The Haggadah is about telling a story that can transform us. It’s a seder because we order the different meanings of each symbol by arranging them from slavery to freedom, or as the Talmud says, “from g’nut/degredation to shevach/praise”. Most of the time there are four meanings, going from slavery, to leaving Egypt, to entering the land, to looking forward to redemption.
Any important symbol or verse that appears in the Hagadah more than one time is ordered in this way - hence it’s a seder, an “order”. Matzah is explained four times, there are four children, in order from lowest to highest (wise is the lowest stage), we explain the verse, “Because this God did to me by bringing me out of Egypt,” four times . The different meanings, taught through verses and explanations and through eating itself, are always ordered from the most difficult to the most liberated.
However, there’s one important symbol that we don’t explain even once: the charoset.
The Talmud Bavli debates whether or not it’s a mitsvah to have charoset at the seder. It tells the story of the spice-sellers in Jerusalem, yelling out their shop windows “Spices for the mitsvah!” The essence of the Charoset in the Talmud is not that it should be sweet, but that it should be tart, like apples, and thick like mud. Rashi (not the Talmud) gives a few explanations of what this means: it’s a reminder of the (tart) apple trees in Egypt under which the Israelites made love and gave birth; it’s a reminder of the mud and straw (dates/apples and spices) for the bricks they made as slaves.
But the Haggadah doesn’t put those meanings in order because, like the Talmud itself, it doesn’t explain any meaning for charoset at all. Why?
The word for tartness (the root is QHH) has the same root as what is said about the wicked child: “set his teeth on edge/q’heih et shinav,” the same words the midrash uses for what happened when Adam and Chavah ate from the tree: “their teeth were set on edge”. Charoset is the stuff that happens when we can’t separate out the meaning of things, when the symbols get stuck together, when slavery and freedom are mishmashed together. Like the wicked child’s picture of the world, there’s no separation between worship and enslavement (both are called “Avodah” after all). Like the tree of knowledge, literally the tree of knowing good and evil, good and evil are all mixed together. In this way, charoset represents our normal lives outside the seder.
We want to transform that confusion through the seder ritual, but we also bring our confusion along with us in the journey rfom Egypt, along with the joy of freedom, along with the bitterness of slavery - hence the Hillel sandwich, matzah (freedom) with maror, stuck together with charoset. So one more lesson from the Haggadah is: don’t separate your normal muddled state from the holy and mystical, from the transformative; even if you feel stuck in what’s sour or bitter, in the mud, add the sweetness. Leave Egypt with all your possessions and experiences, with the hope of freedom along with the heaviness of slavery, and with everything in between.
In light of Rashi’s interpretation (and Arthur Waskow’s suggestion) we can add: Turn the stuck heavy energy we all carry into the tangle of sensual Shekhinah energy of spring. Awakening, spring, bursting forth - love is another way that things get confused and entangled, so that slavery and freedom are all mixed up, but it’s a way that leads beyond itself and out of Egypt.
Sefardim recite the verse, “Misha’arotam Tz’rurot B’simlotam al Shikhmam” as they get ready to hide the afikomen. Literally this verse means, “[They left Egypt and took] their remaining stuff tied up in their cloaks on their shoulders” - think of a hobo with makeshift cloth bag on a stick. In the light (or muddiness) of the charoset, we can intepret the verse thus: Even with our burden of angst and trouble (tzarot, Mitzrayim/Egypt stuff), even with parts of us still waiting to be liberated and unpacked, still left out (nish’arot) beyond our consciousness, even with all of this hidden, trailing behind, weighing on us - EVEN SO, LEAVE, GO OUT, OUT TO FREEDOM!