An Edah Editorial
By Dr. Yael Levine
Where is Miriam on the Seder Plate?
By Dr. Yael Levine
In recent decades, feminists have looked at the Passover seder
and said: Wait a minute! Where are all the women?
The result has been several new rituals, which continue to
gain acceptance and popularity. It turns out, however, that our contemporaries
were not the first generation to look for a way to bring to the Seder table
the role of women in Israel's redemption.
After looking at some of the texts used centuries ago, it is
clear that what we call the "traditional" Seder indeed has something
fishy about it. What's fishy is a missing person, a missing ritual, and actually,
some missing fish.
For many years, the Seder was a time when Miriam, and the achievements
of women, were memorialized. The most basic practice was a piece of fish placed
on the Seder plate to commemorate Miriam.
We have two cooked foods on the seder table – an egg and
a shank bone.The Talmud explains this as reflecting the holiday's two sacrifices,
the special Paschal lamb and the general holiday offering.
It turns out, however, that the number of dishes at the seder
wasn't fixed.
Rabbi Sherira Gaon of 10th-century Babylon noted a custom of
putting three foods on the plate.
"Those three cooked foods are fish, meat, and an egg corresponding to the
foods that Israel will eat in the Time to Come; fish corresponding to Leviathan,
egg to Ziz (an enormous mythic and fabulous bird), meat corresponding to wild
bull." The foods symbolizes the mythic creatures from the realms of sea,
air and land that will be eaten in the Meal of the Righteous in the Messianic
times.
A second reason offered by R. Sherira , however, is one that
resonates more strongly with our generation: "There are those who put an
additional cooked food in memory ofMiriam, as it says, "And I sent before
you Moses, and Aaron, and Miriam" (Micah 6, 4). According to this, Miriam
and the role she fulfilled in the redemption from Egypt is represented by the
third cooked food on the seder table.
This tradition is worthy of renewal in our time, in recognition
of the crucial role Miriam and the righteous women in Egypt played in the Exodus.
Writing a millennium ago, R. Sherira was noting a then-living custom. Now, with
only his text to guide us, how should we reinstitute it?
Rabbi Hayyim Palache (1788-1869) recommended that when eating
the fish at the meal to say a prayer expressing the hope that one will merit
eating from the banquet of the Leviathan; this prayer would seem appropriate
for recitation to connect to the memory of Miriam as well.
Since the shank-bone and egg retain their natural form, it
would seem that a fish added to the seder plate should be baked, cooked, or
smoked fish, rather than our chopped gefilte fish. It would also appear that
a whole fish with head and tail intact should be used, much as many customs
call for use of an entire neck and a whole egg.
In order to explain the reason for the additional foods at
the seder.It would seem that since, according to R. Sherira, the Leviathan corresponds
to the fish and the fish represents Miriam, verses about both the Leviathan
and Miriam are suitable to be recited.
Another rabbi cognizant of the importance of women to the Passover
story was Rabbi Abraham Grate of Prague. His 1708 Haggadah commentary explained
several seder rituals, including the initial hand washing, as referring to Pharaoh's
daughter Bitya and her rescue of Moses from the Nile.
Several traditional sources have drawn a connection between
the four cups of wine that punctuate the Seder and the four matriarchs, Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.
And if these proto-feminist commentaries are from relatively
forgotten sources, how to explain the fact that a basic interpretation of haroset
revolves around women – and almost nobody knows it? According to the Talmud,
haroset is in memory of the apple tree, and Rashi in his commentary makes reference
to the midrash in which, the women would go to their working husbands and would
conceive children between the fields. When the women were ready to give birth,
they would leave their homes out of fear of the Egyptians. They would lie underneath
the apple trees and give birth. Apple haroset, then, is about the fact that
the Jewish women did not lose hope in those difficult times.
Rituals, even time-honored rituals like the Seder -- can make
room for change rooted in traditional sources -- in fact, these "changes"
are in fact historical corrections bringing the women's voice back in after
it was somehow dropped.
As the Haggadah itself reminds us, the more one expounds on
the Exodus the more one is to be praised. In reviving these authentic and authoritative
Seder rituals commemorating the role of our Jewish foremothers, we can more
fully tell of the going out from Egypt.
Yael Levine holds a Ph.D. from the Talmud department of Bar-Ilan University.
