Precedence in Blessings - Rabbi Shaul Silam shlita

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

00:09 Speaker 2 Hello. The topic of this class is the order of precedence for blessings over food, primarily according to the Alter Rebbe’s approach. When other halachic authorities take a different view, we’ll mention it. The class is based mainly on chapter 10 of the Alter Rebbe’s Seder Birchos Hanehenin, and on the Shulchan Aruch, section 211—the Shulchan Aruch of Rabbi Yosef Karo, because we don’t have the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch for section 211. A brief introduction: when we talk about precedence in blessings over food, it can come up in two ways. If I have several foods that require different blessings and I want to eat them all, the question is which one to make a blessing on first, and which afterward. But it also comes up when I have several foods that require the same blessing—several fruits, for example. There, too, there’s an order of preference: which fruit should I hold when making the blessing? After that, of course, if they all require Borei Pri Ha’etz, one blessing covers them all. But I need to focus on the blessing. That’s the point. The first rule is: I want to eat it. If I have several foods in front of me—foods that require Mezonos, Ha’etz, Ha’adamah, and Shehakol—but I only want a piece of chocolate, I don’t have to go through the whole sequence just to eat the chocolate. If I want to eat only one thing, the rules of precedence obviously don’t apply. They apply only to the things here that I want to eat. I don’t have to eat everything and rack my brain over it. The second rule is that precedence applies only to things in front of me. There may be other things I want to eat that I also intend my blessing to cover, but if they aren’t in front of me, they don’t enter

02:06 Speaker 2 the order of precedence. Let me illustrate with an example. If I have an apple, and there are some dates in the refrigerator, we know—as we’ll see—that fruits of Eretz Yisroel take precedence over the apple. So if the dates and apples were both in front of me, I would have to hold a date, say Borei Pri Ha’etz, and have both the dates and apples in mind. But here, only the apple is in front of me. Even though I want to eat dates afterward—and what’s more, when I pick up the apple, I intend my blessing to cover the dates that will be brought to me shortly—I still don’t have to wait for the dates so I can give them precedence. I make the blessing on the apple, because that’s what’s here now. The dates that will arrive later don’t take precedence. What’s more, the Alter Rebbe says that even if someone brings me dates while I’m in the middle of making the blessing on the apple, and I intend the blessing to cover the dates as well, I still eat the apple first. That’s what was in front of me when I began the blessing, so that’s what I eat first and what the blessing is initially made on. Afterward, of course, I won’t need to make another blessing on a date, because the same blessing covered it. Now, the order of precedence among the fruits of the seven species. There’s a verse in Parshas Eikev worth knowing, though we’ll see later that even if you don’t remember it, there’s a trick for remembering the order. The verse speaks about our arrival in a land full of blessings and fruit: “A land of wheat and barley, and vines and figs and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey.” Seven products of Eretz Yisroel are mentioned here. Wheat and barley aren’t exactly fruits, so among the fruits we have grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and

04:08 Speaker 2 dates, which are the “honey.” But what is their order of precedence? The halacha rules that it depends on how close each one is to the preceding word “land.” We have “a land of wheat and barley, and vines and figs and pomegranates.” Set wheat and barley aside. Vines are mentioned third, because wheat and barley stand between “land” and vines. Figs are fourth from the first “land,” and pomegranates are fifth. Then: “a land of olive oil and honey.” Olives are mentioned first after the second “land,” and honey—dates—is mentioned second after it. So olives come first, because they are first after the second “land.” Dates come second, because they are second after the second “land.” Then come grapes, which are third after the first “land,” followed by figs, which are fourth after the first “land,” and then pomegranates. So when I have olives, dates, grapes, figs, and pomegranates, the order of precedence is the order I just listed. Now, don’t get confused: this doesn’t mean that if I have all five fruits, I have to eat them in that order—olives first, then dates, then grapes, then figs and pomegranates. No, that’s not what it means. It means that if I have them all, the olive comes first: it’s the one I should hold and make the blessing on. If I have several of them and want to eat everything in front of me, I should first hold and make the blessing on whichever comes earliest in the order we’ve discussed. So the order is indeed olives, dates, grapes, figs, pomegranates. If I have only dates, figs, and pomegranates, I make the blessing on the dates, because dates are second after the second “land,” while figs are only fourth and pomegranates fifth. Now you might say: for that, I need to remember

