Pesach (Passover) question.

[disclaimer]To the Mods - This is intended as a factual question, but if the religious connotations require moveing to GD, then go right ahead[/disclaimer]

I went to a Passover meal for the first time last night (although I have heard a lot about it, working at a Jewish school for 5 years), and I wanted to ask a question about the meaning behind the afikomen.

For those who don’t know, the afikomen is a piece of matzos (the middle piece of three pieces) which is broken early in the meal, and once of the pieces is wrapped in a piece of white cloth and hidden. Later in the meal, the children all look for the the hidden piece of the afikomen and the one who finds it is rewarded with a prize (usually candy). The afikomen then becomes the last thing eaten at the supper.

The host of the meal simply said that the origins and meaning of this tradition is not known, but I wondered whether any (preferably Jewish) dopers had insights to offer on this. For a Christian, the tradition is laden with messianic predictions to be fulfilled by Jesus - what is the contemporary Jewish thought on the matter?

Gp

The reason for hiding the afikomen is a simple one – it keeps the kids interested.

The afikomen itself is in rememberence of the Passover sacrifice, which was (like today’s afikomen) the last thing eaten at the Passover meal. The custom to hide it (some have the custom where the parents hide it and the kids find it; others where the kids hide it and the parents have to either find it, or “pay the ransom” that the kids set (toys, etc.)) is simply to help keep the kids interested in the seder and awake.
Zev Steinhardt

Whoops. Missed this part of the question.

In short, no, there are no messianic predictions hidden in the afikomen rituals.

Zev Steinhardt

Actually, I’ve been wondering about the Afikomen myself.

In the many Haggadas I’ve read over the years, the Afikomen is said to be hidden by the children. The adults then pay a ‘ransom’ to get it back.

But at every Seder I’ve ever been to, an adult hides it and the children search for it. The kid who wins getting a reward of $5 or so.
When and why did the procedure change?

Re-Seder’s and the Messiah (or Meshiach)
Actually, there is one portion of the Seder in which Messianic prophecies have some relevance. At one point, the door is opened for the prophet Elijah. Among his other duties, Elijah is supposed to announce the coming of the Messiah.
When Jerry Seinfeld hosted Saturday Night Live, he portayed a drunken, lewd Elijah who visits a Seder. When the zayde(grandfather) objected that Elijah was supposed to be learned and wise and return to announce the Messiah, the door opens again. Jesus, actually the late, great Phil Hartman, walks in and says “Hey, Elijah! Where’s the wine?”
As might be expected, this offended Jews for one reason and Christians for another. A formal apology was issued.

I’m with Zev on this one, and not just because he’s so freaking smart either, so there !!!

The afikomen has always seemed to me to be both another symbol, AND a practical device. For all of the other symbols, the Matzoh is the central item, IMHO.

You get to hold in your hand exactly the stuff that the Jews had to eat… .to me, powerful reminders.

When I was about 7 or 8, my grandfather ( who did NOT run the Seder ) was the one we were told to go to for the negotiations, regarding the Afikomen.

We bargained back and forth, my brother, two cousins and I. Eventually we were handed each a bundle of bills. A very…large…bundle…of…very…huge…bills.

Each of us were handed 5-10 bank notes. Each note was a 10,000 Deutsch-Mark note, from 1922-era Germany. They had been sewn into clothing worn by my family - purely as added insulation, they were virtually worthless as currency by 1938- when they fled Germany.

I still have mine. To me, each year as my kids go through the fun ritual of negotiating for some dollars, I’m reminded that at one point, the money was meaningless, it was the story it told to me that year that was priceless. A few years ago, I told my kids to demand, as the “ransom”, a few 10,000 Deutsch-Mark notes each.

My Uncle is a fairly tough man to get an emotion out of. He was obviously shocked that the kids asked, and then realized that I’d told them. He went down to his desk, and incredibly- had what was left of that large stack from so many years ago… and, he paid the asking price.

