Pesachim 39
“How do we know that a bitter herb is specifically a vegetable rather than the bitter oleander bush?”
Today’s Daf Yomi provides a tutorial in herbology and the type of plants that are deemed acceptable representations of the bitterness of our enslaved ancestors in Egypt. Suffice it to say, that it is important for the bitter herb that we put on our Passover plate to be bitter. It is also a welcome diversion from the protracted discussion of dough and matza over the last few days, although we are told there is a parallel between the two.
The types of acceptable herbs that fill our throat with bitterness include the hazeret, which the Koren Talmud tells us is a form of lettuce popular in ancient Rome. The other acceptable bitter herbs include chervil (a type or parsley), field eryngo (a type of thistle), endives and maror (a type of dandelion.) The herbs must be served fresh or dry, but not over-boiled or pickled. In my family, we would usually place a sad sprig parsley on the Passover plate, but now I know we could have used some of the dandelions from our backyard which my father raged a battle against with his weed-whacker.
When is a vegetable a bitter herb? Bar Kappara characterizes these bitter herbs as vegetables and says they fulfill the obligation to eat bitter herbs on Passover. Rabbi Yehuda appears to have a preference for wild endive, which he says can be used interchangeably with garden endives, and hazeret which is ascribed with certain superpowers in today’s text. Rabbi Meir adds the plants asvas and tura (green gangly looking plants) and sweet myrrh to the mix.
Rabbi Yehuda sums it up nicely for us and says that “any plant that has white sap when it is cut may be used as bitter herbs.” Rabbi Yohanan piles on and says that “anything whose surface is light green is fit for this mitzva.” The Rabbis come together in their analysis and declare that any plant that has sap and a light green surface would qualify as a bitter herb.
The humble lettuce is instilled with a lot of power in today’s reading. The Gemara asks what is the meaning of lettuce and answers that “it refers to the fact that God has mercy on us.” We are told that lettuce, or hazeret, is the preferred bitter herb (even though it is not an herb) because it has a bitter aftertaste, just like the Egyptians who were “soft at first when they paid the Jews for their work, but were harsh in the end, as they enslaved them.”
There are many foods that are bitter to the taste. Rav Rehumi mentions kufya fish. Abaye answers that one must think of herbs (or vegetables standing in as herbs) in the context of matza (and we return to the dough), and “just as matza must be prepared only from food that grows from the ground, so too, bitter herbs must be from food that grows from the ground.”There is a parallel construct between the five grains that are permissible for baking matza and the five bitter herbs.
The Gemara inquires if the oleander bush can be considered a bitter herb, since it grows from the ground and is not just bitter to the taste but highly poisonous. We are told that bitter herbs must come from a plant like matza and not a tree. The oleander grows on a small bush with vibrant flowers of many different colors. They are commonly grown as ornamental shrubs due to the beauty of their flowers but are highly poisonous and come with warnings to keep pets and children far away. The plant is so toxic that it can contaminate water that it comes into contact with. The oleander symbolizes beauty, hope and desire, but also extreme danger. If it were not so poisonous and vetoed by the Gemara, it would be a perfect reminder of the bitterness of our past that is wrapped in so much beautiful tradition, but also heart-wrenching persecution.
With the coronavirus raging and a vaccine not so near on the horizon for most of us, it is likely that we will not be able to celebrate Passover with our family in-person for the second year in a row. It was novel last year to place my computer on my table and invite my family into my home through Zoom. The next Passover will just be bitter. These are certainly dangerous times with the numbers of new coronavirus cases increasing every day and more virulent mutations being recorded across the world.
The oleander flower is the perfect symbol for the times we are living through, with its dual symbolism of beauty and danger. Its flowers offer the vision of a world where we are free to move around without fear of being exposed to the virus. And yet, they can be deadly.