Understanding Charoset
Pesach 5772
Shmuel Herzfeld
We often think of Maimonides (Rambam) as a great scholar of Jewish law and philosophy. But in his commentary to the Mishnah, he shows us that he also has a talent for cooking as he records a recipe for the ritual food that we have at the Seder known as charoset.
Rambam writes: “We soak figs or dates and cook them and crush them until they are soft. Then we knead them with vinegar. Afterwards we add spikenard or hyssop without grinding them.”
Dr. Susan Weingarten, an Israeli scholar who studies the history of food and Judaism and has a special focus on the history of charoset, has found more than sixty unique charoset recipes.
Many of these recipes are recorded in rabbinic literature. Some are only recorded in popular folklore.
In case you are wondering, the recipe that she thinks may be the most delicious is a Persian recipe that was told to her by Esther Cohen who is originally from Shiraz. This recipe calls for apples, pears, peeled almonds, black raisins, and pomegranate seeds all mixed together in a blender.
Interestingly, a charoset made out of pears and pomegranates is already discussed by a great Ashkenazic rabbi named R. Israel Isserlein (1390-1460). He was the leading Ashkenazic rabbi of the fifteenth century and the author of the great work known as Terumat Hadeshen.
R. Isserlein’s student, R. Yosef b. Moshe, writes in his work, Leket Yosher (page 83) that R. Isserlein taught that it is a mitzvah to put into the charoset, “pomegranates and all fruits mentioned in Shir Hashirim, but he was not sure why pears are put into charoset. Nevertheless one should not change the custom.” And R. Yosef adds that his own father had told him to put pears into charoset in order to give it the color of mortar. R. Yosef suggests that R. Isserlein required the charoset to be thick like mortar but not necessarily to be the color of mortar.
However, despite having all of these sixty recipes, many of which are intricate and contain exotic fruits and spices, the great code of Jewish law known as the Shulchan Aruch, teaches that we are not actually supposed to eat the charoset. The Shulchan Aruch writes (475:1) that we must take an olive size portion of maror, dip it entirely in charoset, but do not leave the maror there so as not to nullify the bitterness of the maror. Umitaam zeh tsarikh le-naer hacharoset mei-alav, and for this reason we must be sure to shake off the charoset before eating the maror.”
Thus according to the Shulchan Aruch, we should not actually eat the charoset with either our maror or our matzah. The maror should be dipped in the charoset, but then the charoset needs to be removed.
This doesn’t mean that we can’t eat any charoset on Seder night. It just means that we can’t eat it with our maror or our matzaah in a ritual manner.
In truth, there is a long tradition of not eating the charoset at all, even in a non-ritual manner. The early 14th century Italian work known as Shibbolei Haleket writes that the custom is to put little pieces of brick and cement into the charoset in order to remind us of the mortar that our ancestors used in Egypt. I doubt that too many people ate that charoset which had the cement and brick mixed in!
So if we don’t eat the charoset in a ritual manner then why do we have it at the Seder?
The Talmud Pesachim (116a) records two different basic approaches to charoset. The first is the majority, anonymous opinion of the Tanna Kamma that charoset is not a mitzvah, and the second is the minority opinion of R. Eliezer bar Tzadok that charoset is a mitzvah.
If according to the Tanna Kamma, charoset is not even a mitzvah then why do have it at our Seder and why do we dip the maror in the charoset? The Talmud records the explanation of R. Ami who says that we have charoset “mishum kappa.”
Rashi (ad locum) says that kappa is a sharp, poisonous, item found in the maror which the charoset counteracts and neutralizes. I am not sure exactly what this means. But that is how Rashi interprets Rav Ami’s statement in the Talmud.
Rashbam and Tosafot both quote an earlier opinion of Rabbenu Chananel who says that kappa is a dangerous worm found in vegetables and which the charoset destroys.
In any event, the Shulchan Aruch Harav (47:11) notes that these days we have no concern about kappa in the maror and therefore we can conclude that it is no longer the reason why we eat charoset at our Seder today.
On the other hand, according to Rav Elazar bar Tzadok who says that charoset is a mitzvah, how is it a mitzvah? Nowhere in the Torah does it mention charoset! So we must conclude that it is a rabbinic mitzvah and when we dip that charoset in the maror it carries with it a great deal of symbolism.
The Babylonian Talmud (Pesachim 116a) offers two different possibilities concerning the symbolism behind the mitzvah of charoset and the Jerusalem Talmud offers a third reason.
One explanation of the Babylonian Talmud is that the charoset reminds us of the clay that the Israelites worked with in Egypt. The Jerusalem Talmud tells us that charoset is symbolic of blood.
