The Symbolism of Karpas Why was it necessary to tell us that one must make a blessing on the karpas boray peri ha’adamah,’ since we are obligated to make a blessing on any food which we consume? The reason is based on a principle of Halacha: for anything which would normally be improved through cooking, we say the sh’hakol blessing when it is uncooked and the appropriate blessing¹² (in this caseha’adamah) when it is cooked. Based on this the Maharil wonders why, if one uses parsley for the karpas, one would say boray peri ha’adamah? There is a great lesson to be learned from the fact that we say this blessing even though we eat it raw. This is an allusion to a Midrash:¹³ 11b for an extended development of this Midrash. Also see Ezekiel 16:7 which is also quoted later in the Haggadah. when the Israelite women gave birth in the fields and the Egyptian soldiers would come to kill the children, the ground would swallow up the infants. The Egyptians would then bring oxen to plow up the ground in order to find them. After they left, they broke through the ground and sprouted up like weeds, as it says “I caused thee to multiply as the plants of the field.” (Ezekiel 16:7) In order to remember this great miracle, we eat greens and recite the blessing boray peri ha’adamah even though it is not necessary to recite this blessing under these circumstances.

footnotes: ¹² Reference: (missing) ¹³ Babylonian Talmud, see Sotah