Yahatz

The afikoman is a piece of matzah, broken off from the whole, that is traditionally hidden away during the meal, to be searched for and found afterwards, at the end of the Seder.

Usually, it is the adults who hide the afikoman and the children who find it, in order to get a reward. The reward for the adults is that, in anticipation of the hunt for the afikoman, the children are more likely to make it through the long, sometimes impossibly long re-telling of the flight from Egypt, the wandering in the desert, the manna, the many rituals, the sharing of recipes, the old jokes, and the complexities of family dynamics, be they redeemed or unredeemed.

So now it is time to hide a piece of the broken matzah (or whatever you are substituting) in YOUR house. If there aree two or more people, one can hide and another later will search.  But even if you are a single participant, hide the afikoman from yourself - in some clever place a child would not easily find.  We'll come back to it later.


haggadah Section: Yachatz