Religious Requirement
B. Pesachim 116a asks:
Why is charoset a religious requirement?
Rabbi Levi says: In memory of the apple-tree [זֵכֶר לַתַּפּוּחַ , tekher la-tapuach].*
Rabbi Yohanan says: In memory of the mortar [זֵכֶר לַטִּיט, tekher latit].**
רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בְּרַבִּי צָדוֹק אוֹמֵר מִצְוָה וְכוּ׳. מַאי מִצְוָה? רַבִּי לֵוִי אוֹמֵר: זֵכֶר לַתַּפּוּחַ. וְרַבִּי יוֹחָנָן אוֹמֵר: זֵכֶר לַטִּיט. אָמַר אַבָּיֵי: הִלְכָּךְ צְרִיךְ לְקַהוֹיֵיהּ וּצְרִיךְ לְסַמּוֹכֵיהּ. לְקַהוֹיֵיהּ — זֵכֶר לַתַּפּוּחַ, וּצְרִיךְ לְסַמּוֹכֵיהּ — זֵכֶר לַטִּיט.
Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Tzadok, says [that eating ḥaroset is] a mitzva. What mitzva? Rabbi Levi says: In remembrance of the apple. And Rabbi Yoḥanan says: In remembrance of the mortar. Abaye said: Therefore, it must be both tart and thick. Tart in remembrance of the apple, and thick in remembrance of the mortar....
[Wm. Davidson trans, adapted]
*What apple tree?
B. Sotah 11b describes enslaved Yisraelite women seducing their husbands amid harsh conditions and the threat to male babies, conceiving, and then: "they were delivered in the field beneath the apple-tree [to keep the births secret] as it is said: Under the apple tree I roused you" (B. Sotah 11b)....
"Under the apple tree I roused you; It was there your mother conceived you, There she who bore you conceived you." – Song of Songs 8:5 (see also Inside/Outside, Lingering/Haste)
**Cheres / Earthenware
The Hebrew "cheres" [חֶרֶס] means "earthenware" or "potsherd." The Talmud links charoset with mortar or clay; particular spices, like cinnamon, are meant to resemble straw used in making bricks. Based on this, charoset simultaneously plays two roles:
- a reminder of forced building labor; and
- a functional substance, serving as sweet contrast of liberation with the bitter of enslavement, and holding the bitter maror to the matzah for the Hillel sandwich.
With or Without Charoset?
Rav Amram Gaon (9th C., Babylonia) and Maimonides (12th C., Egypt) require that matza be dipped in charoset just as maror and karpas should be. Charoset (a symbol of mortar) is appropriately mixed both with matza (the bread of poverty) and with maror (The taste of bitter slavery). But Rabbi Avraham Hayarchi (French Talmudist, 12th C.) never heard of such a strange custom. Why, he asks, dip the matza (the bread of liberation eaten during the Exodus) in charoset (The reminder of slavery)? Rabbi Joel Sirkis [15th/16th C., Poland] replied that for Maimonides the matza dipped in charoset stands for the experience of emergence from slavery to freedom. The contrast of matza and charoset makes us aware of the meaning of freedom.
-- p.125, A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, Shalom Hartman Institute, 1997
תַּנְיָא כְּווֹתֵיהּ דְּרַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: תַּבְלִין זֵכֶר לַתֶּבֶן, חֲרוֹסֶת זֵכֶר לַטִּיט. אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בְּרַבִּי צָדוֹק, כָּךְ הָיוּ אוֹמְרִים תַּגָּרֵי חָרָךְ שֶׁבִּירוּשָׁלַיִם: בּוֹאוּ וּטְלוּ לָכֶם תַּבְלִין לְמִצְוָה.
...It was taught in accordance with Rabbi Yoḥanan: Spices are in remembrance of the straw, and the ḥaroset [itself] is in remembrance of the mortar. Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Tzadok, said: the small shopkeepers in Jerusalem would say as follows: Come and take spices for yourselves for the mitzva.
Sotah 11b continues:
וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא שׁוֹלֵחַ מִשְּׁמֵי מָרוֹם מִי שֶׁמְּנַקֵּיר וּמְשַׁפֵּיר אוֹתָן, כְּחַיָּה זוֹ שֶׁמְּשַׁפֶּרֶת אֶת הַוָּלָד, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר:
״וּמוֹלְדוֹתַיִךְ בְּיוֹם הוּלֶּדֶת אוֹתָךְ לֹא כׇרַּת שׇׁרֵּךְ וּבְמַיִם לֹא רֻחַצְתְּ לְמִשְׁעִי וְגוֹ׳״.
