Tifereth Israel Congregation

Breaking the Middle Matzoh

By Mark Berch

Right after Karpas, we break the middle of three matzot, just to generate the afikoman.  You perhaps think that this is the only way this has ever been done.  Not at all.

In the oldest Ashkenazic custom, it was the upper matzah that was broken. A standard code from southern France (Provencal) says that any of the three can be broken, and the custom there was not to bake any special markings into these three matzot, to tell one from the other.

Maimonides said that the matzah is to be broken later, before dinner, after maggid has been done, and that indeed has been the practice of Yemenite Jews.

Further, Maimonides and some other medieval authorities required only two matzot, not three, if it’s not Shabbat.  This would seem to present a problem.  The Talmud’s rule says that the broken piece is put inside the whole matzah.  That would seem to require a whole matzah above and below, which is indeed our practice.  But the Hebrew word used, be-tokh, “inside,” can also be vocalized as be-ta-vekh (with the vav as a consonant rather than a vowel), meaning in the middle. Thus, it would be placed on top of a whole matzah, which is wrapped around it, in the middle.  And indeed, we have a report that early Babylonia Jewry did just that.

As for breaking itself, the Talmud’s explanation is that it is broken because it is the bread of the poor (Deut 16:3), and the poor eat broken bread, and thus, so do we.  Another ancient explanation is just as we have two loaves for Shabbat, because of the Bible’s reference to double bread, so do we generate the two pieces, which is done by breaking the middle matzah in two. Generating the afikoman piece becomes a side-effect, and the present afikoman ritual is a later practice.

 There are many, many other examples of such variations in how the Seder is performed.  Don’t feel you have to rigidly adhere to one way of doing things, because that’s not been the history of the Seder.  The same is true for the symbolism.  For example, some say the middle matzah is broken, with a part hidden away, to remind us that the poor sometimes cannot eat what they have; some has to be squirreled away “for later.”

The Seder, ultimately, is what you make of it, even in the fraction of a second it takes to break a matzah in two.