Menachem Bluming Muses: Why the chicken neck on the Seder Plate?
I look at the empty Seder plate with this lonely chicken neck left behind, and wonder, why is it there? Here’s a thought: One of the most amazing characters in the story of the Exodus is Pharaoh. He witnessed with his own eyes the downfall of his country, he experienced firsthand the miracles of the Ten Plagues one after the other, he saw how every prediction Moses made came true, and yet he stubbornly refused to let the Israelites go. Only when every firstborn Egyptian died in the final plague did he relent and let them go. Stubbornness is sometimes called having a stiff neck. The neck connects our head to our body, representing the passageway that translates what we see with our eyes and know with our mind into what we feel with our heart and do with our body. A stiff-necked person is unmoved by what they know to be true. They have blocked neck, and the message just doesn't reach their heart. This was Pharaoh's problem. Indeed, the Hebrew word for neck is הערף...