Observing a vegan Passover

My wife, Shoshana, and I became vegans on our wedding day. We believed, and still believe today, that a bayit neeman b’Yisrael (a faithful Jewish house) should embrace shared intentional core values. We made decisions about how we’ll keep strictly kosher, about how we’ll invite guests into our home, how we’ll take care of our health, what we’ll feed our children and what ethical sacrifices we’ll need to make to actualize the fundamental Jewish values and our personal values as well. 

One choice was to embrace strict veganism (no meat, chicken, fish, dairy, eggs or honey). At first, that sounded incredibly daunting. But, in only a matter of days, we had become accustomed to making very different choices about what we eat at home and how we eat out. 

It is a commitment to healthy living, wanting to live long, and wanting to move away from industries that engage in horrific treatment of animals and disregard for their impact on the environment. Shortly after, we founded the leading international Jewish vegan and animal welfare organization, The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute. 

On Passover, we make unique choices about what to eat (there are hundreds of extraordinary vegan kosher l’Pesach recipes) and about what to put on our seder plate. 

The zeroa (shankbone) and the beitzah (egg) found on the seder plate represent respectively the Pesach offering and the Chagigah offering that were offered in the time of the Temple in Jerusalem. But they are only symbolic and need not be used to achieve the traditional requirements of the seder plate. Most vegans replace the shank bone with beets (based on the Talmudic passage in Pesachim 114b) and many replace the egg with a mushroom. The rabbis of the Talmud taught that the requirement is merely two cooked items. I’ve been told that others use dry unfermented barley, olives and grapes on their seder plates. Establishing seder customs to represent concern for animal welfare is a beautiful way to celebrate how we actualize our freedom.

Others celebrating feminism, worker rights, gay rights and other causes add other fruits and vegetables to their plates to remind those at the seder of their commitment to justice. Many add a tomato to reflect on the abuse of agricultural workers. This year, we intend to include a lock and key on the plate to remind us of the enormous abuse found in the American prison system today and the imperative of prison reform. 

The number of vegetarians and vegans is difficult to determine, but recent polls have attempted to measure U.S. adult preferences. A 2008 Harris poll found that 7.3 million American adults (3.2 percent of U.S. adults) were vegetarian; of those, 1 million (0.5 percent) were vegan. While these numbers were small, nearly 23 million people (10 percent) consciously ate mostly vegetarian. In addition, nearly 12 million more Americans (more than 5 percent) reported that they were “definitely interested” in pursuing a vegetarian diet in the future. Later, a 2011 Harris interactive telephone poll found that 33 percent of American adults ate meatless meals frequently, up to more than half the time. In addition, it indicated that while only 5 percent were vegetarians, half of those (2.5 percent, about 7.5 million) were now vegan, five times the percentage of 2008.

Vegan food especially has burst upon the scene. Whereas there were virtually no vegan choices a generation ago, today it is hard to find a restaurant that does not have a veggie burger or bean curd or wheat gluten dish. 

Happycow.net, which lists vegetarian/vegan restaurants, has identified more than 11,000 in the United States, with more than 2,000 in California alone. Home options have also soared, and Pesach is no exception. In 2013, for example, the New York Times ran an article covering several vegan Pesachs, complete with recipes from Nava Atlas. Today, there are many resources for a vegan Pesach and we have an unprecedented number of vegan/vegetarian options, which have the potential to add even more dramatic symbolism to our seder. 

The primary themes of Passover are freedom and responsibility. We were slaves in Egypt, G-d set us free, and with that freedom, we became responsible. 

In slavery, there is no freedom to make choices: no choice of what to wear, what to eat, or what to become. Today, we find ourselves in the 21st century in a radically different situation. We have so many choices that it can be paralyzing. 

In a slave mentality, one merely eats whatever they can. In a post-slave mentality, one merely eats whatever they want. In a liberated mentality, one makes active, responsible moral choices about what to consume. 

When deciding what to eat, we should ask: What will the impact be upon my health? How will this affect the environment? What are the trade policies that enabled the production and shipping of the products? How were the laborers treated to produce this food? Were animals harmed in the production of this food? Have I expressed gratitude for this privilege? 

The Rabbis taught an extraordinary lesson (Pesachim 116a): “We start (the Haggadah) with disgrace and we end in praise. What is disgrace? Rav said, ‘Our ancestors were idolaters.’ Shmuel said, ‘We were slaves.’ ”

The Rabbis taught that while we end the Pesach seder with praise and celebration, we must start it by acknowledging our disgrace. 

Rav and Shmuel argued about what that disgrace was (being slaves or being idolaters). The former is a physical tragedy and the latter is a spiritual tragedy. In the former, one cannot choose what to do and in the latter one cannot choose what to be; we are without true freedom to choose. 

Today, each of us has material ethical choices to make about what we buy and use, and we have significant spiritual choices to make about how we construct meaning in our lives and about who/what we serve. May we all use this holiday to elevate our moral and spiritual pursuits to actualize our destinies. 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the executive director of the Valley Beit Midrash.