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A WEEKLY LETTER FROM OUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Listen: On a podcast called Women Leaders, I had a fascinating conversaton yesterday with a (female, duh!) scholar of Iran and the Middle East.

Watch: Itzhak Perlman — yes, the violinist — shares his favorite Passover recipes, including potato salad with schmaltz, on our Yiddish cooking show.

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I was a young adult, dozens of Passover Seders in the rear view, before I realized we were Doing It Wrong. Not the whole Seder, just the afikoman — that half-piece of matzo you tuck away in a special bag as the world’s lamest “dessert,” without which, the tradition goes, you cannot complete the Seder.

My sisters and I, like other Jewish kids the world over, knew the afikoman was one of the Seder rituals designed to keep us engaged, and we were game. We’d plot creative new spots in our living room to hide the thin package, and look forward to the little gifts we’d inevitably collect by night’s end.

Yes, I said hide, not find. In my family, the kids hide the afikoman while the Seder leader is distracted, then hold it “ransom” when the leader needs but cannot find it, negotiating for the aforementioned gifts that the leader always, miraculously, has at the ready.

I have come to understand that this approach is not the norm. Turns out most Seders have the olds hiding and the kids finding, then trading, the prized piece of matzo for those miraculously-at-the-ready gifts so the Seder can conclude.

Reader, I’ve done it both ways, and I’m here to tell you: My family’s way makes more sense. If the leader needs the afikoman, why would they hide it? Much more logical that the mischievous and easily distracted kids do so as a prank. If the kids don’t care about finishing the Seder, why would they bother looking? Just for some lame — sorry Mom — coloring book or Starbuck’s gift card? Not my kids.

But that is beside the point. The point is that our tradition is rife with such twists, with machlokot — disputes — over how to fulfill any given mitzvah, with people of good faith seeing the same situation through different, even opposing, lenses. And we continue to tell the story, generation after generation.

(Illustration by Odeya Rosenband; photo by Lambert/Getty Images)

I am not suggesting that the afikoman is a reasonable metaphor for the Israel-Hamas war. I understand that some disputes have real stakes, and real moral issues weighing on each side.

But we can learn a lot from disputes whose outcomes do not matter about how to deal with those that do. And thinking seriously about something as silly as who hides the afikoman might at least help us find ways to sit around the same Seder table with people who disagree about the very substantive challenges we face, to discuss what divides us with humility and respect.

Here are a few principles I’m trying to hold onto during these days of difficult conversations:

Avoid litmus tests. Nobody would suggest that someone who observes Passover and attends Seders but has the kids hide the afikoman instead of the adults is “not Jewish.” So stop saying that about Jews who call for an immediate ceasefire or an end to the occupation, or even oppose the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. They are not kapos, they are not self-haters, they just disagree with you on a very important and emotional issue.

But also: Stop suggesting that people who do not use the word “genocide” or “apartheid” do not care about Palestinian human rights.

Come at questions with curiosity. Most people’s answer to why the kids or the adults hide the afikoman at their Seders is the same: That’s what I grew up with. Which, by the way, is a fine reason, at least according to the Talmud; minhag avoteinu b’yadeinu, it says, we should keep the rituals of our parents in our hands. This is, by the way, why many American Jews continue to have two Seders even though we now know well on which day the new moon falls.

But when you ask someone how they came to their position on the two-state solution or who they think should be responsible for bringing food into Gaza, the answers are likely to be more complicated and nuanced, maybe even upsetting. Ask with an opennness to hearing something new, with an eagerness for understanding. Pro tip: “But do you condemn Hamas?” is not a question that comes from curiosity.

The debate is the destination. You do not have to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at your Seder table. (You do have to decide who will hide the afikoman, though perhaps that’s another good rationalization for two Seders — kids hide the first night, grown-ups the second.)

Rabbi Benji Samuels of Congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Newton, Massachusetts, where I grew up, reminded me of an old joke playing off the debate over whether the congregation should stand or sit during the Mourner’s Kaddish. The rabbi in the joke consults an old man: Is the tradition to sit? No, the elder says, that is not the tradition. So we stand? No.

But everyone is yelling at each other about this all the time, the rabbi laments. That, says the wise old man, is the tradition!

The tradition of the afikoman, meanwhile, appears to come from a line in the Talmud that reads, “We grab the matzot on the night of Passover, so that the children will not sleep.”

Our editorial fellow, Odeya Rosenband, plumbed the depths of the internet, and found that — at least according to this recent article in Haaretz — the tradition of parents hiding it dates back to Maimonides and the 12th century, while my family’s twist, kids hiding and holding it for ransom, started in the 17th.

North African Jews, meanwhile, wrap the afikoman in white and carry it around on their shoulders, according to the National Jewish Outreach Project, while Iraqi Jews conduct a dialogue while holding it. “Where are you from?” the adults might ask. “Egypt,” the kids answer. Where are you going? Jerusalem. Etc.

A Chabad rabbi named Yossi Yaffe was quoted in this 2019 article saying the hide-and-seek afikoman ritual teaches “children to search and look for this wonderful future.”

One of the most comprehensive resources Odeya found was Sefaria’s “Story of the Afikoman,” which lists biblical and rabbinic references to the afikoman, as well as modern stories and mentions in the media. “There is also symbolism about having the next generation involved in bringing together that which was broken,” it notes, “particularly that which was broken by the previous generation.”

Perhaps the afikoman is something of a metaphor for the war after all.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

Thanks to Odeya Rosenband for contributing to this newsletter,

and Adam Langer and Samuel Breslow for editing it.

NEW FROM THE FORWARD

YOUR PRE-PASSOVER READS

Whether you’re looking for a break from cleaning and cooking for the holiday, or just need a litle help getting into the Passover mood, we gotchu. Here are a few new stories, plus one classic from our (recent) archives:

Susan Greene, our Israel correspondent, looked at how the usually hot holiday travel market has chilled significantly because of the war.

The intrepid Benyamin Cohen tracked down a Mormon law professor who geeked out on buying chametz — including whiskey! — from an entire shul.

Our Foodie-in-Chief Sam Lin-Sommer on soft matzo. You read that right.

Soon-to-be Rabbi Aiden Pink on how “A Rugrats Passover” became iconic.

Rabbi Jay Michaelson on how to host a Seder when everyone is talking past each other and disagrees about the war.

And a few more! How Jewish refugees made a Seder in 1941 in Japan … Empty chairs, mirrors and pomegranates are a few ways this year’s Passover is different than any other… Bringing Passover back to the (Polish) town that killed our relatives.

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WATCH: LA-DI-DA-YENU

In my pre-Passover newsletter two years ago, I shared a video of the a capella sextet Six13 doing a Billy Joel-inspired Passover song. Well, this morning a friend sent me the group’s latest, and it’s similarly ear-wormy, in a (sort of) good way. A little background music while you set the Seder table?

FLOWERS FOR SHABBAT

(Reuven Dattner)

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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