Q&A: Sweets After the Final Matzah
Sweets After the Final Matzah
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In the Talmud in Pesachim (119b–120a) there are two versions in the passage dealing with whether it is permitted to eat dessert after the final matzah (what is nowadays called the “afikoman”). According to the first version, it comes out that it is forbidden, whereas according to the second version it is permitted; beyond that, the Talmud did not decide the matter. In practice, it is known that the halakhic decisors ruled stringently in accordance with the first version. My question is: why? After all, this passage was not resolved in the Talmud, and apparently the prohibition on eating after the afikoman (or after the Paschal offering or after the matzah) is not a Torah prohibition but a rabbinic one, and we generally rule leniently in cases of rabbinic doubt. ??
2. Would it be permitted to be lenient based on the consideration I wrote, even though the halakhic decisors (most of them or all of them, I do not know) ruled stringently??
Answer
The halakhic decisors themselves also disagree about this. One can be lenient with a rabbinic law.
Discussion on Answer
When I read your question, for some reason I understood that you were asking about after midnight, and that is what I answered.
However, even regarding the eating itself, see the Derisha there, who discusses the question whether only once he recited the blessing he may not eat, or even before he recited the blessing. But on this point almost all the halakhic decisors followed the first version, and it is hard to be lenient. If you yourself think otherwise for some reason, then of course you can act in accordance with your view.
It just seems to me more straightforward to infer from the Mishnah, which says, “One does not conclude after the Paschal offering with afikoman” — “after the Paschal offering” implies after the Paschal offering, not after the matzah — than to say that it states a “needless to say” formulation: needless to say after matzah, whose taste is not as substantial, but after the Paschal offering one might say not, so it comes to teach us otherwise. That seems less like the plain sense of the Mishnah.
In addition, apparently this is preferable because many times you want to eat dessert and you know that after the afikoman you won’t be able to, so you eat the dessert before the afikoman, and then the last one is eaten as overeating, and you do not fulfill your obligation.
{ P.S. Maimonides wrote that the reason one does not conclude with dessert after the Paschal offering (and according to him, even after the matzah) is so that the taste remains in his mouth; one could analyze whether this is a general rule. What is its source at all? }
Are the things I wrote enough to be lenient??
Thank you very much in advance. I really appreciate it 💙
As I wrote, if that is convincing to you, then follow your understanding.
Thank you very much, Rabbi. I searched in books and online and didn’t find halakhic decisors who permit it. Could you perhaps help with which decisors?