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    Clearly, one the most central mitzvoth of Pesach is the mitzvah of higadata l’bincha, the obligation of a father to tell his children the story of our Exodus from Egypt on seder night. Our rabbis understood that the Torah had, in effect, made every Jew a teacher in this regard and that, as teachers, we would all need “textbooks” and “teaching aids”. They, therefore, created the Haggadah as the “textbook” and the many rabbinical mitzvot and seder customs as the “teaching aids”. One such mitzvah is that of afikoman, the piece of broken matzah that is put away until the end of the Seder. In many families there are various customs involving the hiding and the retrieving of the afikoman. Let’s take a look at some of them and where they have come from.

    The word afikoman comes from the Greek word “epi komon” meaning “the dessert following the meal.” The Mishnah says that we don’t add after the Pesach offering, afikoman. The Gemara explains this means that we do not eat any dessert after we consume the meat of the korban pesach. The Gemara then continues and says that we don’t add after the matzah, afikoman. The matzah the Gemara is referring to is the matzah that is eaten to serve as remembrance of the korban pesach. At some point during the time of the rishonim this special matzah came to be known as the afikoman in deference to the fact that dessert could not be eaten after it.

    At the beginning of the seder, we perform yachatz, whereby we break the middle of our three matzot and place the larger piece aside as the afikoman. The Shulchan Aruch writes that it is customary to wrap the afikoman in a cloth and hide it to commemorate the pasuk which reads, “And you shall guard the matzot”. The Mishnah Berurah writes that many have the custom at their seder to have one of the participants place the afikoman on his shoulders and reenact leaving Egypt in order to fulfill the pasuk that reads, “Their dough was wrapped into their garments on their shoulders”.

    The Gemara states that we are “chotfin” the matzah on Pesach night so that the children will not fall asleep. Exactly what this word “chotfin” means is a matter of debate among the rishonim. While Rashi interprets it to mean that we hurry to eat the matzah so that the children do not fall asleep, our custom is to follow the interpretation of the Rambam. The Rambam says that “chotfin” means to grab or snatch. We snatch the matzah so that the children will be motivated to ask us questions like, “Why are we hiding the matzah before we eat it?” as well as other questions like, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” These questions, of course, provide us with the perfect opening to tell them the entire story of Yetziat Mitzrayim.

    There are different customs regarding how the afikoman is grabbed. In some families the parents hide it and the children find it and “grab” it, while in others the children simply grab it from the parents directly. Either way, it doesn’t really matter as long as the children are engaged in the process and the afikoman is hidden and retrieved.

    It’s interesting to note that many of our rabbis have drawn a distinction between the act of “grabbing” the afikomen and that of “stealing” the afikomen. They hold that one should never call “grabbing” the afikoman, “stealing” it. They cite the Rambam who writes regarding the halachot of stealing, that one may not steal, even as a joke. Hence, this grabbing is not stealing, for to call it such would be to train our children in bad middot or character traits, which is something that we never condone.

    In the end, we can definitely say that the afikoman is certainly deeply rooted in both our tradition and in our halacha and that it has two principal purposes. The first, to be the impetus to keep the children awake during the long Seder service and the second, to provide the starting point for the children to ask questions about the meaning of the Seder, itself. With this knowledge in mind, may our respective afikomen which we eat this year fulfill their intended purpose so that in their merit the afikomen which we will, please God, eat next year, be consumed in the company of melech moshiach in Yerushalim, may he come speedily and in our day.