06:13 Speaker 2 the verse. How am I going to remember it? There’s a first “land” and a second “land”; it’s a little difficult. But there’s also a mnemonic that makes the order of precedence really easy to remember. As it happens, the order of precedence also matches an increasing number of seeds in the fruit. An olive has one pit, and it comes first. A date has one pit that’s somewhat split—somewhere between one and two—and it comes second. A grape has six or seven small seeds, and it comes third. Figs have many more, and pomegranates have even more than that. Some people say there are 613 seeds in a pomegranate, but that’s not so. It isn’t true; you can check. There aren’t 613, but there are a lot. So, as it happens, there’s a very simple way to remember the order. If I have grapes and pomegranates, and pomegranates have far more seeds than grapes, I first make the blessing on the grapes and leave the pomegranates for later. And so on with the other fruits. That was the third rule. The fourth rule is this: what if one of the seven species is more beloved to me than another fruit in front of me, also from the seven species, but the other fruit comes earlier according to the rule we just discussed? Let me give an example. I have pomegranates and figs, and figs come before pomegranates. So it would seem that I should make the blessing on the figs. But right now, I particularly want a pomegranate. Or perhaps I generally prefer pomegranates. As we’ll see later, “beloved” can mean either of two things: what I want most right now, or what I generally prefer. So, to put it simply, I prefer a pomegranate to a fig. Do I still have to give precedence to the figs because they’re fourth after “land,” or should I choose the pomegranates? No

08:26 Speaker 2 Since they are fourth after “land”—yes, fourth after the first “land”—or should I put the pomegranates first because I prefer pomegranates? The halachah is, the Alter Rebbe says, that I may make the brachah on whichever I want. I can start with the figs or start with the pomegranates, as I choose. Incidentally, it’s interesting to note that according to Halachah Berurah—by Rabbi David Yosef, so this is the halachah for Sephardim—in this case, even though we prefer the pomegranates, we would nevertheless say borei pri ha’eitz on the figs. Since they come earlier, he holds that their precedence takes priority over preference. Maga Ash. Now, the rule of Maga Ash that everyone knows does not appear in that form in the Gemara, the Rishonim, or the Shulchan Aruch. You won’t find that acronym, Maga Ash, in the halachic authorities, right? It’s something from more recent generations, put together as a way to remember the order. The order is correct; it really is based on the Talmud and the halachic authorities. But it isn’t presented in this form in the holy books. So what is Maga Ash? M stands for hamotzi or mezonos; G for borei pri hagafen; the first A for ha’eitz; the second A for ha’adamah; and Sh for shehakol. With that, we’ve summed up several sections of the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch. Hamotzi takes precedence over—and mezonos takes precedence over borei pri hagafen; that appears in one place. Elsewhere, borei pri hagafen comes before ha’eitz and also before shehakol, and ha’adamah comes before shehakol. But one part of Maga Ash is a little different: ha’eitz taking precedence over ha’adamah is presented as something it’s good to do, not an obligation. It’s not like mezonos, where I must say borei minei mezonos before borei pri hagafen, and hagafen before

10:33 Speaker 2 ha’eitz, ha’eitz before shehakol, and ha’adamah before shehakol as well. Ha’eitz before ha’adamah is not mandatory. It’s good to do, because it follows only one opinion among the Rishonim. That’s why Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch also presents it as desirable, but not obligatory. That’s Maga Ash. The sixth point—I wanted to discuss the five species of grain. When we talk about mezonos, we have to mention exactly what mezonos is and what we say that brachah on. We know that mezonos—well, what we say mezonos on. I’m not talking now about mezonos versus hamotzi, when it’s mezonos and when it’s hamotzi; that’s for another class, with Hashem’s help. I mean mezonos as opposed to shehakol, because I can make flour out of millions of things. Surely I wouldn’t say borei minei mezonos on something made from potato flour or peanut flour. So what do I say it on? On the five species of grain. Now, we need to understand that “the five species of grain” is a halachic category. If you look in botany books, you’ll see that there are thousands of kinds of grain. Rice is also a kind of grain, and buckwheat—I’m not talking about spelt—buckwheat is also a kind of grain, and quinoa is also a kind of grain. There are thousands more, and they have nothing to do with our rule. Halachah has a category called the five species of grain: the grains ordinarily used to make bread. And it isn’t based on what any particular person is accustomed to using. The ruling is: wheat, barley, spelt, oats, and rye. Those are the only five species of grain in halachah. This appears in Mishnah Challah and in several other places. There are many practical halachic implications to these particular grains being the halachic species. For our purposes, the point is

