Introduction to the Blessings on Pleasure - Rabbi Menachem Mendel Vilshansky shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:10 Speaker 2 With praise and thanks to Hashem, the Chabad Rabbis’ Halacha Hotline has merited to fulfill the Rebbe’s request that Anash—all of the Jewish people—study the halachos they need every day. When we speak about the halachos people need, the Rebbe lists the halachos of prayer, blessings over food, and Shabbos. Blessings over food are among the halachos the Rebbe specifically says people must know well, because we encounter questions about them at every turn. Besides the fact that we constantly need to make blessings and know which blessing to say, the very act of studying these halachos prompts a person to think about the blessings and their meaning. Saying a blessing without intention has no meaning. What’s more, whenever we mention Hashem’s Name, it is written that doing so is an act of sanctifying His Name. And when a person has in mind that Hashem’s Name signifies that He was, is, and will be, he draws that Name into the world. Beyond that, as chassidim we know that saying “Blessed are You, Hashem” draws Hashem’s Name into the world. That is why it is so important to know the halachos of blessings over food well. It is told of Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Chen, the Radatz, that before making a blessing, he would place his fingers on his forehead like this. They asked him, “Reb Dovid Tzvi, what is the source for this custom? Why do you do it? What does it mean?” He answered, “When I was five years old, I had a yechidus with the Tzemach Tzedek, and the Tzemach Tzedek told me, ‘Dovid Tzvi, stop being a little boy; stop being a child. When you make a blessing, you need to know Whom you are blessing. When you make a blessing, you need to know Whom you are blessing—Whom you are blessing.’ And ever since then, before every blessing I make, I think about Whom I am blessing: the One Who spoke and the world came into being.” There are so many opportunities to experience Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “I have set Hashem

02:31 Speaker 2 before me always”—by understanding the meaning of the blessing, the meaning of its words, and its importance. Blessings over food, as the name implies, are blessings over things a person enjoys. They differ from blessings over mitzvos, in which a person thanks Hakadosh Boruch Hu for giving him the ability to perform the mitzvah and for sanctifying us with His mitzvos. They also differ from other blessings, whether they are blessings of praise to Hakadosh Boruch Hu or blessings that are a form of prayer. Here we are talking about blessings over things a person enjoys in this world. Is a person permitted to enjoy this world? It is written that Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi raised his fingers upward before his passing and said that he had not enjoyed this world even as much as a little finger’s worth. We are not, G-d forbid, talking about indulging like a non-Jew, or even like a person driven by his desires—even if he is a Jew, may Hashem protect us. That is not fitting for a chossid. We are talking about taking something Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given you, something that gives you life and health. That is your enjoyment: you use something Hakadosh Boruch Hu has provided in this world, gain vitality from it, and then serve Hashem. That is the greatest enjoyment—giving the body what it needs. And sometimes there is also enjoyment of the taste, on the tongue and palate. A person cannot ignore the fact that he tastes what is in his mouth. So when the Torah established, concerning food, “You shall eat and be satisfied, and bless Hashem,” as the Alter Rebbe says, the Torah laid the foundation for a person’s obligation to bless Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That verse concerned bread. The Torah spoke of only one blessing: the blessing after eating bread. From there, the Sages derived and linked to the verse a broader rabbinic obligation covering all blessings over food: to make a blessing after any food, even if it is

