Meal With a Message

Michalle Gould, Carol Robinson, Rabbi Art Gould, Bernice West, Eric Grose and wife Layne participate in a community Seder put on by Congregation Beth Shalom in Modesto on Sunday. The rituals and symbolic foods of the Seder evoke the twin themes of the evening: slavery and freedom. Part of the meal is designed to help participants recall the Jewish people's slavery in Egypt. The evening also evokes the freedom of the slaves' escape from the Pharaoh. The Seder plate symbolizes the order of things and includes the egg for renewal. Other foods include charoset, a sweet paste that represents the mortar that the Jewish slaves used to cement bricks, and maror, made of bitter herbs that symbolize the bitterness of slavery.