CDRLabs.com

i'm just about to leave for the family feast - the Seder.
Gefilte Fish - Yum!
my son Yoav looks very pretty dressed up for the holiday

so happy passover to everyone, good luck finding the Afikoman and getting lots of Optica Storage related gifts

dodecahedron wrote:my son Yoav looks very pretty dressed up for the holiday

Picture!

dodecahedron wrote:so happy passover to everyone, good luck finding the Afikoman and getting lots of Optica Storage related gifts

Same to you!

G

What's an Afikoman?

Ian wrote:What's an Afikoman?

It means dessert. Apparently, at the beginning of the Seder, the matzoh (unleavened bread?) is broken and the kids have to go find it. The point at which it is returned is called the Tzafun IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong)..

Oh, and happy Passover!

Happy Passover all!

OK, here goes... (hope i get the explanations right in English. you're sure to find better ones in wikipedia)

Matza, plural matzot (modern Hebrew) or matzos (Ashkenazi dialect) is a special food of Passover - it's unleavened bread. it's to remind us of how when the Israelites / Children of Israel (the Hebrew people) left Egypt they had to hurry so they didn't have time for the dough to leaven.

for you non-Jews, basically it's a big flat kind of cracker. not particularly tasty. bad for your diet - too much of it causes constipation, and it's high in calories.

during Passover (approx a week) Jewes aren't supposed to eat bread, only Matzot.

the Seder is a holiday feast on the Eve of the Passover holiday. historically, it's modeled after Greek-Hellenic wine feasts. anyway it's a very ritualized meal, during which the Haggada is read. this is a cremonial text, discussing the liberation of the Israelites when they left Egypt. it's to remind us of our history and our liberation from enslavement in Egypt. there's lots of symbolism, there's particular foods that have to be on the table, special foods eaten only during this meal (and not other days), 4 wines of glass are drunk etc.
this Haggada is read through the ceremony. there's about an hour of reading (during which you only drink some whine and eat little bits of the symbolic foods at the appropriate places) before you get to the actual meal.

on the table there's some soft of cloth in wich are 3 matzot which are special (i mean they're ordinary matzot, but they're considered special) and aren't touched or eaten. early on in the ceremony the middle one is broken in two. this middle one is called Afikoman (or maybe just half of it, i don't know). anyway, one of the "rules" of the ceremony is that you haven't finished the ceremony and fulfilled your obligation, and aren't supposed to leave the table, till you've had a small piece of the Afikoman. that's more or less at the end.

so over the years a tradition has developed that the children "steal" the Afikoman and hold it for ransome. since the grown-ups can't complete the Seder till they've eaten of it, they have to give presents to the children. basically, the children are hijackers.
there are variations: some have the elder, who "runs the show", hide the Afikoman as a pre-emptive move against the theiving children, and then the children spend the evening looking for it. others just let the kids steal it easily, they (the kids) hide it and the grown ups go hunting for it (well, only pretend...they don't really try to find it).

as far as gifts go, Passover is the holiday of "big good gifts", like Christmas is for Christians.

here's a couple of pics of my son Yoav (seems i didn't take that many pictures last night...)

Yoav looks kind of tired. Looks like the other kids were very successful at holding the Afikoman "hostage".

Thank you for your explanation of the rites! You know, I've probably learned more about Jewish culture in this forum than in the whole time prior to that.

G

LOL when he's not tired he's too quick for a digital camera! by the time i am and half-click for focus, he's moved already!

the Afikoman business was taken care of the older kids. he got his presents in any case

Dodeca, what's with the huge red bump on Yoav's forehead? Looks nasty!

oh that...
it's called Hemangioma.
it's a growth of blood vessels under the skin, which causes the red color.
it's not there at birth, it appeared when he was a month old and gradually grew. now it's a bit smaller than the max size it was.
it gradually grows smaller and is expedted to disappear by the age of 3.

1st hit on Google:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency ... 001459.htm
explains it nicely.

Wow.. Yoav is getting big. His hair is long too. I'm ready to give Ryan a buzz cut. Every time he eats he gets half his meal in his hair.

i wish i had that kind of problem.
he doesn't eat much. i mean he has no interest in food, getting him to eat "grown up" food is very difficult.
but yeah, his long hair is lovely. i wish i had hair like that...

We had a hard time giving Ryan baby food. he always wanted to feed himself. Now that he eats normal food, he chows down. The only problem we have now is that he likes to feed the dog.

dodecahedron wrote:it's called Hemangioma.
it's a growth of blood vessels under the skin, which causes the red color.

At least he's not getting into the Israeli mafia early on!