04:37 Speaker 2 not bread, and also to make a blessing before eating it. The Alter Rebbe even cites the verse, “The earth and all it contains belong to Hashem,” and so on, following the discussion in the Gemara. The Gemara says: On the one hand, it is written, “The earth and all it contains belong to Hashem”; on the other hand, it is written, “He gave the earth to mankind.” If Hashem gave the earth to mankind, why does it belong to Hashem? The Gemara answers: One verse refers to before a blessing, and the other to after a person has made a blessing. Before the blessing, “The earth and all it contains belong to Hashem”; after the blessing, “He gave the earth to mankind.” When does Hashem give it to you? When do you have permission to take something belonging to Hakadosh Boruch Hu in His world and enjoy it? Only after making the blessing. So when the Sages instituted a blessing before eating, it was somewhat different from a blessing afterward. The blessing afterward offers praise and thanks for the enjoyment. The blessing before eating is not only praise to Hashem, speaking of drawing His holiness into the world and of His great creation—what grows on trees, what grows from the ground, and so forth. It is also a request for permission. Our Sages say that anyone who benefits without making a blessing is considered to have benefited from something consecrated to Heaven, as though he had misused consecrated property. There is a spiritual prohibition of misuse for someone who does not ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu for permission through the blessing. If he does not ask permission by making the blessing, he has no permission to eat. The Alter Rebbe says, “The earth and all it contains belong to Hashem,” and so on. The Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach says in Likkutei Sichos, volume 24: What is the rest of that verse? “The world and all who dwell in it.” When the Alter Rebbe wants to allude to something, he says “and so on.” With “You shall eat and be satisfied, and bless Hashem,” he does not say “and so on.” He does not want to mention “your G-d,” the Divine Name associated with severity. But when he says, “The earth and all it contains belong to Hashem,” he adds “and so on.” Why?

06:45 Speaker 2 Because the verse continues, “The world and all who dwell in it.” “The world and all who dwell in it” hints to us and teaches us that it is not only the earth—meaning the Holy Land—and all it contains that belong to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is not only what you hold from the land where you live, not only what is already in your possession, in your field—what you picked, received, or brought home. It is not only the earth that belongs to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but also “the world and all who dwell in it”: the entire world and everyone in it. Even if a non-Jew had something, or even if a Jew gave it to you, you may no longer feel that connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu giving it to you directly through the rain and your field, or through something you went and picked or obtained by your own efforts. Someone else, a non-Jew, gave it to you. You might say, “Where does Hakadosh Boruch Hu come into this?” “The world and all who dwell in it”—its inhabitants too, the whole world—everything belongs to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So that is an introduction to the halachos of blessings over food: everyone must ask permission by making a blessing, because otherwise they would be benefiting from something consecrated to Heaven without permission. Let us ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu for permission. Our course of study will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we will focus more on the fundamentals, because understanding the foundations of blessings over food helps us understand the halacha and distinguish one thing from another, one situation from another, one case and one food from another—each food on its own terms. The halachos of blessings over food are among the more difficult and complex halachos. One could also say that they involve many, many disagreements that affect all sorts of foods. But not only foods: they also affect all sorts of situations we encounter—mixtures of foods, eating, the timing of meals—with endless details and endless disagreements. The Rebbe

09:00 Speaker 2 The Alter Rebbe, thank G-d, gave us an order. Besides writing the Shulchan Aruch, where he set out all the laws of blessings over food after studying them as only the Alter Rebbe could study the Gemara and the early authorities—at the highest possible level, like one of the early authorities himself, as people describe him—and certainly after studying all the later authorities, he summed it all up. His work is, in fact, the source for all the books that came after it. The Ben Ish Chai and the Mishnah Berurah constantly cite later authorities, and in most places they mean the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe created the remarkable work that is his Shulchan Aruch. But as chassidim, we know that he also produced a Luach Birchos Hanehenin, a guide to blessings over food, and then took that guide and made it into Seder Birchos Hanehenin—an ordered presentation of those blessings. That teaches us that blessings over food need order: an order for learning, an order for making blessings, an order for understanding, and then, naturally, order in eating and drinking. Everything needs to be orderly, like on Seder night. Seder Birchos Hanehenin is printed in the Alter Rebbe’s siddur, and there the material is arranged in chapters, with each chapter dealing more or less with a different subject. The first chapter deals with defining the blessings: which blessing is specifically designated for each food, what the Sages instituted, which kinds of blessings they instituted as blessings before eating. It also discusses blessings after eating. Chapter 2 deals mainly with different kinds of bread and grain products that are mezonos: which require Hamotzi and which require Mezonos; which kinds always require Mezonos, which sometimes require Mezonos and sometimes Hamotzi, and what is unquestionably bread. That is chapter 2. Chapter 3 discusses

