for sick Jewish soldiers in the Austrian army, Poland, 1919 Photo: The Austrian Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People / Courtesy of Menachem Berger, Israel
This is especially evident in places like India or Ethiopia, where rabbinic Judaism and the interpretations of Halacha did not reach throughout history, and the only text they could rely on was the Torah itself. Therefore, the Jews of India referred, in a completely literal way, to the writing in the book of Exodus 12:7: “And take some of the blood and put it on the two mezuzahs and on the lintel of the houses in which they will eat it.”
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The Indian Jewish community living in the country did indeed cease from this, but in India itself – in the villages as well as in Mumbai – Jews practice, to this day, imitating the smearing of the lamb’s blood on the faces of the entrances to the houses of Israel in Egypt on the eve of their liberation. The Jews of the Bnei Yisrael community dip their palms in the blood of a lamb or a goat and dip them in the crossbar. Over time, they stopped embossing in the jamb itself, but do it on pieces of paper and hang them over the jamb. The red handprint resembles Hamsa and symbolizes good luck and protection.
Gibraltar: dust in the rubble
There are also Jews in Gibraltar – a British territory located at the southwestern tip of Europe, between Spain and Morocco. They arrived there after the expulsion from Spain, and today they work mainly as lawyers and accountants in the tax haven that is Gibraltar. These Jews have a really strange custom on Passover, which also seems to indicate a tendency to interpret things too literally.
The Jews of Gibraltar do not overlap, and in order for their mortar to really resemble clay, they add dust to it. Yes, they crush dust from real bricks and add to the recipe
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Passover Seder at the Rosh family, Oren, Algeria, 1930 Photo: Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People / Courtesy of Jacques Assoulin, Israel
Passover Seder at the Rosh family, Oren, Algeria, 1930 Photo: Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People / Courtesy of Jacques Assoulin, Israel
Rabbi Yochanan, one of the greatest of the Amorites, claimed that the reason they eat harousta on Seder night is to remember the mortar that the Jews had to prepare to make bricks when they were slaves in Egypt. Usually the kharosat resembles clay in its color and texture, when in fact it is made of sweet and tasty things: a mixture of crushed nuts, apples, sweet red wine and cinnamon in the Ashkenazi version, or figs and dates in the Spanish version. But the Jews of Gibraltar do not overlap, and in order for their clay to really resemble clay, they add dust to it. Yes, they crush dust from real bricks and add to the recipe. Real clay.
Iran and Afghanistan: Merbitim with green onions
In contrast to the verbal customs, in Iran and Afghanistan an amusing symbolic custom is advocated. In the Persian and Afghan Pesach order, it is customary to hit each other (lightly) with a green onion (or leek) when the chorus of “Dayno” begins. This tradition, it turns out, symbolizes the whippings that the Israelites suffered in Egypt during their days as slaves.
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Seder Pesach, Yemen, 1950 Photo: Paul Goldman / Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People
Seder Pesach, Yemen, 1950 Photo: Paul Goldman / Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People
The meaning is serious, but in practice it is a fun and playful custom that many Persian Jews testify that they are very fond of – especially the children, who once a year can give free rein to their captive offspring and are invited to hit their brothers and parents, and even their grandparents, with green onions.
United States: An orange in the Passover bowl
Progressive American Jews usually add an orange to the Passover bowl. Back in the 1980s, feminist American mothers would explain to their daughters that the orange in the seder bowl was an act of feminist resistance; A symbol of women’s rights. The origin of this custom has been attributed to Prof. Susanna Heschel, a Jewish-American researcher and expert in Jewish sciences, the daughter of the theologian and philosopher Avraham Yehoshua Heschel.
Heshel chose the orange “because it indicates that when lesbians and gays contribute and are active in the life of the Jewish community, it contributes to all Jews wherever they are.” There are those who spit out the seeds to remind everyone to spit out homophobia and hatred of the other
The story that used to be told about the orange is this: Heschel lectured at a university in Miami, Florida (the state of oranges) and spoke about feminism. “A woman belongs on the stage of the synagogue like an orange belongs in the Seder bowl,” the crowd shouted at her with contempt. And since then, an orange is added to the Passover bowl.
But it turns out that this story is a myth. Susanna Heshel is indeed the source of the custom of adding the orange, but the story about the man who shouted at her from the audience did not exist and was not created. Aliba Deshell, this is what happened: she spoke to Jewish students at Oberlin College in Ohio in the 1980s and there she became aware of a Haggadah written by a student, which included a story about a young girl asking Rabbah if there is a place in Judaism for lesbians. The rabbi in the story angrily replies, “There is a place for lesbians in Judaism just as there is a place for a crust of bread in the Seder bowl!”, thereby implying that lesbians are impure and harm Judaism.
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Passover Seder in the “Sons of Avraham” congregation, Lafayette, Indiana, USA, 1983 Photo: Linda Lifschutz, USA / Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People
Passover Seder in the “Sons of Avraham” congregation, Lafayette, Indiana, USA, 1983 Photo: Linda Lifschutz, USA / Oster Visual Documentation Center / ANU – Museum of the Jewish People
Following this story, Heschel decided on the following seder night to place an orange on her seder plate. She shared that she chose orange “because it indicates that when lesbians and gays contribute and are active in the life of the Jewish community, it contributes to all Jews wherever they are.” The orange seeds symbolize rebirth and renewal, and there are those who spit the seeds out of their mouths to remind everyone to spit out homophobia and hatred of the other.
In recent years, Heschel sought to clarify her intention and tell the origin of the orange custom as it really was. The myth woven around the addition of the orange angered her for two reasons: first, the idea of the orange is attributed to a man. And secondly, her intention was not only feminist in the narrow sense – according to her, women have long since received their place on the synagogue stage and it is not wise to fight for that. Her explicit intention was to include lesbians and gays in Judaism.