But there is another answer in the Babylonian Talmud that I especially want to focus on.
The Babylonian Talmud suggests that the charoset is zecher letapuach a reminder to us of the “tapuach tree”. (Tapuach in biblical Hebrew refers to a citrus tree, i.e. an etrog.) Rashi explains that in Egypt the enslaved men would come home from the fields exhausted and uninterested in any intimacy with their spouse. However, their holy wives would inspire them as they sat under the tapuach tree.
Why is this story so important to be told at the Seder?
I think this story is a reminder of the heroism of the enslaved Israelite men and women. When we hear the word hero we don’t necessarily think of a wife inspiring her husband, but perhaps that is the message of the charoset. The Israelites were being brutally enslaved. Slavery is as much psychological as it is physical. When a person is enslaved the simple act of holding their head up high and believing in a bright future is often the first step and the necessary step to breaking the chains of their captors. This act of the Israelites in Egypt in deciding to create more children even while they were being enslaved themselves was really an act of great defiance and the path to redemption from Egypt.
Perhaps the charoset is a reminder to include the spiritual heroism of the Israelites in the telling of the Exodus story. With all the focus in the Torah on the greatness of Moshe, on the plagues, and on the miracles of Gd, maybe there was a concern that the day to day heroism of the people might get shortchanged. After all, what they did to bring redemption is not exactly obvious. The charoset reminds us that they were brave in their spiritual resistance and did not give up their souls to slavery. We should never forget their spiritual resistance to the Egyptian leadership.
I understand this heroism of the Israelites in Egypt better now that I have read the memoirs of Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the former chief rabbi of Israel. Rabbi Lau survived Buchenwald as a small seven year old child and he writes of the heroism of the imprisoned Jews enslaved by Nazis in the ghetto and then in the concentration camps.
When we think of resistance to the Nazis we often make the mistake of asking who took up arms and literally fired shots against the Nazis. That is very brave but there was another type of resistance that Rabbi Lau discusses that is no less brave. This was the resistance of the men and women who strove for spirituality in the midst of their darkness.
Rabbi Lau tells how as a young five and a half year old boy he and his mother were hiding in an attic in the ghetto as the Nazis were looking for them. Rabbi Lau writes that his “mother had accurately seen what we might face, and baked my favorite honey cookies. She knew that when I ate them they would distract me….Even today, many years long after those days of horror, I remember precisely the wonderful taste of Mother’s honey cookies. The memory of them is my consolation in trying situations; they are the drop of honey with which I sweeten bitter days.” (Out of the Depths, 14.)
When we see our sweet charoset at our Seder this year let us think about those honey cookie let us think about the quiet bravery and spirituality of Rabbi Lau’s mother, Rabbanit Chaya Lau.
When I look at the charoset this year, I will also think of Rabbi Lau’s brother and his fellow prisoners who resisted the Nazis with their heroic spirituality.
As a mere child in Buchenwald, Rabbi Lau was isolated from his older brother Naftali and placed in a different part of the camp. Rabbi Lau tells about how he learned about Passover from his brother:
As Passover approached, Naphtali and his friends were determined to do anything to avoid eating leavened foods during the holiday…months in advance they began to prepare by collecting potatoes. They told me about the arrangements and tried to explain the significance. Before January, the prisoners had organized a trade in potatoes: three potatoes were worth the daily bread ration…. I did not keep Passover then mainly because I did not know anything about it. One day, a feeble Naphtali dragged his feet toward Block 8 and stood next to the barbed-wire fence….He pulled a few potatoes from his pockets, and explained that he could not carry them because they hindered him while working with the bodies in the crematorium, so he was bringing to me the goods he had set aside for Passover. He asked me to guard them carefully. Then he explained to me a few words about the prohibition against eating leavened foods. I guarded those potatoes with my life. (Out of the Depths, 57.)
The Jews also celebrated the Passover Seder in Buchenwald. Over and over they sang the holiday song Karev Yom from memory: “The day is approaching that will be neither day nor night/He has placed guards over your city all day and all night/The darkness of the night will be lit like the light of day.” They had no Haggadah and no matzah. Still, among them there was no leavened food to be seen—only potatoes. (Out of the Depths, 59.)
I would only add two things. The Jews of Buchenwald might not have had matzah or a Haggadah but with their heroic spirituality in the face of evil they sure had charoset.
And what about that charoset? As we said, the fruit in it comes from the great biblical love song, Shir Hashirim, which is a love song from Gd to the Jewish people.
And there too, in Buchenwald, as the holy and heroic prisoners practiced their heroic spirituality they were making their own charoset and in doing so they were singing their own love song to Gd. In the midst of the darkest days of Buchenwald they were telling Hashem that they loved Him.