11:05 Speaker 2 a primary food and a secondary food: when you make a blessing on the primary food and it covers the secondary one, what the exceptions are, and so on. Chapter 4 discusses foods served during a meal, and so on. Since the chapters are divided up and already form Seder Birchos Hanehenin—the Alter Rebbe has put things in order for us—it would be a shame to mix them up. We will learn in the Alter Rebbe’s order, but we will place some emphasis on the fact that this is spoken, not written. We can distinguish between learning the underlying principles and then learning the halachah. Separately, we will also give straightforward rulings about which blessing to make on each item. At the end, we can present it concisely: this food takes this blessing, that food takes that blessing. That will make it easier for someone who wants to memorize the blessings by listening to the audio. In addition, we do need to learn some of the underlying principles. As I said by way of introduction, there are many, many disagreements about these matters. When discussing the principles, we will address only disagreements that affect our understanding of a principle or how something is defined. That will give us order in our minds when it comes to blessings over food. With that framework, we will later be able to distinguish between different situations and understand how one case differs from another. We may be able to know the halachah ourselves, or at least know what to ask and how to ask it, or how to study the matter further. The Sages established five blessings, but they knew people might make mistakes. They also knew people would not always know which blessing to make. Take, for example, a food about which there is a doubt whether its blessing is Ha’eitz or Ha’adamah, or whether it has reached the stage at which one makes Ha’eitz on it. We know that on small, unripe fruit one makes Shehakol. Once the fruit has grown and begins to take on its characteristic shape and sweetness, its blessing becomes Ha’eitz. A person who is unsure about the fruit—

13:13 Speaker 2 and this need not be an ordinary person with no expertise; it could even be an agronomist—looks at it and sees that it is borderline. He should make Shehakol. In other words, the Sages knew that a person might make a mistake or have a genuine doubt about which blessing to make, or have a doubt arising from a disagreement among the halachic authorities. Sometimes the authorities disagree about which blessing to make, and you need to decide. So there are times when the Sages said: a tree grows from the ground. If I am unsure whether to make Ha’eitz or Ha’adamah, or there is a disagreement, we make Ha’adamah, which covers fruit of the tree. We will see in later classes how this works. Sometimes, when there is serious doubt and we do not know whether something is a tree fruit or a ground-grown fruit, do not know how to define it at all, or do not know whether its blessing has changed, we say Shehakol because of the doubt. It should be noted that even if a person deliberately makes Shehakol, it covers everything. But that does not mean what people commonly think. Many people say, “I make Shehakol on everything.” G-d forbid. The Alter Rebbe says that the Sages instituted a particular blessing for each thing, and you are obligated to make the particular blessing they instituted. You cannot decide for yourself. Who are you to decide that? More than that, the rule that one makes Shehakol in a case of doubt applies only after learning the laws. It applies to someone who has studied them and encounters a disagreement among the authorities that he does not know how to resolve, or that the rabbis do not know how to resolve. Alternatively, he may be unsure whether a particular fruit has developed enough to be fit for its designated blessing. In that case, he makes Shehakol on it. But you cannot say, “I haven’t learned, so I don’t know; I’ll make Shehakol on everything.” It is true that if you did

14:59 Speaker 2 that, whether unintentionally or deliberately—if Shehakol slipped out, it covered everything, and even if you said it deliberately, it covered everything. But you cannot decide on your own to do things that way. You need to know that you are obligated to study the laws. That is our purpose in learning the laws of blessings over food: to know them. We will therefore be especially careful to make the appropriate blessing on each thing. If tree fruit and ground-grown fruit are served to us, we make the blessing on the tree fruit before the blessing on the ground-grown fruit. That is because Ha’adamah covers tree fruit after the fact. Also, the blessing for tree fruit is, so to speak, a step above the blessing for ground-grown fruit; it has risen to a higher level. So we first make Borei Pri Ha’eitz on the tree fruit and then Borei Pri Ha’adamah on the ground-grown fruit. If someone mistakenly made Borei Pri Ha’adamah on tree fruit, he has fulfilled his obligation. Even if he made Ha’adamah on a ground-grown food—for example, he took a potato and made Borei Pri Ha’adamah on it—and at the time clearly intended to cover an apple beside it, that is not the proper way to do it in the first place. The Alter Rebbe says not to do that. But after the fact, it also covered the tree fruit, because in cases of doubt about blessings, we rule leniently. Still, we do not do that. Each thing needs its particular blessing. Unlike all the above, if a person takes wheat, grinds it, and makes it so very, very thin that it becomes watery, I would not call that flour and water from which he is going to make bread. I would call it water with flour, and the blessing on water with flour is Shehakol. The Alter Rebbe says that if you cannot turn it over with your tongue, cannot roll it around with your tongue,

