Updating the Afikomen
March 2, 2018 11:33 PM Subscribe
I grew up with the Passover tradition where an adult hides half the middle matzah during dinner, the children search for it after dessert and give it back in exchange for a reward. This year the youngest child is in college and most of the cousins well into their twenties and thirties. Time to update this tradition - any ideas?
Best answer: I'm the youngest of the youngest of four so I was the one in college with all the siblings and cousins in their 20s-30s pre-kid years. In our family we did a few things.
One year it was my job to hide the "afikomen" which was actually some dog treats wrapped up in the napkin we usually used for the afikomen. When it came time to search for it, I helped our dog find it and everybody cheered and it was pretty darn cute. This wouldn't work if 1. no dog 2. dog who would smell the treats and go nuts during dinner.
One year when it came time for it we talked about the afikomen and how it's one of many clever traditions built into the structure of the meal to encourage comfort and enjoyment. Ultimately we skipped the actual hiding and finding but talking about it filled that moment and created some good mindfulness for the gathering.
One year we hid the afikomen and informed the table that whoever found it was officially released from any dish duty for the next 24 hours. That was pretty crazy.
One year we "hid it" under Elijah's cup, declared Elijah had found it and gave him the "reward" of an extra cup of wine. (Drunk by my dad who was the one who had hid it, of course.)
One year my mom hid it back in the matzoh box and we ended up eating it with eggs the next morning - we entirely forgot about it after dessert.
These days I do a seder with a passel of toddlers and dogs and goyim, it is highly informal and the afikomen is very useful to bracket the meal. We talk god and tradition and slavery and freedom and stuff beforehand with the kids, then hide the afikomen, then it's time to eat, then the kids find it and half the table leaves to take them home or put them to bed or whatever, and the rest of us continue the rest of the seder and talk more seriously about contemporary things. Passover is, unfortunately, a really important holiday these days with a lot of relevant topics and lessons and things to discuss. I think my favorite seders with the adult family were the years we didn't do the afikomen much at all, and just talked about real things and how tradition helps remind us of lessons our people have had to learn the hard way in the past. If your family likes Passover and is amenable, try that and see how it goes. Honestly though there is merit to a nice little break before and after the meal. If you don't do a hide and seek thing, maybe get up and hang out in another room, or spend a few minutes outside.
posted by Mizu at 1:06 AM on March 3, 2018 [16 favorites]
One year it was my job to hide the "afikomen" which was actually some dog treats wrapped up in the napkin we usually used for the afikomen. When it came time to search for it, I helped our dog find it and everybody cheered and it was pretty darn cute. This wouldn't work if 1. no dog 2. dog who would smell the treats and go nuts during dinner.
One year when it came time for it we talked about the afikomen and how it's one of many clever traditions built into the structure of the meal to encourage comfort and enjoyment. Ultimately we skipped the actual hiding and finding but talking about it filled that moment and created some good mindfulness for the gathering.
One year we hid the afikomen and informed the table that whoever found it was officially released from any dish duty for the next 24 hours. That was pretty crazy.
One year we "hid it" under Elijah's cup, declared Elijah had found it and gave him the "reward" of an extra cup of wine. (Drunk by my dad who was the one who had hid it, of course.)
One year my mom hid it back in the matzoh box and we ended up eating it with eggs the next morning - we entirely forgot about it after dessert.
These days I do a seder with a passel of toddlers and dogs and goyim, it is highly informal and the afikomen is very useful to bracket the meal. We talk god and tradition and slavery and freedom and stuff beforehand with the kids, then hide the afikomen, then it's time to eat, then the kids find it and half the table leaves to take them home or put them to bed or whatever, and the rest of us continue the rest of the seder and talk more seriously about contemporary things. Passover is, unfortunately, a really important holiday these days with a lot of relevant topics and lessons and things to discuss. I think my favorite seders with the adult family were the years we didn't do the afikomen much at all, and just talked about real things and how tradition helps remind us of lessons our people have had to learn the hard way in the past. If your family likes Passover and is amenable, try that and see how it goes. Honestly though there is merit to a nice little break before and after the meal. If you don't do a hide and seek thing, maybe get up and hang out in another room, or spend a few minutes outside.
posted by Mizu at 1:06 AM on March 3, 2018 [16 favorites]
Mizu's variations on the afikomen tradition sound fun and might work for you. But I must say that in my experience, adults who have consumed the 4 glasses of wine and have a sense of humor will let their inner child out and enjoy looking for the afikomen in the traditional way. My daughter-in-law (a convert) always gets a kick out of it. We don't even bother with rewards.
posted by RRgal at 8:02 AM on March 3, 2018
posted by RRgal at 8:02 AM on March 3, 2018
Somehow my family turned it into the kids hiding it.
