יחץYa'hats, c'est le rite qui consiste à couper en deux la matsa médiane des trois matsoth du plat du Sédère.
Ahh, Yachatz. It's times like this I'm glad I'm not the head of the household - now's the part where Moses needs to break the middle matzah in two, hold it high for everyone to see, wrap the bigger half, and sneak it off to hide the Afikomen. Never mind, I guess Phil gets to hide the Afikomen. (Anyway, no one here has any interest in looking for it because you get the same bag of Gelt whether you find it or not.)
The thing about this matzah, is that it's the bread of affliction. It's what our people ate in Egypt. If any of my readership is hungry, come on by. And anyone out there who can't celebrate your own Passover, come over and do it with us.
And while you're at it, pour yourself a second cup of wine.
Maybe at this point Emma can Skype in from Germany to say, "Dies ist das Brot des Ungluecks." (Germany is still Ashkenaz to me, so you can imagine how long it's going to take me to start calling 26th Street Dean Keeton. Like never.) Anyway, nothing says affliction better than Unglueck. In contrast, le pain de misère makes you want some.
Yachatz is the heart and soul of Passover, the critical point in the service where you are supposed to remember where you (or you ancestors) came from. I like to put it this way: You may deserve some credit for where you are in life, but don't be so full of yourself to think that luck didn't play a role, so spread that luck around. I'm not the only one who feels this way. Maimonides was very concerned that fortune made people arrogant and insensitive.
Speaking of arrogance and insensitivity, some say that we eat matza at Passover rather than puffy bread because puffiness stands for arrogance and insensitivity. Where do they come up with that stuff?
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