12:50 Speaker 2 that flour made from them can, depending on how it’s baked, produce foods whose brachah is either hamotzi or mezonos. But if I bake cakes from other kinds of flour, the brachah will be shehakol; that’s a different matter. There are other implications too. By the way, before we get to those, an interesting question: Why does the verse say “a land of wheat and barley”? Why are only wheat and barley mentioned? Why do we also include spelt, oats, and rye as important grains? This is very interesting. There is a disagreement here between the Shulchan Aruch and many halachic authorities, including the Alter Rebbe. According to the Shulchan Aruch, these are not actually types of wheat or barley. Rather, because the Jewish people were accustomed to making bread from spelt, oats, and rye, these too are considered important grains, and the brachah on foods made from their flour is mezonos or hamotzi. That is the Shulchan Aruch’s view. But the Magen Avraham, the Alter Rebbe, and the Biur HaGra have a different view. The Alter Rebbe holds that spelt is a type of wheat, while rye and oats are types of barley. There aren’t many practical implications to this difference between the Shulchan Aruch and the Alter Rebbe, but it’s interesting to note. Now, apart from hamotzi and mezonos, how does this play out in halachah? In many areas. Dough made from any of the five species of grain we listed requires separating challah. But if it’s made from something else—if I make dough from rice flour, for example—there is no obligation to separate challah. Only those five species can become chametz. So if I bake something from them that becomes chametz, eating it on Pesach is a Torah prohibition. The other species, by contrast, are considered kitniyos. In other words, the prohibition against their flour on

15:09 Speaker 2 Pesach is not a Torah prohibition. And it works the other way around too: the things that can become chametz are the things we make matzos from. So although matzos made from wheat are certainly preferable, according to halachah I can bake matzos from wheat, barley, spelt, oats, or rye. With any other kind, I do not fulfill the mitzvah of matzah. The prohibition of chadash applies to all five, as does the prohibition against eating an egg-sized amount of mezonos outside the sukkah. Of course, we eat everything in the sukkah, but there is a prohibition against eating an egg-sized amount of mezonos outside it. That applies only to foods that are mezonos, meaning foods made from these grains. If they’re made from other flours, that prohibition does not apply. All this is to clarify what the five species of grain are. That’s the sixth rule. We’ll move on to the seventh rule. If I have a barley drink—beer—does the barley drink take precedence over apple juice? We say shehakol on apple juice, and we say shehakol on beer. But beer is made from barley, one of the seven species for which the Land of Israel is praised, whereas apples are not. So is there precedence or not? There’s an interesting disagreement among the later authorities. According to the Bach, the Taz, and the Mishnah Berurah, yes; according to the Magen Avraham, no. And the Kaf HaChayim also holds that it takes precedence. So according to most authorities—the Bach, the Taz, the Mishnah Berurah, and the Kaf HaChayim—there is precedence even for a shehakol drink made from barley. According to all these authorities, if I have beer and apple juice and want to drink both, I should say shehakol specifically on the beer, and then drink the apple juice. According to the Magen Avraham, there is no order of precedence here, and I can make the brachah on whichever I want. The eighth rule: If I have something whose brachah is ha’adamah and something whose brachah is ha’eitz—well, we’ve already discussed ha’adamah and ha’eitz. We said that one should put first—that it’s good to put first

