Haggadah:Karpas/0

Karpas

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Why eat Karpas?

The custom known today as Karpas¹ is mentioned briefly in Mishna Pesachim 10:3-4:

EN/HEע/E

(ג) הֵבִיאוּ לְפָנָיו, מְטַבֵּל בַּחֲזֶרֶת עַד שֶׁהוּא מַגִּיעַ לְפַרְפֶּרֶת הַפַּת.

The passage's language is somewhat difficult, but it appears to speak of eating or dipping² some food before the main meal.  The Mishna mentions chazeret (lettuce) explicitly, but the truncated phrase "and they brought before him" allows for the possibility that other foods or vegetables were brought as well.  No reason is given for the custom, and at first glance it would seem to have nothing to do with Pesach and the story of the Exodus.  Why, then, has the custom been incorporated into the Seder?

First Course

In the mishnaic period it was a common practice in Israel that festive meals began with a  series of appetizers. This is attested to in several Tannaitic passages,³ which mention assorted appetizers as being part of "סדר הסעודה". Thus, for example, Tosefta Berakhot 4:8 mentions a series of three "פרפריות" that would be served to guests. As the source speaks of washing hands, it further seems that these were normally dipped in some sort of liquid (as only then would ritual hand-washing be required). Such festive meals likely served as the model for the Seder, and thus, in its earliest stages, the "vegetable dipping" of Karpas likely had no religious significance.  It was simply the natural opening of the meal, meant to whet the appetite for later courses.⁴  

¹ The custom was originally referred to only as "טיבול ראשון" (the first dipping/eating), and it is first in medieval times that the term "karpas" is used to refer to the practice, perhaps because karpas (celery or parsley) had become the vegetable of choice.  [See the Simanei HaSeder of Rashi which lists Karpas as the third "sign".]

² The word "מְטַבֵּל" has been understood in both ways. See the Itturעיטור הלכות מצה ומרור קל"ג who writes, "טבול לשון אכילה היא" and Rambam who explains, "ומטבל בכאן עניינו שמתעסק באכילת הירק". [Rambam, nonetheless agrees that the vegetable is dipped.]  Cf. RanBavli Pesachim 114aAbout R. Nissim Gerondi's understanding of Rashi: "ופרש"י ז"ל דמאי מטבל מטפל".

³ See, for instance, Tosefta Pesachim 10:4, Tosefta Pesachim 10:9, Yerushalmi Berakhot 6:6.

⁴ See M. Ish Shalom (מאיר עין על סדר והגדה של ילי פסח) who compares the custom mentioned in the mishna with the regular custom to eat assorted vegetables  before the main meal, though he suggests that there was an intentional switch in the normal order so as to spark the children's curiosity.
More recently, many scholars have suggested that the Seder was modeled after the Greco-Roman banquets of the Rabbinic period, which the Rabbis adapted for their purposes.  Since appetizers, including lettuce, were part of that meal, the practice was incorporated into the Seder as well.  See S. Stein, "The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pesah Haggadah" in The Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (1957): 13-44, who points to many similarities between the Seder and the Hellenistic symposium relating to table manners, food habits and modes of discussion.  See also B. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder, (California, 1984):50-66 who attempts to highlight what was nonetheless unique about the Seder, and Y. Tabory, "פסח דורות" (Tel Aviv, 1996):367-377, who distinguishes between the customs which parallel, draw from, or intentionally deviate from the symposia.
Cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai, הגדת חז"ל, (Jerusalem, 1998):23, who suggest only that appetizers were common features of banquets in Eretz Yisrael, not connecting the phenomenon to Hellenistic practices.  The Seder, being such a meal, also began by dipping such vegetables.