16:55 Speaker 2 when you put the wheat mixture in your mouth, that is a sign that it is watery and its blessing is Shehakol. You have taken flour and water, and the result is watery; its blessing is Shehakol. By contrast, if you take flour and water, make a batter and begin to knead it, then we need to see how you prepare it. Will it become bread, or will it become a kind of mezonos food? We will look at that later. But wheat—sorry, flour with water—has had its blessing changed. Why? Because its form has changed. When you take flour and water and make bread from them, you have produced a most excellent food: “bread sustains the heart of man.” But when you take flour and make it so watery that you cannot make bread from it, you have removed it from the category of wheat: it has been ground and turned into a watery mixture. It no longer has—there is nothing left of it as flour, either. So what do we have here? Wheat whose form has changed. Any fruit or vegetable, whether it grows from the ground or on a tree, whose form has changed completely has the blessing Shehakol. From this we learn that there is an exception. Although we said that anything growing from the ground or on a tree has the blessing Borei Pri Ha’adamah or Borei Pri Ha’eitz, if I turn it into a liquid, it will have neither of those blessings. It will have a different blessing. When we speak about blessings before and after eating, we need to know that, as I said earlier, although each thing has its own blessing, there are exceptions for the blessing after eating as well. For example, if someone eats a tree fruit, an apple, and along with the apple eats one of the seven species, there is a difference in the blessing after eating between the seven species that grow on a tree or from the ground and the apple. Wheat and barley that have become

18:55 Speaker 2 to become cookies, we recite Al Hamichyah afterward. The same applies to figs, pomegranates, grapes, and so on: when you eat them as they are, you first recite Borei Pri Ha’eitz, but afterward they have the special after-blessing for the Seven Species, Al Ha’eitz Ve’al Pri Ha’eitz. So they have a different after-blessing. Bread has its own Birkat Hamazon, and wine has a different after-blessing too, Al Hagefen Ve’al Pri Hagefen. Because it has been elevated to a more important status as a beverage, we give it a special after-blessing to distinguish it from the other Seven Species. But for all the other Seven Species, we say Al Ha’eitz Ve’al Pri Ha’eitz. So someone who eats an apple recites Borei Nefashos Rabbos afterward, because that is the after-blessing for fruits of trees and produce of the ground. It is a general blessing, and of course it is also the after-blessing for anything whose first blessing is Shehakol, such as eggs, poultry, meat, and so on. But here too there is an exception. Just as we learned earlier that there is an exception to the first blessing, there is an exception to the after-blessing as well. Sometimes you do not need to recite an after-blessing at all. When? For example, someone eats an apple, as I mentioned earlier, and a fig along with it. There are laws about which one he should make the blessing on first. Should he put the fig before the apple or not? Since the fig is one of the Seven Species, it should come first. On the other hand, if he prefers the apple, he may put the one he prefers first. But he recited Borei Pri Ha’eitz and ate both. What after-blessing does he recite now? Does he recite both Borei Nefashos Rabbos for the apple and Al Ha’eitz Ve’al Pri

20:43 Speaker 2 Ha’eitz for the fig? No. Since Al Ha’eitz Ve’al Pri Ha’eitz already includes everything that comes from a tree, he recites that one blessing and does not need to recite another for the apple. If he does recite one for the apple, it would be a blessing in vain. This is the place to point out that when you recite an incorrect blessing—or when, instead of simply making the correct blessing, you multiply unnecessary blessings because you do not know the halachah—you are making a blessing that is not needed. Every unnecessary blessing becomes a blessing in vain, and the transgression is as serious as swearing falsely in the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, because it invokes His name in vain. “You shall not take the name of Hashem your G-d in vain.” So here we recite Al Ha’eitz Ve’al Pri Ha’eitz and include both fruits together. We have seen, then, that with an after-blessing, one blessing can sometimes cover two things. That is something of an exception, because you do not recite the other after-blessing. Sometimes you are not obligated to recite an after-blessing because you did not eat the required amount, but that is not relevant right now. We are talking about exceptions. Where else is there an exception? A person drinks wine for Kiddush. Does he say Al Hagefen Ve’al Pri Hagefen after Kiddush? No. He does not recite an after-blessing at all. He washes his hands, eats bread after reciting Hamotzi, and Birkat Hamazon afterward covers the Kiddush wine. If he did not wash his hands, he would need to recite Al Hagefen Ve’al Pri Hagefen. But if he washed and recited Hamotzi, Birkat Hamazon covers the wine from Kiddush, because that wine is part of the Kiddush that opens