It took on an intimate meaning in our family, all of those years ago. The price paid was literally the Price Paid…

It sure did keep us focused on the Seder services.

Cartooniverse

In case this was not indicated at your seder, afikomen is Greek for “dessert.”

In my house the adults still pay a ransom to the kids to get the Afikomen back. So, I wouldn’t say that the tradition is universally changed.

I agree with and echo Zev’s statements. It not only keeps the children interested, it keeps them occupied during sections of the seder that they find boring.

However, learning never stops. This year, in preparing for the seder, I learned that the tradition of children stealing the afikomen was viewed as “common” by the 1600s, so the tradition is very old and must pre-date that. Apparently there is a line in the Talmud (pre-dating 250 AD, say) that mentions “grabbing the matzah” and there is some speculation that was the origin of the tradition.

I didn’t copy down the source for this, I read through many haggadot with scholarly annotations. I can try to find it if y’all are interested.

Different families have different traditions on how this is done. I believe that the most common approach is that the father/seder-leader hides the afikomen (hides in plain sight – the whole idea is for the children to find it) and the children search to find it. For example, I always make a big deal out of “hiding” it, but the children all can see approximately where I put it (on the bookshelf, say.) The children find it and then demand “ransom” to give it back, and we haggle a bit – obviously, a Middle-Eastern tradition.

We always have the kids “steal” it, which is not hard to do. Usually I’m paying more attention to the discussion than the afikoman, so the first tip I get that it’s gone is lots of laughter and movement from the kids.

I’ll also add that the afikoman is the last thing one should eat at the meal, and that everyone should leave enough room to eat it. It’s not always so easy after two cups of wine and a full meal.

according to the Jewish Book of Why (and summarizing)

This is a 700+ year old custom. To make the Seder more exciting for children, youngsters were allowed to “steal” and hide the afikomen. Since the Seder could not continue until a piece of the afikomen was eaten by everyone, the leader of the Seder had to pay off the chillins to fetch the afikomen so that he could finish the Seder.

On a personal note: I know after a few hours with my family, heck, I would be willing to pay to end the night!

Now we are getting somewhere!!!

Thanks to everyone else for thier responses, but this (if it is the truth) makes it all clear - I had thought that this was a much more ancient custom - to the point where I had been told that it was the afikomen that Jesus was breaking when he said “this is my body…”

Can anyone confirm what shulmahn said about the age of the tradition, or provide a cite?

Thanks again

Gp

Careful here. The word “afikomen” and the use of a special piece of matzah is, I think, older than that.

The custom of children stealing the afikomen developed after there was an afikomen to steal. It’s the theft/ransome that developed more recently – from my sources, was common by the 1600s, so must have started before that; from shulmahn’s sources, originated in the 1200s or 1300s.

The word “afikomen” is Greek in origin, so the idea of a special piece of matzah at the end of the meal probably dates back to the very early days (when Greek language was still an influence on Hebrew.)

It is highly unlikely that Jesus broke the afikomen when he said “This is my body.” For one thing, that meal was probably NOT a seder – although it was a Passover meal. For another thing, the use of the afikomen as desert presumably started after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD) – before that time, people used the roast lamb for the “desert” last bite. (So says my Haggaddah.) Hence, Jesus would not have been using an afikomen of matzah, but of lamb.

The afikomen is mentioned in the Mishna in Pesachim 10:8 (those of you who can read Hebrew can find it here), so it is at least 1800 years old, probably older than that. (The Mishna was “sealed” about 1800 years ago, but it was a “work in progress” orally for centuries before that.)

C K Dexter Haven is correct in pointing out that when the Temple stood, the afikomen was the Passover sacrifice. Nowadays, in rememberence of the sacrifice, we eat matza as the afikomen.

As for the age of the custom of hiding the afikomen, I really don’t know.

Zev Steinhardt

Also, I’m not sure if the hiding of the afikomen is a tradition from the Ashkenazi branch of Judaism or if it is done as well in the Sephardi tradition?