צפון

After the meal, take the Afikoman and divide it among all the members of the household, by giving everyone a kezayit (the volume of one olive).

Take care not to eat or drink (only water allowed, but not recommended) after the Afikoman.

It is to be eaten in the reclining position and this ought to be done before midnight.

אַחַר גְּמַר הַסְּעֻדָּה לוֹקֵחַ כָּל אֶחָד מֵהַמְּסֻבִּים כְּזַיִת מֵהַמַּצָּה שֶׁהָיְתָה צְפוּנָה לַאֲפִיקוֹמָן וְאוֹכֵל מִמֶּנָּה כַזַּיִת בְּהַסִּבָּה. וְצָרִיךְ לְאָכְלָהּ קֹדֶם חֲצוֹת הַלַּיְלָה.
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What

After Shulchan Orech and before birkat ha’mazon we eat a piece of matzah that was “hidden” at the time of Yachatz. This is the half of the middle matzah that was not put back with the other two whole ones. It can be combined with more matzah if there is not enough hidden matzah to go around. We refer to this matzah as the afikoman. Tzafun means “hidden.”

Why

We eat the afikoman as a reminder of the Pascal lamb that was eaten as the final food of the night, when guests were no longer hungry. Over time, the afikoman has come to be equated with dessert, following which nothing else is eaten.

Understanding Afikoman

The Mishnah teaches, “We do not conclude after the Pascal lamb, with afikoman” (Pesachim 10:8). The Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds list various ideas as to what the Mishnah meant for us to avoid with the afikoman:

  • Not to meander from one group to another (i.e., each Pascal lamb was prepared for a predetermined eating group)
  • Not to eat mushrooms and pigeons after the Pascal lamb
  • Not to eat dates, parched corn, and nuts
  • To refrain from certain types of singing

The Tosefta, a rabbinic text contemporaneous with the Mishnah, adds the following: “A person is obligated to engage in [studying] the laws of Passover all night, whether alone, with his child, or his students.” This obligation to learn with the people likely to be at your Seder would have precluded meandering with them “from one group to another.”

Misnomer

The Mishnah instructs us not to engage in afikoman. By calling our final matzah of the Seder afikoman, we, in essence, misuse the term to mean that which we do end with (rather than the Mishnah’s directive of that which we should not end with).

Afikoman’s Historical Roots

The prohibition of engaging in afikoman seems to have historical origins.

“The Sages [Rabbis of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmud] feared that the Seder night, similar in many ways to the Greek symposium [banquet], would degenerate into the kind of lewd behavior which was common at a symposium. When the partying would reach its peak, they used to burst into other houses and cajole the occupants to join them, and continue the celebration there. This was called epikomazein [in Greek]. The Mishnah warned that the rite of the Passover sacrifice should not be concluded with an epikomon, i.e., afikoman.” —Joseph Tabory, The Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations (attributed to Saul Lieberman)

For the Talmud, to avoid afikoman means avoiding an undesired outcome: eating dried, salted dessert foods, subsequent wine drinking, followed by public rowdiness, meandering, and undignified singing. The Passover Seder redirects us to plain dessert (matzah), a limit of four cups of wine, and ritual, family singing: birkat ha’mazon, Hallel, and Nirtzah.

Historically, afikoman provides a glimpse into how Judaism incorporates structures of its surrounding cultures, but establishes key religious differences. Similar to the Seder, at a Greek symposium participants might drink wine, lean to one side while eating and drinking, and engage in a question-and-answer discourse preceding dinner. The Rabbis incorporated some of these Greek customs, but provided both preventative measures and active substitutions to put a Jewish imprimatur on the evening.

Tzafun: Return of the Hidden

Much of who we are and who we can be remains hidden from view, even to ourselves. Carl Jung called this “the shadow.” The Tzafun ritual welcomes the hidden matzah back to the meal, back into the flow of the Seder. The revelation of that hidden piece and its return to the table is critical in the culmination of the redemption ritual.

Tzafun, the hidden piece, is looked for and ultimately found by the child (in us) who remembers that there was something lost, that there is something missing. The revelation of that hidden piece and its return are critical in concluding the redemption ritual. Tzafun, therefore, becomes the process of assimilating those hidden parts of us found by the child back into our lives. The beauty of Tzafun is the promise that all of us (as children) can discover the hidden depths of who we are and who we can become.

The child is under the table or in dark rooms searching, as the adults speak at the table. Adults talk and heal; the child searches for the hidden and is redeemed. Both are necessary elements in uncovering what lies in “the shadow.”

In Light of the Video...

  1. Think about the missing pieces in your life. Have and/or how have you searched for them?
  2. In the video, the narrator uses the double metaphor of a word puzzle and the afikoman to discuss his lifelong search for certain answers. What symbols and metaphors have resonated for you in your search for answers?
  3. In the narrator’s search, he has only uncovered crumbs and fragments. When we find and reveal the afikoman at the Seder, it too is only a fragment of a whole matzah — and that piece is then subdivided to share with others. What do you think this implies about the possibilities — or limits — of our searching? Are we only ever able to find fragments? Can these fragments be enough to satiate?