22:24 Speaker 2 the meal. Wine also has another quality: it prepares the digestive system for eating and increases the appetite. People used to drink wine before eating to prepare the stomach, so no after-blessing is recited over it, because it is a preparation for the meal. So generally, you must recite an after-blessing, but when something is a preparation for the meal, that is an exception: you do not recite an after-blessing. The same applies to someone who eats dates before a meal to stimulate his appetite; he does not recite an after-blessing. By contrast, someone who drinks before a meal does need to recite an after-blessing. Even if he washes his hands afterward, he will need to recite the after-blessing during the meal. If he forgot, a different rule applies; we will learn that later. The main point is that we have first blessings and after-blessings, but we need to look at the circumstances of each case. Sometimes you cannot recite the after-blessing you think you need to recite, or you do not recite one at all. Take an interesting example. Someone drinks wine and recites Borei Pri Hagefen. The law is that because he made a blessing over this important beverage, it covers all other beverages he drinks afterward. He does not make another blessing over any of them. Now, someone who drinks wine and then has a glass of water—say he drank wine for Kiddush and now needs to go wash his hands—if he drinks a glass of water, he enters into a question about an after-blessing for the water, and it creates an interruption between Kiddush and the meal. But suppose he did not wash his hands: he made Kiddush, recited Mezonos and ate mezonos in the place where the meal will be held, as we know one must do, and now he wants to drink cola,

24:14 Speaker 2 or he wants to drink water. He does not recite a blessing, because he already recited Borei Pri Hagefen. Not only that: the same applies to someone who heard him recite it. We will yet see, in the laws of blessings over food and drink, that if one person who is enjoying something recites a blessing for another person who is also enjoying it, the other person fulfills his obligation. With these blessings, you cannot recite one for someone else if you are not partaking yourself. If I am drinking water now and a friend beside me recites Shehakol for me, but he is not drinking, how can he recite it for me? But if he too is holding a glass of water and is thirsty, and he recites Shehakol for himself while intending to fulfill my obligation, and I answer amen, I have fulfilled my obligation, just as with Kiddush. Therefore, when a friend recites Borei Pri Hagefen and I fulfill my obligation through his blessing, I do not recite a blessing over any other beverage afterward. Hearing Borei Pri Hagefen with the intention of being included in the blessing makes me part of it, and I do not need to make a blessing over another drink. So there is an exception with the first blessing too: Borei Pri Hagefen covers all beverages. Someone who makes another blessing over the other beverages enters into a question of a blessing in vain, [unclear]. Of course, things are different during a meal; we will learn that too. There are separate rules for someone who made Kiddush—or heard Kiddush from someone else—and then wants to drink wine during the meal. But right now I am talking about someone who made Kiddush and is eating mezonos. He wants to know whether to make a blessing over other beverages. He has fulfilled his obligation through the blessing over the wine. But what happens if he drank only a tiny bit? He recited Borei Pri Hagefen and drank a little wine, less than the required amount. We will yet learn

