Last year, I wrote about how to prepare for Pesach with less stress. You can read that here to get yourself started and then enjoy this year’s article about charosets.
In the U.S., our experience with Jewish customs is largely based on our Ashkenazi heritage. American secular society has learned about Judaism through this lens, too. Recently, this perception has been given a new name – Ashke-normativity. It means that sometimes we forget that Jews have been scattered around the world for almost 2,000 years, developing a rich variety of traditions in prayer, song, practice, and especially, food.
A History Lesson: But we know that’s not true. After the destruction of the Temple, when most Jews were expelled from the land that is now Israel, we eventually scattered in many directions. Today’s Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Jews who ended up in the region known as the Pale of Settlement, which encompassed areas in what is now Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and other modern countries. Jews spent many hundreds of years in these regions, sometimes accepted, or at least left alone, and happy, other times persecuted and miserable.
Other Jews stayed in the east, in what is modern-day Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and some as far east as India. Most of these Jews and their descendants are known as Mizrachi, from the Hebrew for east, mizrach.
On the Iberian Peninsula, known as Sepharad, Jews lived for almost 800 years in relative peace and were well-respected under Moorish (Muslim) rule. But as we all know, when the Moors were finally overthrown by Christians, the new regime targeted Jews with the Inquisition and eventually expelled all Jews in 1492. Some Spanish, or Sephardic, Jews scattered north into France, the Netherlands, and England, and eventually into the New World as commodity traders. Other Sephardic Jews fled south and ended up spread across Northern Africa, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and, in a crazy twist of fate, back in Egypt. The Ottoman Empire welcomed Spain’s Jews, landing them in Syria, Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Still, because of their ancestors’ Spanish origin, they remain Sephardic.
There were several other Jewish communities, which were so isolated that they developed their own, unique, very specific customs. There were two communities in India that today call themselves Bene Israel and Cochin Jews. Italian Jews were restricted to living in ghettos. The word comes from the Venetian term for foundry, ghèto, because the original closed Jewish quarter in 1516 was located near one. There was little movement into or out of these ghettos, leaving their inhabitants isolated from other Jews.
More recently, beginning in 1984 with Operation Moses and finally ending in 2022 with Operation Zur Israel, between 20,000 and 25,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel. These Jews had been separated from other Jews for so long and lived so remotely that they still practiced an ancient form of Biblical Jewish practice.
The point is that Jews everywhere, guided by Torah and either the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmud, practiced the SAME Judaism, but developed very different interpretations and customs. They were influenced largely by their location and their level of safety and acceptance. Food customs grew around locally available goods and recipes based on what the neighbors were eating.
About Charoset: When asked to name the most quintessentially Jewish food, Rabbi Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, holds up charoset. In his book, Gastronomic Judaism as Culinary Midrash, he observes, “It is eaten almost exclusively during . . . Passover, its consumption is prescribed in Jewish law for the annual Jewish ritual meal of the Passover seder . . . and is generally eaten only by Jews or their non-Jewish guests at the seder.”
I think it’s interesting that charoset is always sweet. I mean, it is supposed to represent the mortar we made as slaves to build for our taskmasters. There’s nothing sweet about that.
Some historians surmise that sweet charoset derives from the sweet or sweet-and-sour fruit relishes that were likely served at Greek symposia, on which the structure of the seder is based. And while charoset is on the seder plate, other than the instruction to eat the Hillel sandwich of charoset and bitter herb, there is no other explanation of it in the Haggadah or the Torah. Nevertheless, the practice of eating sweet charoset certainly goes back far enough in history that Jews who were later scattered all over the world include it in seders.
No matter where they ended up, Jews had to use the fruits that were available to them. In Europe and the Pale of Settlement, even though Pesach occurs in spring, it was still quite cold. There were no fresh fruits, and only a few dried fruits, so Ashkenazi Jews used the wrinkled apples in their fruit cellars for charoset.
But in northern Africa, Asia, and tropical Central and South America, a large variety of fresh and dried fruits were available. Charoset that includes dates, raisins, and almonds is most common, but they also used fig, persimmon, fresh grapes and currants, apricot, bananas, and pomegranate seeds. In addition to almonds, they used walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, and sesame seeds. Flavor bombs like ginger, rose water, and orange water also found their way into many charoset recipes.
So, to honor our global history and to make the seder meal more fun, I prepare several types of charoset every year. Here are recipes for some of our favorites.
Ashkenazi Charoset
My Mom never measured the ingredients for this charoset and neither do I. Depending on the size of my guest list, I usually use 1 large or 2 smaller apples, a little bit of sugar or honey, and enough wine to soak the apples and leave a small puddle at the bottom of the bowl, which will be absorbed later. The apples can be grated on the large side of a box grater or diced very small. The most common nut used in this type of charoset is walnut, which is usually chopped very small. Many people, maybe most, also add cinnamon, but my Mom was allergic so we never did.
Egyptian Charoset
Adapted from The Jewish Holiday Kitchen by Joan Nathan
I’ve included this charoset in our seder for more than 20 years. Everyone loves it so much; it’s now our favorite. This recipe makes quite a bit; more than enough to enjoy it on matzo all week. But it’s also an easy recipe to cut in half.
| Ingredients | Directions |
| 1 LB black raisins
½ LB pitted dates 2 C water ¼ C sugar ¼ C crushed walnuts or almonds |
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Syrian Charoset
Adapted from Too Good to Passover by Jennifer Felicia Abadi
Don’t skip the orange blossom water. It’s everything.
| Ingredients | Directions |
| 2 C whole dried apricots
½ C freshly squeezed orange juice ¾ C water 2 TBSP sugar or agave 3 TBSP freshly squeezed lemon juice 2-3 tsp orange blossom water ¼ C unsalted pistachios or almonds, chopped coarsely |
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Chestnut & Date Charoset Balls from Ferrara, Italy
Adapted from Matzah and Flour: Recipes from the History of the Sephardic Jews by Hélène Jawhara Piñer.
*You can find already cooked chestnuts in bags in most supermarkets.
| Ingredients | Directions |
| 4 Medjool dates
2 large, dried figs 1 TBSP large Malaga raisins if you can get them. Otherwise, use regular black raisins 20 almonds, with peel 30 pistachios, shelled ½ green apple, grated 4 cooked chestnuts, ground* ½ tsp ground dried ginger 1 short cinnamon stick or about ½ tsp ground cinnamon 5 dried hyssop leaves or thyme, crushed |
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