Why is there a roasted chicken bone on the ceremonial Passover?
There were different components of the passover ritual in the days of the temple. there were 2 separate sacrifices offered — one a holiday one and one specific to passover. On our plates during the ritual meal we put symbols which represent these — we use a roasted egg for the holiday sacrifice and a roasted bone (a shank bone, chicken neck or something like that) to represent the passover sacrifice. But because we don’t do sacrifices nowadays, we aren’t trying to put an actual piece of slaughtered meat (in fact, the ritual law prohibits eating roasted meat on the passover ritual meal specifically because we don’t have the sacrifice).