posted by brujita at 8:24 AM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by brujita at 8:24 AM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
you could do a symbolic "search" where the challenge is a trivia contest instead of a physical object (could use some objective goal like "get five right" for the contest ending.) Bonus to use questions thematically related to the seder.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:29 AM on March 3, 2018
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:29 AM on March 3, 2018
Our family seder has more people in the grandparent generation and the grandkids are mostly college age except the teenage youngest cousin, who wasn’t too thrilled at always doing the four questions. A few years ago we started having the people between 70 and 83 do them. 70 years is traditionally considered a full lifespan and some people celebrate a 2nd bar/bat mitzvah at 83. You could do something similar for the afikomen.
posted by expialidocious at 9:18 AM on March 3, 2018
posted by expialidocious at 9:18 AM on March 3, 2018
Best answer: Our Seder is huge (it also serves as a family reunion), so the tradition started of having all eligible men hide afikomens on themselves instead of in the house. Once the kids have ransacked their relatives, the bar/bat mitzvah/young adult group collects a suitable ransom from each hider (amounts are tiered by age, family size, etc.), pools the money, spends the second half of the Seder deciding which charities to donate it to, and announces the list at the end. I loved when I finally turned old enough to be in the deciding group. All in, the process gives everyone a chance to share the causes we think are important across the generations, and to remember the people no longer with us on Passover (there are always donations in honor of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so on).
posted by picopebbles at 9:43 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by picopebbles at 9:43 AM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: If people are still interested in a group "game," "Where in the World is the Afikomen" lead by the seder leader is fun. It's basically 20 questions in group format where people go around the table asking 20-questions-rule questions. I have been part of a collaborative group that has found the Afikomen in the Taj Mahal, on someone's houseboat, at a favorite childhood family restaurant, in someone's old school classroom, and in someone's pocket at the table.
As legal adults who drink, we also rather enjoy the "I'm leaving Egypt and I'm bringing..." ABC game, where we go around the table and have to remember the rest of the preceding alphabet, e.g. "I'm leaving Egypt, and I'm bringing the Afikomen, brisket, cold cuts, dayenu..." all the way through to the end. It gets pretty raucous when we're on the 4th cup, YMMV. My family is very fun.
posted by juniperesque at 4:06 PM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
As legal adults who drink, we also rather enjoy the "I'm leaving Egypt and I'm bringing..." ABC game, where we go around the table and have to remember the rest of the preceding alphabet, e.g. "I'm leaving Egypt, and I'm bringing the Afikomen, brisket, cold cuts, dayenu..." all the way through to the end. It gets pretty raucous when we're on the 4th cup, YMMV. My family is very fun.
posted by juniperesque at 4:06 PM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
The key thing to remember is that traditionally you can't end the seder without eating the afikomen. So offering a prize to whoever finds it isn't just a game for kids, it's also the one chance they have at real leverage.
With that in mind (and granted we are horrible people), when our parents told my siblings and me that we were too old to ransom the afikomen for money or presents anymore, we went full-on and started ransoming it for Adult Humiliation. "We will give it to you if tomorrow night you will do a sock puppet show of the crossing of the Red Sea", "We will give it to you if on the first seder next year you perform a living room synchronized swim routine based on the Haggaddah", etc.
God bless my parents for actually going along with this and not disowning us, but it definitely made our seder awesome for a good bunch of years.
posted by Mchelly at 10:10 PM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
With that in mind (and granted we are horrible people), when our parents told my siblings and me that we were too old to ransom the afikomen for money or presents anymore, we went full-on and started ransoming it for Adult Humiliation. "We will give it to you if tomorrow night you will do a sock puppet show of the crossing of the Red Sea", "We will give it to you if on the first seder next year you perform a living room synchronized swim routine based on the Haggaddah", etc.
God bless my parents for actually going along with this and not disowning us, but it definitely made our seder awesome for a good bunch of years.
posted by Mchelly at 10:10 PM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for inspiration. I marked the ones most likely to work for my family -
Letting the dog find it is totally our style but the dog has a very poor sense of smell...
Having Elijah find it is a great cop-out for the years when nobody is really up for looking.
Where in the World is the Akifomen? also sounds like it would work well
My current favorite idea is a variation of picopebbles where we have multiple afikomen (or maybe just multiple afikomen holders) and anyone who wants to contribute cash can hide one, anyone who finds one gets to vote on how to spend the money. Just need a way to track how many are hidden so they all get found.
posted by metahawk at 8:42 PM on March 25, 2018
Letting the dog find it is totally our style but the dog has a very poor sense of smell...
Having Elijah find it is a great cop-out for the years when nobody is really up for looking.
Where in the World is the Akifomen? also sounds like it would work well
My current favorite idea is a variation of picopebbles where we have multiple afikomen (or maybe just multiple afikomen holders) and anyone who wants to contribute cash can hide one, anyone who finds one gets to vote on how to spend the money. Just need a way to track how many are hidden so they all get found.
posted by metahawk at 8:42 PM on March 25, 2018
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posted by parmanparman at 12:42 AM on March 3, 2018