“Do not let the salt of G-D’s covenant be lacking …. with all your offerings, bring salt” (Lev. 2:13).

Our present-day custom of sprinkling a little salt on our bread or dipping our bread into salt before the blessing ha-motsi stems from the above verse in our Sidra. Our rabbis equate the Jewish home with the bet mikdash (Temple), our table with the mizbeakh (altar) and our food with the Temple offerings. A Jewish meal feeds not only the stomach but also the soul. A simple berakha elevates the bread we eat to the status of a korban, an offering to G-D. And an offering to G-D requires salt to flavor it.

Naturally we think of salt as a mere accessory. Nowadays it receives a pretty bad press particularly from medical and health experts. The fact remains that – albeit in small doses – it is a vital commodity.

Fascinatingly the sacred Hebrew language corroborates this. The word for salt is melakh – mem, lamed, chet – while bread is lekhem – lamed, chet, mem. The very same letters make up both words.

Symbolically, the message is very striking. Bread represents substance while salt connotes flavor. Just as the Hebrew letters for both words are identical, so in Judaism both are equally essential. The Jewish things we do require both substance and flavor.

A Jewish restaurant may impart a heimishe flavor. However, if the food served there is only “kosher-style” not kosher, the Jewish substance is obviously lacking.  Conversely a home with separate milky and meaty sinks, a Pesach kitchen and hechshered products to the exclusion of all others will not be lacking in Jewish substance. But if lashon ha-ra (gratuitous gossip) rather than a dvar Torah or a kind word constitutes the table-talk accompanying the glatt kosher fare then that home will be found wanting when it comes to the ta’am of Jewish flavor.

Today tefila (prayer) has by and large replaced the Temple services. Our prayer “offerings” most certainly must be accompanied by ‘salt’. Es fehlt salz (‘it lacks salt’) is a severe criticism where tefila is concerned. So what can one say when parts of a service are gabbled off at breakneck speed with scarcely a chance to draw breath let alone reflect on the meaning of the words one is saying? The substance might be there but the salz of kavana (devotion) is sadly absent. On the other hand, an elaborate cantorial rendering of a piyyut (prayer-poem) may be high on salz but if half the words are mumbled, jumbled, distorted or distended beyond recognition, where is the broit for the salz to flavor? Both lekhem and melakh are equally necessary.

Jews everywhere are in the throes of preparing for Pesach. In particular, we look forward to sitting once again with our families, friends and guests around the Seder table. Hopefully our seder will provide both substance and flavor in equal measure.

Some of us may prepare the salz by making our Seder as contemporarily relevant as possible – which is exactly as it should be. “In every generation all must see themselves as if they personally came out of Egypt” – the Seder needs to be experienced, not just read. But if the ‘hagada’ one is using is a new alternative variety, pushing political or cultural agendas far removed from the original story of the Exodus, one may find the broit rather insubstantial. If, on the other hand, we say every word of the (real) Hagada but perfunctorily in order to get to the real broit (naturally the unleavened variety) as rapidly as possible, we may notice the acute lack of salz.

Nowadays authentic hagadot come in every shape and size and it is possible for us on these magical Seder evenings to read, to reflect, to discuss and to be at one with each other and with our past, present and future destiny. In so doing, we touch immortality.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)