26:04 Speaker 2 the required amounts. The required amount of wine is a revi’is. That is not the subject of this lesson, but he drank less than the required amount. Now he drinks water, and he drinks the required amount of water—a revi’is. So again, as we will see when we reach the laws of the required amounts for drinking, his first blessing in this case was Borei Pri Hagefen. But his after-blessing will not be Al Hagefen Ve’al Pri Hagefen, because he did not drink the required amount of wine. It will be Borei Nefashos, because he drank a revi’is of water, or a revi’is of cola, or whatever it may be. In other words, even though each item has a specified first blessing and after-blessing, circumstances can change which blessings are covered by others. We need to learn the rules. A classic case: we spoke about rice, its particular blessings, the variations, and the differences of opinion. Suppose someone whose practice is to recite Shehakol over rice is served chicken and rice on a plate. He can recite Shehakol over the chicken or over the rice, but for chicken that is the clear-cut blessing, whereas for rice it is not. In other words, he recites Shehakol over the rice only because of the doubt. Which should he recite Shehakol over? I asked rabbis, and they told me to recite it over the chicken, since that is its specific blessing, and have it cover the rice, whose blessing is in doubt. What if he likes the rice more than the chicken? These are the kinds of questions in the laws of blessings over food and drink that have no end. You can study them again and again, and you always need to learn, look into the matter, and ask a rabbi when a difficulty arises. But as I said, if someone is making several blessings while eating the rice—if he has also recited Mezonos, Ha’adamah, and Shehakol over other foods—then the whole question falls away. The whole question

28:15 Speaker 2 That applies only to someone who makes Shehakol on all rice. For someone who says each of the blessings, there’s no question in this case. So today we looked at what our Sages instituted regarding blessings before eating, and we saw that each thing has its own blessing, unless there’s an exception. What happens if someone forgot to say the blessing? After all, you’re not allowed to eat without one. If he remembers while the bite is still in his mouth, he should spit it out and say the blessing. If that would be very unpleasant for the people around him, or the food would become repulsive, there is the option of moving it to the side of his mouth. But halachah says it isn’t proper to say a blessing with your mouth full: “Let my mouth be filled with Your praise.” It isn’t proper to praise Hashem and bless Him when your mouth is full; we don’t even speak that way. So it’s better to spit it out. If he didn’t spit it out, he should move it to the side and say the blessing. Even if, G-d forbid, you forgot to say the blessing before eating, find some more of that same food and say the blessing now, so that after the fact it will also count for what you already ate, what is already in your digestive system. That’s why we always have to pay attention to saying blessings. I never saw my grandfather, a"h, say a blessing before eating while standing. I heard from family members that he said—and actually, I remember him telling us this too. Once I asked him, we asked him, why he said blessings sitting down. He said, “What do you mean? How can you concentrate? How can you address the Creator, say His name, ask His permission to eat, and praise Him when you aren’t settled, when you’re just doing it on the go?” The Taz says that a person must concentrate during every blessing and not busy himself with something else. Sometimes we see people saying a blessing while doing something else, straightening things up at the same time. A blessing without concentration—there’s serious doubt

30:23 Speaker 2 about that blessing. The Alter Rebbe also brings this in his Shulchan Aruch, in the laws of blessings. At the end of the first volume of Orach Chaim, he speaks about how a person needs to know what blessing he is saying and concentrate on its meaning. All the more so, he must not let his mind wander. The Alter Rebbe points this out and says that, ideally, a person should say the blessing aloud and with concentration, loudly enough for his own ears to hear. Ideally, you should say a blessing aloud, not quietly. Yes, those of us who have become used to religious practice, or who have been religious from birth, develop these reflexes: when we pick up a cup, our mouths just do something automatically. Maybe stop for a moment and say the blessing aloud, or say it slowly. Then perhaps someone else will hear it and answer Amen. The Alter Rebbe speaks about saying blessings aloud in the laws of blessings in the Shulchan Aruch. Certainly, with those blessings where it isn’t clear whether they’re some sort of reflex, a movement of the lips, some motion of the hand or lips that a person makes, or an actual blessing—what did the Frierdiker Rebbe say in the name of the Tzemach Tzedek? “Stop being a child.” When we say a blessing, we need to know to Whom we are saying it. Now, as we discussed earlier regarding the obligation to say a blessing, we need to remember that there are blessings through which you can fulfill another person’s obligation. With blessings before eating, you can say the blessing yourself and do more than give the other person the opportunity to answer Amen: if you yourself are partaking, your blessing can fulfill his obligation. When we say Borei Pri Hagafen to fulfill someone else’s obligation for Kiddush, I’m not only fulfilling his obligation for Kiddush. According to Chabad custom, I also say Borei Pri Hagafen and fulfill his obligation