וּמְלַקֵּט לָהֶן שְׁנֵי עִגּוּלִין, אֶחָד שֶׁל שֶׁמֶן וְאֶחָד שֶׁל דְּבַשׁ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר:
״וַיֵּנִקֵהוּ דְבַשׁ מִסֶּלַע וְשֶׁמֶן וְגוֹ׳״.
And the Holy One, Blessed be God, would send from the heavens above one who would clean and prepare, just as a midwife prepares the newborn, as it is stated:
“And as for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel was not cut nor were you washed with water for cleansing..." (Ezek 16:4).
And would gather for them two round stones, one of oil and one of honey, as it is stated:
“And God would suckle them with honey from a crag and oil from a flinty rock” (Deut 32:13).
...As the children grew, soldiers would find them in the field and kill them, but "a miracle would occur for them and they would be absorbed by the earth." When the soldiers were gone, the children would "emerge and exit the ground like grass of the field, as it is stated: 'I caused you to increase even as the growth of the field' (Ezekiel 16:7)." Eventually, the children join their families. Then...
וּכְשֶׁנִּגְלָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עַל הַיָּם, הֵם הִכִּירוּהוּ תְּחִלָּה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״זֶה אֵלִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ״.
And when the Holy One, Blessed be God, revealed Godself at the Sea, they recognized God first, as it is stated: “This is my God, and I will glorify Him” (Exodus 15:2).
Soncino footnote for this verse:
this. Ex. 15:2. The word ‘this’ implies that God had been previously seen; therefore it must have been the former babes.
רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר, מִי אָמַר קִלּוּס לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, הַתִּינוֹקוֹת, אוֹתָן שֶׁהָיָה פַּרְעֹה מְבַקֵּשׁ לְהַשְׁלִיךְ לַיְאוֹר ...
וְכֵיוָן שֶׁבָּאוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל לַיָּם הָיוּ אוֹתָן הַתִּינוֹקוֹת שָׁם וְהֵם רָאוּ לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בַּיָּם הִתְחִילוּ אוֹמְרִים לַאֲבוֹתֵיהֶם זֶהוּ אוֹתוֹ שֶׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה לָנוּ כָּל אוֹתָן הַדְּבָרִים כְּשֶׁהָיִינוּ בְּמִצְרַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: זֶה אֵלִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ.
Rabbi Yehuda says: Who was reciting accolades to the Holy One blessed be God? It was the children, those whom Pharaoh sought to cast into the Nile...
When Israel arrived at the sea, those same children were there and they saw the Holy One blessed be God at the sea. They began saying to their fathers: ‘This is the One who was doing all those things for us when we were in Mitzrayim,’ as it is stated: “This is my God, and I will glorify God” (Exodus 15:2).
This midrash is cited obliquely and/or quoted in some format in a number of haggadot, including A Different Night cited above (see page 113: "Why This Charoset?") It has a substantial role in Haggadah Min HaMeitzar: A Seder Journey to Liberation, from Gabriella Spitzer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2023). Learn more and get a flavor of the approach and art work at Keshet Online. The essay below from Rabbi Arthur Waskow is, to the best of my recollection, what first prompted me to consider this wild tale and its relationship to Passover.
Passover’s R-Rated Condiment
by Arthur Waskow, 2009
...There are several kinds of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach:
- The freedom of people who rise up against Pharaoh, the tyrant
- The freedom of earth, the flowers that rise up against winter.
- The freedom of birth, of the lambs who trip and stagger in their skipping-over dance.
- The freedom of sex, that rises up against the prunish and prudish.
The text of the Song of Songs subtly, almost secretly, bears the recipe for charoset, and we might well see the absence of any specific written explanation of charoset as itself a subtle, secret pointer toward the “other” liberation of Pesach — the erotic loving freedom celebrated in the Song of Songs, which we are taught to read on Passover....
...the Song celebrates a new way of living in the world.
- The way of love between the earth and her human earthlings, beyond the future of conflict between them that accompanies the end of Eden.
- The way of love between women and men, with women celebrated as leaders and initiators, beyond the future of subjugation that accompanies the end of Eden.
- The way of bodies and sexuality celebrated, beyond the future of shame and guilt that accompanies the end of Eden.
- The way of God so fully present in the whole of life that God needs no specific naming (for in the Song, God’s name is never mentioned).
- The way of adulthood, where there is no Parent and there are no children. No one is giving orders, and no one obeys them. Rather there are grownups, lovers — unlike the domination and submission that accompany the end of Eden.
In short, Eden for grown-ups. For a grown-up human race.
Whereas the original Garden was childhood, bliss that was unconscious, unaware, the Garden of the Song is maturity. Death is known, conflict is recognized...yet joy sustains all....
-- from "On Faith" in the Washington Post, April 8, 2009. Full text now found via Archive.org