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RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:AFIKOMAN:YERUSHALMI:
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: TALMUDIC DISCOURSE: PASSOVER AND THE AFIKOMAN
is standing in for a piece of the Passover sacrifice of lamb. When
the Temple stood, groups would buy into shares of lamb and everyone in
the group would eat a portion as the last thing they tasted during the Passover
meal. In the Yerushalmi Talmud, however, we have several alternative definitions:
What does the term afikoman mean?
'Rabbi Simon said in the name of R. Inanini bar R. Sisay: Kinds of music
played as entertainment after dinner.
Rabbi Yochanan said: Kinds of sweet things eaten after the meal to whet
one's thirst for further drinking.
Samuel said: For example, the mushrooms and pigeons of Hananiah bar Shilat
which were delicacies eaten after the main part of the meal. (Yerushalmi Talmud. Pesachim 37d)
Here are some definitions we would never expect given our practices today
which seem designed to make sure the festive meal continues. In addition.
these foods and practices seem designed to make sure that the people who
came down as a group stay together in their group and not wander around and
join someone else's group and mistakenly eat a Paschal sacrifice in which
they have no share.''(R.Abrams)
Pesach-offering to God" (Num. 28:16). This refers to the roasted lamb
that we are to cook over a fire, not to boil in water and not to keep any
leftovers. "The fifteenth day of this month is a festival; for a seven day period
matzoth shall be eaten" (Num. 28:17). This of course refers to a
second holiday called the Festival of Matzah or the Spring holiday (Ex.
34:18).
Pesach as a spring festival is very old, and Hebrews observed a spring
holiday long before our deliverance from Egypt according to Rabbi Hayyim Schauss.
When Moses asked Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, he first asked
permission for them to go and celebrate the spring holiday and sacrifice
(Ex. 3:18, Ex. 10:09). When some of us were nomadic shepherds and our flocks' lambs and kids
were born we observed a feast at the time of the spring's month full moon
(circa 14-15th of the month).
sacrificed a lamb or kid before nightfall. It was forbidden to break any bones or
leave any part uneaten. The chief of the tribe daubed the tent posts with blood
of the slain animal as an antidote to illness and plagues. Some Bedouin
tribes do this custom today. Anthropologists posit that holidays start as
nature festivals, and as cultures' mature people give a deeper meaning to the
festival.
The meaning of the name Pesach remains obscure. Exodus 12:13 says it
means to spare, while Exodus 12:23 says it means to skip, to pass over. Perhaps it
alludes to the skipping spring lamb that is the zodiac sign of the
Jewish month of Nissan. The zodiac signs certainly predate the holiday of
Passover.
When others of the Hebrew tribes lived by tilling the soil, they
developed another spring holiday called the "the festival of unleavened bread."
ended with the reaping of the wheat. This season lasted about seven weeks.
Before the start of the barley festival the Hebrews would get rid of their sour
dough, which was fermented dough used instead of yeast to leaven bread.
They got rid of any product connected with last year's crop. This was done as
a talisman of their faith that they would be granted a good crop in the
coming season. In the Midrash the rabbis teach that while Lot was
living in Sodom, he served the angels matzah because they visited him
during the unleavened bread feast.
Pesach and the Feast of Matzot were originally two separate and distinct
holidays as indicated by the verses quoted above . The were both celebrated in early spring.
Pesach is the older holiday. It was from our desert shepherding customs.
the newer of the two, developed after we had settled in Israel and began to
farm.
Originally the spring holidays were a deliverance from
nature. They later became associated with our deliverance as a nation.
Finally the two merged with spiritual connotations for the symbols that presently
adorn our seder plate.
Further development in the Passover holiday came when we were ruled
harshly by the Romans and our second Temple fell. Pesach became an allegorical
holiday for a future redemption from Rome just as Ezekiel's book ,which is our haftarah during Pesach,
was a parable with hopes to release us from Babylon.
We discarded our nomadic
customs and inserted the Greco-Roman rites of reclining sofas and of
drinking many cups of wine. We also began to eat our meal leisurely and not in the hurried
manner commanded in the Torah.
We reformed the injunction to eat the Pesach lamb with "loins
girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and...eat
in haste" (Ex. 12:11). Our Karaite cousins who do not accept any Talmudic
laws, still eat their meal in this fashion. Their matzah is made only
with barley flour.
