On Pesach there are many different customs and laws that are celebrated. We follow the steps of the seder which include washing hands, drinking wine, telling the story of Exodus, drinking more wine, and eating. After our meal we get to enjoy dessert, just like most other meals. But what makes this night different from all other nights? Dessert at the Pesach seder is not the typical Manischewitz coffee cake or cookies. Desert is the afikoman. The afikoman is half of a piece of matzah that is broken earlier in the seder and set aside to be eaten for the desert of the meal. Although that does not sound like a nice mouth-watering sugary treat, spiritual reasons make up for its lack of taste. The afikoman allows one to become fully immersed in Pesach by enabling them to participate in a small experience that slaves in Exodus went through. The afikoman encourages us to remember that the bland piece of matzah is not the real dessert, rather it is the spiritual attitude the afikoman brings that is the real treat.
The Artscroll Haggadah says that “we allow the afikoman to linger in our mouths; for the afikoman- a piece of bland matzah- signifies that it is not the sweetness of the food which wets our palate, but the observance of mitzvos which is sweeter than ‘honey dripping from the combs’” (Psalms 19:11.) It is seen here that the afikoman is merely a piece of bland matzah. The afikoman however, is in fact significant because our faith in G-d is way more powerful than the connection than of a person to something sweet like honey combs. While enslaved in Egypt, the one thing the Jews had to fall back on was their faith. They continued to believe and then they were rewarded. When the Jews exited Egypt, the real reward was not walking out of Egypt itself, rather it was experiencing the divine miracle.
Given the importance of the afikoman, why do we have a custom to hide it? One reason is so the children will ask questions (Pesachim 9.) “The most devastating effect of slavery, ultimately, is that the slave internalizes the master’s values and accepts the condition of slavery as his proper status” (Yitz Greenberg 35.) Once a slave accepts his status, he no longer asks questions. Asking is so essential because asking is a sign that you are free. A huge part of Judaism is based on questioning. In Pirkei Avot, it is said that “a shy person does not learn.” The Mishna and Gemara are huge sets of Jewish books that are completely based on questions themselves. The Talmud states that even if a person is having a seder alone, he should ask the four questions to himself because of their powerful symbolization of freedom. Another idea as to why we hide the afikoman is stated explicitly in the bracha that most say before eating the afikoman: “I now am prepared and ready to perform the mitzvah of eating the afikoman. For the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed is He, and His presence through Him who is hidden and how is inscrutable. I pray in the name of all Israel” (Artscroll Haggadah.) Here the hidden afikoman is being compared to G-d, by showing that just because G-d is hidden does not mean that he is not capable of something special. We hide the afikoman to show that G-d’s presence is not always for us to explicitly see. Sometimes we have to purely rely on our faith to remember that G-d is with us, rather than see it directly just like the afikoman.
Due to the afikomen’s importance, one might ask why we choose to break it in half. On Pesach, instead of just reading the story of Exodus, during tzafun, the section in the Pesach seder where the afikoman takes place, we pretend to be slaves ourselves. Our ultimate goal is to fully understand and remember the suffering of our ancestors. We do this by putting ourselves in the slaves shoes. We split the Afikoman in half because we want to save the little food we have for later. Yitz Greenberg also points out “a striking commentary by Rabbi Harold Schulweis [which] suggests that the afikoman is the matzah of the future (messianic) redemption. The matzah is broken because the world is still unredeemed; the matzah is eaten at the end because our hope is still unbroken.” Given this idea, we break the matzah to be reminded that our world is also broken. Breaking the matzah at such an important part of the seder only reminds us that our world, which is even more so important, is too broken and it is our job to fix it.
The Mishnah Berurah 476:1 states that “a person should not eat so much during the meal that he has no appetite whatsoever for the afikoman. If a person is so full that he has to force himself to eat the afikoman, it is considered as if he has not eaten the afikoman at all.” This teaches us the importance of having the afikoman. Some Jews take this so seriously that they in fact have the custom of saving a piece of the afikoman from the second seder until the following year. Next year, when they are cleaning for pesach they burn it along with the rest of the chametz they find. Some do this in order to fully remember the Exodus throughout the entire year (Shaarei Teshuvah 477:2.)
The Afikoman is here to reenforce multiple attitudes that we should have on Pesach. The afikoman helps reaffirm and strengthen our belief in G-d by showing us that just as the matzah is simple so too is our relationship with G-d. Dessert is different on this night because instead of physically having something sugary, the real sweetness comes spiritually.
Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom!
Ariel Cohen