[Avodah] The Scope of the "7 Mitzvos d'Rabbanan"

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Rich Wolpoe wrote:
> When did ner shabbos get a brachah? As per Maggid Mishnah
> [hilchos shabbos 5:1] it's Seder Rav Amram Gaon. If so this
> list is NOT Talmudic. - but a bit later. 

The Maggid Mishnah's actual words are: "Kach kasuv b'Seder Rav Amram, v'chen hiskimu kol ha'acharonim z"l." In my view this falls far short of something like "Rav Amram tiken bracha al ner Shabbos".

RRW seems to be interpreting the Maggid Mishnah to mean that until Rav Amram's time, no bracha was said on Ner Shabbos. I do not see that from this source. All I see from here is that there is no sefer older than Rav Amram which *documents* the saying of this bracha. It is quite possible that the bracha was established long before Rav Amram, perhaps even long before the Mishna, but we don't have any record of it.

[begin sci-fi mode] I have a friend who quotes an explicit Gemara that "Shlomo Hamelech and his Beis Din established a bracha on Ner Shabbos". He can't remember if it was in the Bavli on Shvi'is 15b or in the Yerushalmi at the end of the first perek of Tamid. He had to take his time machine back past quite a few book-burnings until he finally found that gemara. And now, unfortunately, the time machine is malfunctioning, and we may never find out which daf it was. [end sci-fi mode] Daven for the archeologists; maybe they'll find it yet. Who knows?

Akiva Miller

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