An Orange on the Seder Plate A modern-day custom in support of
including marginalized Jews in mainstream Jewish life Reprinted
with permission from www.ritualwell.org. In the early 1980s,
while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel [the campus Jewish
organization], Susannah Heschel, a well-known Jewish feminist
scholar, was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that
suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign
of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (which was intended to convey
the idea that there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as
there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). Heschel felt
that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that
Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like hametz
[leavened food] violates Passover. So at her next seder, she
chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians
and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. She
offered the orange as a symbol of the fruitfulness for all Jews
when lesbians and gay men are