[Avodah] New Brachos

[Chana]

RAF writes:

> R'nCL replied to RAM:

Actually it was RMB who postulated that we need to always ask the two questions to understand the issue.

> > And note that hanosen l'ayef koach would seem to violate both of
> > your questions: - does the situation call for a beracha? - no it
> would
> > seem according to the gemora, which does not mention it.  Is it an
> > established nusach?  Not at the time of the gemora.
> 
> I don't think that both blessings are of a kind. Birkot hanehenin are
> seen as necessary before enjoying teh world. Hanoten laya'ef koa'h is
> of a different breed, a pure sheva'h. 

I do not disagree with this.  But, the new hypothetical brocha that RAM came up with, that of saying "Baruch Hashem Who makes pretty rocks" On walking down the street and seeing a pretty rock, seems to me to be a form of sheva'h rather than nehanin (ma'aseh breishis and zocher habris is surely shevah, rather than nehenin, and I took the rock case to be similar.  You could I suppose say that RAM is proposing his brocha because he is getting pleasure from the pretty rock, but we don't generally consider what we see as giving us benefit in this way, and of course similarly we could say that we definitely get benefit if we are given koach, but as you say we don't generally say this).  

And then RMB was asking his two questions:

> 1- Does the situation call for a berakhah?
> 2- Is this berakhah an established nusach?

As I understood it, not just on the steak, but on this brocha as well, ie as I understood it, RMB was saying that does the situation "seeing a pretty rock" call for a beracha (answer no, because we don't make brochos on rocks, but we do on seeing a rainbow or on thunder or on the ocean etc) - ie he was not distinguishing between brochos of sheva and nehanin.

> Sheva'h does not necessarily depend on a situation the way birkot
> hanehenin and birkot hamitzvot do, and hence, the situation upon which
> we react by praising G"d, is more fluid. Thus, I would argue that you
> will sooner encounter a berakha levatalah in birkot hanehenin and
> birkot hamitzvot, than in birkot hasheva'h. This is confirmed by the
> fact that we do not hesitate to praise G"d by singing poems that
> include His Name (a.k.a. zemirot*)

Again, I don't disagree.  But, it seemed to me, when RAM was proposing the brocha that he felt would be a bracha l'vatala as he had always understood it,  it was a new brocha of sheva that he came up with.  The point he was making was that if he felt that it was truly magnificent that Hashem created pretty rocks, and he wished to praise him for this, he had, up until this point, understood that he could not do so because to do so was a form of bracha l'vatala.  RMB then proposed asking his two questions in relation to all brochos to get to the issue, which would seem to include brochos of shevah.

Now, what I was trying to point out was that in a similar case, you have a new brocha (one not found in Shas), the issue that worried the Taz and others was the existence of a rule that one should not create new brochos post Shas, but not because there is an issue of bracha l'vatala d'orisa. And on the other hand ROY and others understand the Mechaber as not liking hanoten layef koach not because it is a new brocha that violates an accepted position that post shas we do not come up with new brochos (because after all, not to accept new brochos post Shas is surely a form of minhag, and Ashkenazim saying it is also a minhag, so one minhag can trump another), but because if you do so, you get into bracha l'vatala territory.  Sheasani k'rotzono is surely a bracha of shevach, but ROY says you should say it without shem or malchus.
 
> * = And don't tell me of that strange "minhag" of not pronouncing His
> Name in zemirot, a minhag that I am intimately familiar with, for it
> is inherently contradictory. If one praises "HaShem", one has praised
> a word, not G"d. We use that word when mentioning texts by way of
> demonstration, in order to abstain from mentioning His Name, but
> surely, when praising Him, we should address Him, and not play acting
> out games.

I don't disagree with this either.  But, (although interestingly I don't think the Sephardi poskim posken like this) I can see a logic that *if* you say that merely mentioning HaShem's name when it is not given sanction by Chazal to do so (which is the way I understand RAM to have understood the matter of a  bracha l'vatala up until now), then why would you not potentially have problems with mere songs?  The question is, what is wrong with a bracha l'vatala?  Is it that one is giving false witness by saying something that is (implicitly or explicitly) not true (such as one is going to eat when one is not), or is it that mentioning Hashem's name without sanction is in itself the problem, and it does not matter what else you put around it?  It seems to me that your approach is consistent with the Ashkenazi approach as I understand it, but which RAM is struggling to understand, but I am not sure it works with the Sephardi approach (but that may be because I don't fully understand that approach).

> Kol tuv,
> --
> Arie Folger,

Regards

Chana