32:40 Speaker 2 for the blessing of Borei Pri Hagafen, because I drink and enjoy it, and he drinks and enjoys it. So my blessing of Borei Pri Hagafen fulfills his obligation. It would also be possible to say Hamotzi and fulfill the listeners’ obligation, except that the Chabad custom is for each person to say Hamotzi for himself rather than fulfill his obligation through someone else’s blessing. The Rebbe says this is because of the time that passes between the people as the bread is distributed. That is how the Rebbe explains it in Igros Kodesh. In practice, when you make Kiddush, you aren’t only fulfilling the people’s obligation for Kiddush—the mitzvah to sanctify Shabbos over wine in the place where you eat a meal. There is the verse “and call Shabbos a delight,” calling and sanctifying Shabbos, which is the mitzvah of Kiddush. You are also fulfilling their obligation for the blessing before drinking. Each person listening to you needs the blessing both for Kiddush and as a blessing before drinking. When you said the blessing at Kiddush, you fulfilled that latter obligation for him as well. So we see that you can say a blessing for someone else. This isn’t simply a matter of our mutual responsibility for mitzvos, where we are responsible for one another and can therefore say blessings for one another. Here it is also because I myself am drinking. If we’re talking about people who don’t know how to say the blessing, then saying it for them does involve mutual responsibility. For example, if someone doesn’t know how to make Kiddush, I make Kiddush for him because he doesn’t know how. But if a man’s wife and children know how to make Kiddush, I wouldn’t make it for them, because they know how. In his Shulchan Aruch, the Alter Rebbe writes explicitly that, ideally, a man should not make Kiddush for his wife and children

34:32 Speaker 2 if they know how to make Kiddush themselves. Nevertheless, there is a Chabad custom that we saw in the home of the elder Rabbi Landau, as I heard from his grandson, who is now the rabbi of Bnei Brak. I saw it with my uncle Rabbi Ashkenazi and with my father, too: when a man has made the daytime Kiddush in shul at a farbrengen, where everyone has gathered, he says the blessing over the wine for himself there. Then, when he comes home, there’s a question. After all, the Alter Rebbe says that, ideally, a person shouldn’t make Kiddush for someone who knows how to say the blessing. He shouldn’t rely on mutual responsibility for mitzvos to say the blessing for someone else. As we said, with blessings before eating, you can say a blessing for someone else if you yourself are partaking. With blessings over mitzvos, you can say the blessing for someone else even if you aren’t partaking yourself. But with a blessing over a mitzvah such as Kiddush, you can do that for someone else on condition that they don’t know how to say it. Since our people and our children today know how to say the blessing, why are you making Kiddush for them—for your wife and daughters? Yet in practice, we saw that all the rabbis of Anash over the generations, including the rabbis of France, made Kiddush for their wives. The reason is very simple: when you come home and say Borei Pri Hagafen, you drink the wine yourself. You say Borei Pri Hagafen for your own blessing before drinking, and at the same time you fulfill your wife’s and children’s obligation for Kiddush. It works in both ways: for you, it serves as the blessing before drinking, and in the process you fulfill your wife’s and children’s obligation. When the Alter Rebbe says that a man should not make Kiddush for his wife and children if they know how, that applies only if he doesn’t drink himself, or to the nighttime Kiddush, when he has already made Kiddush and... that’s a different matter. But with the daytime Kiddush, all he says is “Borei Pri Hagafen.” He says

36:27 Speaker 2 it for himself, as his blessing before drinking, so it works. He says Borei Pri Hagafen for his own benefit from the wine, and by virtue of mutual responsibility, it also fulfills his family’s obligation for Kiddush. The Alter Rebbe doesn’t discuss this in the Shulchan Aruch. It’s true that some rabbis have raised objections to this custom, citing a paragraph of the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch that doesn’t discuss the custom at all. I saw this practice explicitly with Rabbi Ashkenazi, and I heard about it from the elder Rabbi Landau and from his grandson, and Rabbi Pevzner practiced this way too. So a custom practiced in the homes of Anash and their rabbis for generations deserves respect. It’s a matter of learning from practice, of knowing what to do and doing it.