17:23 Speaker 2 Ha’eitz before ha’adamah. But what happens if the fruit that takes ha’adamah is my favorite? I have a fruit that takes ha’adamah, and I prefer it to the fruit that takes ha’eitz. According to the Alter Rebbe, since halachah does not require putting ha’eitz before ha’adamah, even though that is generally the better order, if the fruit that takes ha’adamah is my favorite, I should put it first. According to Rabbi David Yosef’s Halachah Berurah, one may begin with whichever one he wants. But according to the Alter Rebbe, in this case one should specifically begin with the favorite fruit that takes ha’adamah. The ninth rule: an olive and barley cake. At first glance, cake takes mezonos and an olive is a fruit. We said the order is mezonos, gefen, eitz, adamah, shehakol: mezonos comes before wine, and wine before fruit. So apparently the barley cake should come before the olive. That is indeed the view of the Shulchan Aruch, but the Alter Rebbe’s view is different. According to the Alter Rebbe and several other poskim, an olive and barley cake present a special case. It is true that an olive is only a fruit, and fruit comes after mezonos. But look at the verse: “A land of wheat and barley, and grapevines and figs and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey.” The olive is first after the second mention of “a land,” while barley is only second after the first. Therefore, our custom, when we have an olive and barley cake, is specifically to say Borei Pri Ha’eitz over the olive before eating the barley cake. That follows the Ashkenazi poskim, including the Alter Rebbe. And this leads to a very interesting paradox mentioned by the poskim. What happens if I have barley cake, an olive, and wine? There is something that doesn’t seem to make sense here. Let’s examine it. If I have barley cake, an olive, and wine, do I begin

19:34 Speaker 2 with the barley cake? Certainly not. We said that according to the Alter Rebbe, barley cake comes after an olive. All right, so not the barley cake. Should I make the blessing over the olive first? Certainly not, because there is also wine, and wine comes before an olive: gefen comes before eitz. So perhaps I should say Borei Pri Hagafen first? Not that either, because mezonos comes before gefen. So in this case I seem to have reached a point I can’t get out of. There are solutions. One is to set one of the three aside in this case, follow the order of precedence for the two I have, and then bring out the third. That is one solution. The tenth rule concerns bananas, pineapples, and papayas. What is special about them? These three fruits were discussed by the poskim: should their blessing be Borei Pri Ha’eitz or Borei Pri Ha’adamah? With a banana, the part that grows from the trunk and bears the bananas grows anew every year, so it is not exactly an ordinary tree. Ultimately, the ruling was to say Borei Pri Ha’adamah. After all, when there is doubt between ha’eitz and ha’adamah, one says ha’adamah. That is the ruling for bananas. The same goes for pineapple; there was uncertainty about it too. A pineapple grows in a pineapple plant, but the plant sits right on the ground, with the pineapple growing in it. When you pick it, it really looks as though you are taking it straight from the ground. So there was also discussion about whether its blessing is ha’eitz or ha’adamah. The ruling is to say Borei Pri Ha’adamah. Papaya is quite different. A papaya tree is very, very

21:37 Speaker 2 tall—several meters high. The fruit grows several meters up, but it does not grow on branches; it grows directly on the trunk. You can see pictures of papayas all around the trunk, growing right on it. So there is also a question whether something without branches takes ha’eitz or ha’adamah. It is a dispute, and the final ruling is that we say Borei Pri Ha’adamah over papaya as well. Fine, we have learned something, but how does it relate to our subject, the order of precedence? The later poskim write, and everyone agrees, that if I have one of these fruits and a fruit that takes ha’eitz, since there is doubt about whether these fruits take ha’eitz, I should say ha’adamah over one of them before saying ha’eitz over the other fruit. When does this come up most often? With a banana, because people do not eat papaya and pineapple every day. Bananas are much more common. If I have a banana and an apple, I might be inclined to say, “The banana takes ha’adamah and the apple takes ha’eitz, so it is better to say ha’eitz first.” No. It is true that ha’eitz generally comes first, but since the banana takes ha’adamah because of a doubt, while some opinions hold that it takes ha’eitz, we specifically say ha’adamah over the banana first, and then ha’eitz. If someone got the order wrong, it is not a problem. We can still say ha’adamah over the banana after saying ha’eitz over the apple. But it is preferable to say ha’adamah over a pineapple, banana, or papaya before saying ha’eitz over any other fruit, for the reason we discussed. The rule of precedence gets a little complicated when I have fruits of the Seven Species that are not whole, fruits that are whole, and fruits that are not of the Seven Species and perhaps are not whole, but

