The Passover Seder: Order, Symbols and the Seder Plate Explained

The seder is the meal held on the first two evenings of Passover, and the word itself means order. That is the key to understanding it. A seder is not a dinner with readings attached; it is a fixed sequence of fifteen steps, and the meal sits in the middle of them.

The Fifteen Steps of the Seder

The order is old and deliberately memorised. Many people learn it as a rhyme in childhood and can still recite it decades later.

The Seder Plate

At the centre of the table sits the seder plate, holding six symbolic foods. Each one is there to be pointed at and explained.

• Maror — bitter herbs, usually horseradish or romaine lettuce, for the bitterness of slavery.
• Charoset — a paste of fruit, nuts and wine, resembling the mortar used in forced labour. It is also the sweetest thing on the plate, which is the point.
• Karpas — a green vegetable, dipped in salt water standing for tears.
• Zeroa — a roasted shank bone, for the Passover offering. Not eaten.
• Beitzah — a roasted egg, for the festival offering and for mourning the destroyed Temple.
• Chazeret — a second bitter herb, used in the korech sandwich.

Three matzot sit separately, usually covered, beneath or beside the plate. Many households now add an orange, a custom begun in the 1980s as a statement about who belongs at the table, and some add an olive or a cup for Miriam.

Why Matzah?

The Torah gives the reason plainly: the Israelites left Egypt in such haste that there was no time for the dough to rise. Matzah is called both the bread of affliction and the bread of freedom in the same evening, which is a tension the seder does not try to resolve.

For the eight days of Passover, leavened products made from wheat, barley, rye, oats or spelt are not eaten and are removed from the home beforehand, a process called bedikat chametz.

The Four Questions

Traditionally asked by the youngest person present, the Four Questions all expand a single one: why is this night different from all other nights?

1. Why do we eat only matzah tonight?
2. Why do we eat bitter herbs?
3. Why do we dip twice?
4. Why do we recline?

The rest of the maggid section is the answer. The structure is pedagogical by design: the seder exists to provoke a child into asking, and the entire evening is the reply.

The Four Cups and the Afikoman

Four cups of wine are drunk over the course of the evening, linked to four expressions of redemption in Exodus. A fifth cup is poured for Elijah and left untouched, and the door is opened for him during the meal.

The afikoman is the half matzah broken early and hidden. It is eaten at the end, and nothing may be eaten afterwards. In most households the children search for it and negotiate its return, which is a fairly effective method of keeping them awake through a long evening.

When Is Passover?

• 2026: sundown 1 April to nightfall 9 April
• 2027: sundown 21 April to nightfall 29 April

Passover runs eight days in the diaspora and seven in Israel, where only one seder is held. Full dates for the year are in our Jewish holidays guide for 2026 and 2027.

Common Questions

How long does a seder take?

Two to four hours is typical, and considerably longer is not unusual. The reading before the meal is the longest part.

Can non-Jews attend a seder?

Yes, and guests are common. Hospitality is built into the text itself, which opens with an invitation to all who are hungry.

What does Pesach mean?

Pesach means to pass over, from the account of the tenth plague, when the houses marked with blood were passed over. It is the Hebrew name of the festival.

Why recline at the table?

Reclining was how free people ate in the Roman world. Leaning to the left while drinking the wine and eating the matzah is a physical enactment of no longer being enslaved.

From the MoT Shop

We print Jewish and pro-Israel designs to order and ship worldwide. See our Passover apparel collection, our Star of David and Jewish symbols, or read about the menorah and the chanukiah.