We even took the Greek custom of the afikoman and
incorporated it into our seder.
We tend to teach our children that afikoman means dessert in the Greek
language. You will not however see it on any menus in Athens's Plaka.
The famous sixteenth-century grammarian, Elijah Levita, discovered that the Greek
practice of drunken, sometimes orgiastic revelry, that followed their academic
symposia was called an epikomon.
What we might not have learned in our
university symposia is that in Greek, the word means an entertainment
characterized by drinking, music and intellectual discussion. Syn means
together and pinein means to drink in Greek. Since we could not eat
chometz desserts, we ended our meal with a piece of matzah that took on the name of afikoman.
In circa 500 CE, when the Talmud was written down, after being oral for at least 1000 years, long after the Greek Empire had fallen to the Romans, the question of the origin of the afikoman was still debated
in Tractate Pesachim, daf 119b.
"You shall not break a bone" of the Pascal lamb (Ex. 12:46). Rabbi
Chinuch says this alludes to kings and queens not breaking bones to suck out the
marrow of every hidden piece of meat, as they had plenty to eat. But as
we learned from above, the idea of us relaxing and reclining like royalty is
a Talmudic one, not a Torah one.
We are given a glimpse into why this rule
is given, especially when we are commanded to eat the whole lamb before
sunrise of the next day without keeping leftovers. Stuck in the middle of the
Passover "bbq'ed" lamb rules is the prohibition of cooking this lamb in
its mother's milk (Ex. 34:26). Clearly, this is part of the Passover rules.
It refers to the Pascal kid and not other meats cooked at other times. If
we combine the idea of an ancient spring holiday during which we thank God
for his continued blessings of a successful harvest and a good flock, with the
idea of a national redemption with His promise to continue to protect us, we
can arrive at a possible answer.
We can see how we are taught to respect the life forces of marrow's blood
and mother's milk as symbols of the spiritual, physical and national life
that God graciously bestows upon us daily. By giving up eating the blood in
the marrow of broken bones we remember that we are eating from a once-live
animal which we have sacrificed to sustain us.
By refraining from boiling a kid
in its mother's milk we remember that life is precious and fragile. God
granted us life. We are obliged to remember that we are our brother's
keeper. That is part of the covenant. God brought us out of captivity and "sustained us
through our festive seasons." Our job as good people is to help bring others who
are held captive, who are having their spiritual marrow sucked from their
bones, and who are having no mothers' sustenance, into a redemption as well.
While every piece of food on the Passover seder plate has meaning, the Rabbinic sages wanted to understand about matzah. We should learn to be like matzah, humble and not puffed up with chometz (leavening, ego). As modern spiritual Jews searching our homes for crumbs of chometz, we need to instead be doing an accounting of our lives to rid ourselves, with God's aid, of ego, and the selfishness, selfcenteredness, resentments, and fears that it carries with it.
When Rabbis Simon, Yochanan and Samuel refer to the end of the Pesach meal 'afikoman' as reminders of music, entertainment, sweet things, drinking and delicacies, they were alluding to the Greek origin's of the name of the afikoman and what would occur when Greek's had festive meals following symposia. After all, is not a true Passover, a Torah and Talmudic symposia, a teaching session, as we are commanded to teach, about our slavery in Egypt and how we were liberated from it?
About 6 years ago, to keep interest in Seders, I wrote a new Hagaddah, using Seder foods as symbols for Jewish Renewal and Spirituality. For example, instead of talking about being slaves to Pharaoh, we have a round table symposia, on how we can release ourselves from the bondage of 'self'. We talk about how we can ask God to negate our will to do His will. Sadly we have no small children at our seders doing the Afikoman hunt. Most interfaith couples at our seder, have their grandchildren off doing Easter Egg hunts and at Church. If my wife and I ever, God forbid, truly do an epikomon which will, I am sure, keep folks at our Seder, even if we study the entire Tractate Pesachim, I will let the class know.
It is Adar. May your joy keep increasing!
Shalom!
Rabbi Arthur Segal
JEWISH RENEWAL:
JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC
BLUFFTON, SC
SAVANNAH, GA
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