Charoset: why cement never tasted this good

When I was a kid, I loved eating matzah on Pesach, and my all-time, top-two toppings were honey or charoset. Yes, I had a sweet tooth, and yes, I was ridiculously ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and I’m sure this sugar injection didn’t help me sit through a seder. But it did make me look forward to that matzah. In my humble, child-Greg opinion, there just wasn’t enough charoset made every year. It was delicious at the seders, but then you had a whole week still to go and the charoset was gone!

Now, decades later, and teaching about Pesach every year, charoset is a bit of a dilemma. If you look at any Pesach 101 guide, it tells you that charoset is there to symbolise the mortar that the Israelite slaves used to build the pyramids. But if that’s so, why is it so yummy? Let’s explore.

It’s interesting to note that when we get to the part of the haggadah when we introduce the symbolic foods on the seder plate, we don’t speak about charoset (or the roasted egg for that matter, but we don’t really have space to deal with that one right now). Rabban Gamliel – don’t look for him at shul, he lived 2 000 years ago – said that we’re required to speak about three items, starting with Pesach. Yes, I know the whole week is called Pesach, but actually it’s because that’s the name of the Passover sacrifice offered in the Temple era that recalls the daubing of the blood on the doorposts to avoid the Angel of Death. This is usually marked on the seder plate by a shankbone of a lamb (but veggie families often use a mushroom, beetroot, or burnt twig). Oh, and someone will surely ask every year what the word “shankbone” means. It’s the tibia, if you didn’t know, but let’s move on.

Next is matzah – bread of affliction. Well, that one we all know – they were in a hurry and their dough didn’t have time to rise. And finally, maror, symbolising the bitterness of slavery. How I understand the maror! It burns like crazy, and anyone who, like us, is hardcore about it and uses raw chunks of horseradish at the seder, will know that it even makes you cry. Think wasabi times 10!

But no mention of charoset at this point, and we have to wait until the famous Hillel sandwich before charoset makes its appearance. And then it’s weirdly not even eaten properly because you dip the maror in the charoset and then shake it off. Shake it off! What?! You don’t even get to eat it now? Little Greg is shocked, he’s dying to eat a whole bowl full. But Rabbi Greg gets it, because maror makes you cry but charoset, well it’s dessert right there at the start of the meal, it’s comfort food. How is that reminding us of the cement of slavery?

Let’s go ask Maimonides for help. The great legal and philosophical genius of the 12th century explains charoset thus: “We take dates, dried figs, or raisins and the like, and crush them and add vinegar to them, and mix them with spices, as clay is mixed with straw.” (Hilchot Chameitz uMatzah 7:11) Thanks Rambam for the recipe, it still sounds a lot more like a sweet treat than a marker of poverty and enslavement, and although you say “clay and straw”, I still feel like I’m eating dessert, not cement.

One of the amazing teachers that I met when I was on sabbatical in New York in 2019 was Rabbi Jill Hammer, who explains the dual-nature of charoset with two midrashim in The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for all Seasons.

The first explains how when the Egyptian soldiers came to kill Hebrew boys, the mothers would go and give birth out in the orchards, under the apple trees. (Sh’mot Rabbah 1:12) The second explains how when the Israelites were walking through the parted seas, the kids got hungry and started to cry. You can imagine the scene: wonder and amazement at the fish swimming in the walls of water and then, uh oh, hungry kids. No manna yet. What to do? Imagine the aisle of torture at Woolworths when you’re queuing up with your toddler to pay, and they see the chocolates and sweets to their left and right. What does a good parent do? You don’t want to fill your growing child with rubbish, but they are melting down in the middle of Woolies and there are still six customers in front of you in the line who are all turning their heads to see what you’re going to do.

“The daughters of Israel passed through the sea holding their children with their hands, and when the children cried, they would stretch out their hands and pluck an apple or pomegranate from the sea.” (Sh’mot Rabbah 21:10). Our Israelite ancestor mothers got to pick out fruit from the wondrous Woolies to placate their hungry little ones and so we, re-enacting our long walk to freedom, grate apples into the charoset.

It’s confusing, but let’s see what we have now. Because Pharaoh wanted to kill the male babies, our heroic mothers went out to the apple trees and gave birth there to hide them. And then as they walked free, they fed them with apples (or pomegranates – new charoset recipe this year?) to keep them from crying. These two midrashim might suggest that charoset has just as much to do with birth, survival, and freedom as it has to do with slavery and labour.

Perhaps this year at our seder tables, we can explain to our little Gregs that charoset is on the table to remind us of the cement that our ancestors had to pack onto the bricks doing the slave work building the cities of Pithom and Ramses. We should also explain that slavery is an evil that persists today, and that we who know what it was like to be slaves in Egypt must work every day to end it. And in the same breath, we should explain that our heroic mothers defied the tyrant Pharaoh to let their children live and as they finally walked out to freedom, they sustained them with miraculous sweet treats just like we enjoy on seder night. Enjoy your festival of freedom!

Chag sameach!

• Rabbi Greg is part of the rabbinic team at the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation.