Afikoman/ Afikomen/ Afikomon?

Post date: Aug 12, 2019 12:36:57 PM

How to translate the answer given to the Wise Son in the Haggadah?

"אין מפטירין אחר הפס אפיקומן"

Greenbaum, the translator of the Israel Passover Haggadah writes:

The meaning of this last phrase "Ein Maftirin..." is subject to considerable controversy. In the Talmud various definitions are offered for the word "Afikoman".

1. One should not leave one company and join another (Both, Pesachim 119b)

2. One should not take any desserts following the Paschal offering.

3. One should not indulge in song after the Paschal offering. (Talmud Yerushalmi Pesachim Ch. 10, 6.)

Noted philologists saw in the word afikoman which is of Greek origin, an allusion to the custom in classical times. Following a feast, the company would go from house to house and indulge in light entertainment. On this basis the following version is offered by some translators: "One does not break up the Passover ceremony by announcing, 'To the after-meal entertainment'".

Greenbaum himself renders the phrase: No dessert may follow the Paschal Lamb.

(For a much longer explanation on the history and meaning(s) of the afikoman, See Kulp in the Schechter Haggadah pp.261-266)

Translators who did decide to leave the term אפיקומן in their translation have transliterated it in many different ways:

David Levi (the second to translate the Haggadah into English in 1794 after the first translator A. Alexander neither mentions nor eats the afikoman) writes Afikoman. This is also the most common spelling and the one used in the Haggadot by Goldberg, Gutstein and all Artscroll Haggadot.

Afikomen is a good second and is used in all Maxwell Haggadot and Haggadot ranging from Kaplan's First Reconstructivist Haggadah (1941) to Holzer's "The Medieval Haggadah Anthology" with commentary of Rav Soloveitchik (2014).

Afikomon comes in third. It is, for example, used by Lilly Cowen, the first female English Haggadah translator (1905), J.D.Eisenstein in his Haggadah illustrated by Lola (1928) and Jacob Freedman in his Polychrome Historical Haggadah.

The American poet and translator Abraham Regelson used Aphikoman in all his translations, a spelling also used by Cecil Roth and by the first female English translator in a non-English country, Rachel Mayer in Vienna, Austria. The 1923 Union Revised Haggadah uses Aphikomon, also used in several children's and school Haggadot (e.g. Rabbi Yacob Rudin, 1936 and Magil's Linear Haggadah, 1930).

We can also find Aficoman (Green, 1898), Aficomen (Mendes, 1862) and Aficomon (Gvul Yam, 1889). That the transliteration is so diverse can be explained by the fact that, apparently, Jews used to pronounce the word quite differently as can be shown by the following map, created by the scholar in Yiddish Dovid Katz who works and lives in Lithuania. The map shows the pronunciation of the word Afikoman by different Yiddish dialects in different geographical locations.

The map can be found here: http://www.dovidkatz.net/WebAtlas/10_Afikoymen.htm?fbclid=IwAR2unMIeQvANgySPr1QPwSKTOxN-oVaXaG2Ue6wKiSSlyjjhqZ1LoZZn7EE and was pointed out to me by Nathan Kasimer on the Ask the Beit Hamidrash Facebook page.