Two Sides of the Same Seder Plate (2024)

FAQs

Who answers the 4 questions asked at the Passover meal? ›

Traditionally recited at the seder by the youngest child present, the Four Questions, or Mah Nishtanah in Hebrew, ask about certain Passover rituals. Each question and its answer is printed below followed by fun videos your family can use to practice the Four Questions--and their answers--with your children.

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.

Maror is one of the foods placed on the Passover Seder Plate and there is a rabbinical requirement to eat maror at the Seder. Chazeret (Hebrew: חזרת) is used for the requirement called Korech, in which the maror is eaten together with matzo. There are various customs about the kinds of maror placed at each location.

The latter is usually as thin as it can be made without breaking. Ashkenaz use a seder plate with the different items on it, and Sephardim have separate dishes for each of the items. At the meal, Sephardic might eat kitniyot (beans, rice, corn, peas) while Ashkenaz don't.

The Four Cups of Wine: Of course, the most well-known aspect of the number four in the Passover Seder is the Four Cups of Wine. Each cup represents a different aspect of the story of the Exodus: freedom, deliverance, redemption, and release.

This is a festival which remembers the escape of the ancient Israelites from Egypt. Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the Passover meal together. As this was the last meal that Jesus would share with his disciples, he took elements of the Passover meal and made them symbols of his death.

Horseradish may be the most traditional bitter herb but you could use any bitter green like romaine lettuce, arugula, kale, chicory or endive. If you can't get fresh greens try some mustard, wasabi or ginger. Chazeret: a bitter vegetable or green and another symbol of the bitterness of slavery.

A second bitter item, which is sometimes left off the Seder plate entirely, romaine lettuce symbolizes the fact that the Jewish stay in Egypt began soft and ended hard and bitter (look at the two ends of a piece of lettuce). How it's used: Some families do use the chazeret and the maror interchangeably or together.

Maror and Chazeret – traditionally, two types of bitter herbs are placed on the plate to remind seder participants of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. Usually the specific vegetable used for maror is romaine lettuce, which is not bitter when first tasted, but becomes progressively so afterwards.

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. In fairly recent history, it's been overturned.

Do Sephardic Jews eat chickpeas on Passover? ›

Despite the misconception, many Sephardim have the tradition to refrain from rice, perhaps because of its storage near wheat. Other Sephardim or Mizrachim gladly eat rice, but won't eat chickpeas, hummus, whose name is so similar to hametz.

Soybeans are included in the general class of kitniyot, foods that Ashkenazim (and some Sephardim) may not eat on Passover.

One of the cutest Jewish traditions is that during the Passover seder, the youngest child recites four reasons why "this night is different from all other nights," commonly known as the Four Questions. The purpose of this tradition is to prompt learning.

In the middle of the seder, we arrive at The Four Children (sometimes called The Four Sons) – the wise, wicked, simple, and one who doesn't know how to ask – whose views of the world uncover even more values that are important to us as Jews.

Answer: Our Rabbis tell us that the reason that it is the youngest who asks the four questions, is so that he/she will remain an active participant in the Seder, for after all – the main idea of this Seder is “Hagada” - to tell over the story of our heritage to future generations.