23:33 Speaker 2 are my favorites. Half a mango, for example. So what do we do? What is the order of precedence for these things? I’ll give you a rule. It is not a rule found in the poskim, not even in [unclear]. It is a rule I came up with to help myself remember: “Seven New Shekels.” Seven, shin, ches. First are the Seven Species. Although, between a fruit of the Seven Species and a favorite, the Alter Rebbe says to make the blessing over whichever one you want. But let’s return to this particular point. The Seven Species come first. Next comes something whole. As we said, “Seven New Shekels”: seven stands for the Seven Species, shekel for shalem, whole, and chadashim for chaviv, a favorite. So first the Seven Species, then something whole, and then a favorite. What follows from this? If I have half a date and a whole apple, the whole fruit certainly has a place in the order of precedence, but it does not come before a fruit of the Seven Species. So I say the blessing over half the date and then eat the whole apple. If I have a whole apple and half a mango, and the mango is my favorite, then since a whole fruit comes before a favorite, certainly something that is both whole and a favorite would come first. But when the choice is between something whole and a favorite that is not whole, the whole fruit takes precedence. So the whole apple comes before half the mango. I say Borei Pri Ha’eitz over the whole apple. Although half a date is one of the Seven Species and comes before the whole fruit, the whole fruit comes before the favorite. So if I have half a date, it comes before the whole apple, and the whole apple comes before half the mango. Where is the unusual point here, like the one we had with the barley cake, olive, and wine? Here too, there is something a little

25:44 Speaker 2 unusual. Half the date comes before the whole apple, and the whole apple comes before half the mango. So it would seem that the date comes before the mango, even though the mango is my favorite. But that is not correct. The Alter Rebbe actually tells us that if I have a fruit of the Seven Species and a favorite, I may make the blessing over whichever one I want. So here too there is a certain paradox, but it can certainly be dealt with. That is the eleventh rule. The twelfth rule is to define what “favorite” means. Someone might say, “Look, mango is something I really like, and it truly is my favorite. I have a mango and an orange here, and I want to eat both, but right now I feel more like having the orange.” So which one is the favorite: the one I generally prefer, or the one I prefer right now? First, we need to know that both are called favorites. So let’s set aside the mango and the orange that I want right now. If I have a mango—again, in this discussion mango is my example of a favorite, right? To make “favorite” more concrete, I’m saying mango. So if I have a mango and an apple, the favorite comes first, because I generally like mango more. And if I have an orange and an apple, and generally I do not prefer either one, but right now I really feel like having the orange—not because I usually prefer it, but because I want it more right now—then it is the favorite. I will say the blessing over the orange before eating it, and that blessing will also cover the apple. What happens now—and this is the thirteenth rule—if these two kinds of favorites conflict?

27:39 Speaker 2 What I defined earlier: I have a mango that I generally like best, and an orange that I like best right now. The Alter Rebbe says here that I can make the blessing over whichever one I want, or whichever one I want more right now. A person might generally prefer mangoes but really feel like having an orange right now. If he asks, “Which one should I make the blessing over?” the answer is: “Whichever you want.” Even if he really wants the orange right now, he won’t necessarily choose it, because he might want to save the one he wants most for last. So he really has freedom of choice here. He can give precedence to either kind of favorite: the one he generally prefers or the one he prefers right now. He can do it in whichever order he wants. And the last rule, the fourteenth rule, concerns a whole item. What I’m about to say is not brought in the Alter Rebbe; it’s brought in Halacha Berurah. He holds—and it is certainly preferable, as he also cites several halachic authorities—that the preference for a favorite applies among foods whose blessing is shehakol as well, not just among fruits. So if I have eggs, meat, and things like that, I make the blessing over the one I like best.