Chag Sameach! From our family to yours, we pray that your Passover feast and your week of unleavened bread has been meaningful thus far! In accordance with Torah, the Children of Israel have just spent our weekend participating in the Passover seder. Seder is a Hebrew word meaning "order", indicating that there is an order and routine to our remembrance of the Exodus. For many, this is a drawn-out ceremony where we eat the ceremonial foods, sing our ancient songs, and retell the story of our deliverance from Egypt. Our children search the house for the afikomen and our elders enjoy the traditional foods from the generations before us.
“These are the appointed feasts of Adonai, holy convocations which you are to proclaim in their appointed season. During the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is Adonai’s Passover. On the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Matzot to Adonai. For seven days you are to eat matzah. On the first day you are to have a holy convocation and you should do no regular work.
- Leviticus 23:4-7
For us at the Bible Society, we like to stick to the basics: Eat the lamb. Eat the Matzah. Eat the Bitter Herb. Tell the story. Rejoice that we are free! But during a traditional seder, once everything has been eaten, there is usually a straggler on a the seder plate: a solitary hard-boiled egg. This late-stage addition to the plate can often confuse as it feels like it hints at some type of connection to Easter egg hunts. However, I can assure you that is not the case. So let's see how the egg came to be a part of the Passover seder!
Torah only ascribes three elements to the Passover feast: matzah, lamb, and bitter herbs.
They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over a fire. With matzot and bitter herbs they are to eat it.
- Exodus 12:8
These three elements are the core of our observances.
However! The Children of Israel have endured a number of occupations, exiles, and captivities throughout the centuries. From the Egyptians to the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Romans, the Jewish people have adapted their circumstances to their practices in order to survive. Names and traditions shifted over time and distance from the Homeland. And the egg is one of those!
It's supposed that after the Babylonian captivity, the Jews added the egg to their festivities since it was both abundant and special to the Babylonian culture of celebration. Over time, more things have been added like parsley and saltwater to remember the tears of our slavery or a shankbone to remember the roasting of the lamb over fire.
But after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews in the diaspora tried to find ways of making special offerings that would have been presented at the Temple if it had survived. So, with that in mind, the rabbis attempted to give insight into what would suffice for these special offerings. Over time, two special cooked meats at every seder became representatives of the special festival offerings that are outlined in Torah. (Leviticus 23:8)
However, the egg didn't take on ritual significance on its own until the 13-14th century. Through the writings of the rabbis and sages, the egg became a symbol of mourning and comfort over the destruction of the Temple. It depicted fragility and mourning, as well as the cycle of renewal that all creation experiences.
Ever since, the egg has been a mainstay on the seder plate as a representative of the communal sense of loss and hope for the restoration of Israel.
But those of us who believe in Messiah Yeshua know that the New Jerusalem will have the Temple of Adonai within it - rebuilt and in splendor!
The one who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the Temple of My God, and he will never leave it. And on him I will write the name of My God and the name of the city of My God—the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God—and My own new Name.
- Revelation 3:12
And even more excitingly - we are walking temples of God, His Spirit dwelling within us!
Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that the Ruach Elohim dwells among you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
- 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Ruach ha-Kodesh who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So regardless of an egg being on your seder plate or not, it's intended meaning resounds in the ongoing clarion call at end of every seder: Next Year in Jerusalem! May we see the restoration of Israel and the glory of the Nations, speedily and soon and in our day. Amen.
I appreciate reading your teachings of the Hebrew heritage. I am not Jewish, but, I am grafted into Abraham’s family through Yeshua. Thank you for sharing this history.
Marcia Carpenter on