Rabbi's Corner

I was eight years old, when I found the matzah which my great grandfather had placed in a linen napkin and hidden in the bedroom. I had glued my eyes on him from the moment he performed the yahatz ceremony, breaking the middle matzah into two unequal parts and replacing the smaller part in its original position. When he returned to the table, I looked forward to the search and retrieval. I knew, as did all the children around the seder table, that he or she who found the concealed, larger part, the afikoman, could hold out for any prize.

That Passover night the seder ran exceptionally long and I was sleepy because of the cups of wine I had drunk ( ah times have not changed – I still get very sleepy) and the lateness of the hour. I took the napkined matzah, hid it beneath the pillow of the bed and promptly fell into a deep sleep. I remember being roused by my grandmother who, with some urgency in her voice, insisted that I return the matzah so that the services could be completed. As I did so I sensed that this was no child’s play, that behind the hide-and-seek lay a more serious meaning. ‘They were serious and I, who knew where the broken matzah was, held some true power in my hands.

Through the years I sensed more and more the mystery of the yahatz act. Every other ritual gesture was preceded by a benediction over the wine, the washing of the hands, the parsley, the matzot, the bitter herbs mixed with haroset. But there was no brachah recited over the yahatz, not even an explanation, such as the one given before eating the Hillel sandwich. Rabbinic scholars sensed as well the oddity of reciting a motzi over a broken piece of unleavened bread; they wondered why the middle matzah, and not the other two, was broken and why it was broken into two uneven parts with the larger part saved for the afikomen. Their explanations are largely legal, based upon the position of the Rambam, the Rif and other sages. For others, the "stealing" of the afikoman was designed to keep the children awake with play. But none of the explanations satisfied me. As in the case of opening the door for Elijah, I knew that more than the amusement of children was meant. In the outline of the seder ritual the division of the middle matzah - yahatz - takes place early, before the great declaration, "This is the bread of affliction." The eating of the retrieved matzah comes after ransoming it from the children at the end of the seder. The ritual of eating the afikoman is called tzafun, which means "hidden." It too is eaten in silence, without benediction, before midnight.  After the afikoman, no food or drink is to be taken except for the final two cups of wine.

Brokenness is a symbol of incompletion. Life is not whole. The Passover itself is not complete. The Pesakh we celebrate deals with the past redemption of our people from bondage in Egypt. That redemption is a fact of history and it heartens us because through its recollection we know that our hope for future redemption is not fantasy. lt did happen once and to our whole people.

It was no dream this redemption. It happened and at the seder we relate the testimony of this act. But it is towards the Pesakh of the future that our memories are directed. The redemption is not over. There is fear and poverty and sickness. There is a trembling on earth. Around us are the plagues of pollution, children left behind, immigration debates and the open wounds of Darfur and the Sudan.

The broken matzah speaks to our times, shakes us by the shoulders and shouts into our very beings:

Do not bury Your spirit in history. Do not think it is over, complete, that the Messiah has come and you have nothing to do but to wait, to pray, to believe.

The history of our liberation is not for the sake of gloating over the past but for confirmation of the sanity of our hopes. Even as we retrieve the past, the future is held before us. We begin the story of our past affliction with an appeal for present help and with an eye set upon the future. The silence before the breaking of the middle matzah and before the eating of the afikomen suggests that something secret is expressed in the ceremony. We know that the idea of a messianic era was considered a threat to regimes for whom [which?] there was no messiah but the emperor, no redeemer but Rome. To dream of an era of peace, an end of slavery is a revolutionary critique of the status quo. Jews disagreed among themselves as to who the Messiah will be or when the Messiah will come, but one thing they all knew. This was not the Messiah, this was not the fulfillment of the messianic era.

In silence, without benediction— for one does not bless that which has not yet occurred—they broke the matzah hidden between the two whole ones, anticipated its recovery and, eating it, affirmed their belief in the Passover of the future. The hidden matzah is the greater part. The promise of the future is greater than the achievements of the past. It is no game to keep the child awake, this secret. It is the vision of messianic times towards which we live and struggle. Rouse your children from their slumber. Without their find, the seder cannot be completed.

Once we were slaves, and now we are free. Free to stand up for those who cannot, free to speak for those who have been silenced.