My Sister Stole From Me

By Mayer Smith

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When you are the youngest of 10 children, you get coddled and treated to favored positions at various family functions. On Pesach, the privilege is to get to sit next to the pillow under which your father hides the Afikomen.  Being the youngest, that was my privilege.

The Afikomen is the one-half of the piece of matzoh that the father breaks in half and is placed between the pillows upon which he “leans” during the Pesach service. The “leaning” was to demonstrate that we were no longer slaves that had to eat hurriedly.

The first half of the piece of matzoh from which the Afikomen was saved was broken into enough small pieces so that every attendee was able to get a piece to initiate the meal. The second half of the piece of matzoh was usually placed between the pillows on which he leaned on. If the father was sneaky, he would sometimes place the Afikomen not only between the pillows…but inside one pillowcase which made it much harder to steal.

In our family, if you could successfully steal and hide the afikomen so that my father could not find it, you could negotiate some sort of reward for returning it.  One year, one of my older sisters unsuccessfully tried to negotiate for a red convertible!

One year, after much effort, I successfully retrieved the Afikomen and stuck it behind my back on the chair until I would be able to hide it elsewhere when Pop (what we all called my father) went to wash his hands before the prayers after the meal. The next older child after me was my sister Pearl who often helped the maid serve the meal when the two married sisters living in D.C. were not present.

That year, I must have been six or seven years old, when Pop went to wash his hands, I reached back to retrieve the Afikomen.  It was not there! MY SISTER HAD STOLEN IT FROM ME!