[HANASHIR:8806] Orange on the seder plate

[Joanna Selznick Dulkin <joanna...>]

Hi all,
This isn't specifically Jewish Music related, but it is of definite
interest, particularly at this time of year.  There are many threads of
"drash" circulating about why we place an orange on the seder plate, and
most of the stories relate to Susannah Heschel.  A Rabbi I know wrote Ms.
Heschel for the 'definitive' story, and so here it is!
Enjoy, and Happy Pesach!
-Joanna Selznick Dulkin

*********
I wrote to Susannah Heschel  to ask her for the "definitive" origin of the
orange on the seder plate, since I had understood that it was at a talk
that she gave that the reputed comment was made, and she sent me this.  She
happily gave me permission to forward it to the four corners of the earth.
Here it is; feel free to forward it to anyone you wish.
-Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Associate Dean for Religious Life, Stanford
University

_________
In the early 1980s, the Hillel Foundation invited me to speak on a panel at
Oberlin College.  While on campus, I came across a Haggada that had been
written by some Oberlin students to express feminist concerns.  One ritual
they devised was placing a crust of bread on the Seder plate, as a sign of
solidarity with Jewish lesbians (there's as much room for a lesbian in
Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the Seder plate).

At the next Passover, I placed an orange on our family's Seder plate.
During the first part of the Seder, I asked everyone to take a segment of
the orange, make the blessing over fruit, and eat it as a gesture of
solidarity with Jewish lesbians and gay men, and others who are
marginalized within the Jewish community (I mentioned widows in particular).
 Bread on the Seder plate brings an end to Pesach - it renders everything
chometz.  And it suggests that being lesbian is being transgressive,
violating Judaism.  I felt that an orange was suggestive of something else:
the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing
and active members of Jewish life.  In addition, each orange segment had a
few seeds that had to be spit out - a gesture of spitting out, repudiating
the homophobia of Judaism.

When lecturing, I often mentioned my custom as one of many new feminist
rituals that have been developed in the last twenty years. Somehow, though,
the typical patriarchal maneuver occurred:  My idea of an orange and my
intention of affirming lesbians and gay men were transformed.  Now the
story circulates that a MAN said to me that a woman belongs on the bimah as
an orange on the Seder plate.  A woman's words are attributed to a man, and
the affirmation of lesbians and gay men is simply erased.

Isn't that precisely what's happened over the centuries to women's ideas?

Susannah Heschel
[4/5/01]


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