The Sexy Little Secret of Passover

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 4:10 PM on April 8, 2009.

A quick post before running over to my old friend Kenny's place for my first Passover Seder in many, many years.

I'm planning on breaking out this fascinating story, courtesy of Rabbi Arthur Waskow, with the assembled (hopefully at the least appropriate moment):

A question: "Why is there charoset on the Seder plate?"

That's the most secret Question at the Seder - nobody even asks it. And it's got the most secret answer: none.

The Haggadah explains about matzah, the bread so dry it blocks your insides for a week.

The Haggadah explains about the horseradish so bitter it blows the lid off your lungs and makes breathing so painful you wish you could just stop. The Haggadah even explains about that scrawny chicken neck masquerading as a whole roast lamb.

But it never explains charoset.

Fear not, Waskow will, and it's kind of juicy ... (charoset -- a tasty combination of nuts and fruits -- is usually explained as a symbol of the mortar used by an enslaved Jewish people to build the pyramids).

Charoset is an embodiment of by far the sexiest, kissy-est, body-est book of the Hebrew Bible ---- the Song of Songs. Charoset is literally a full-bodied taste of the Song. The Song is the recipe for charoset....

Verses from the Song:

"Feed me with apples and with raisin-cakes;

"Your kisses are sweeter than wine;

"The scent of your breath is like apricots;

"Your cheeks are a bed of spices;

"The fig tree has ripened;

"Then I went down to the walnut grove."

There are several kinds of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach:

The freedom of people who rise up against Pharaoh, the tyrant.

The freedom of earth, the flowers that rise up against winter.

The freedom of birth, of the lambs who trip and stagger in their skipping-over dance.

The freedom of sex, that rises up against the prunish and prudish.

The text of the Song subtly, almost secretly, bears the recipe for charoset, and we might well see the absence of any specific written explanation of charoset as itself a subtle, secret pointer toward the "other" liberation of Pesach -- the erotic loving freedom celebrated in the Song of Songs, which we are taught to read on Passover. (Check out the wonderful translations by Marcia Falk, Chana & Ariel Bloch, and Shefa Gold, and Chapter 6 of my book Godwrestling - Round 2. )

The Song of Songs is sacred not only to Jews, but also to Christians and to Muslims, and especially to the mystics in all three traditions. Its earth-and-human-loving erotic energy has swept away poets and rabbis, lovers and priests, dervishes and gardeners...

For the Song celebrates a new way of living in the world.

The way of love between the earth and her human earthlings, beyond the future of conflict between them that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of love between women and men, with women celebrated as leaders and initiators, beyond the future of subjugation that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of bodies and sexuality celebrated, beyond the future of shame and guilt that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of God so fully present in the whole of life that God needs no specific naming (for in the Song, God's name is never mentioned).

The way of adulthood, where there is no Parent and there are no children. No one is giving orders, and no one obeys them. Rather there are grownups, lovers -- unlike the domination and submission that accompany the end of Eden.

In short, Eden for grown-ups. For a grown-up human race.

Man, this ought to go over as well as when I offered a prayer for Palestinian liberation at the last Passover I attended!

Tagged as: passover, charoset

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.