[Avodah] What's the berakha on hearts of palm?

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 02:36:59PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> Micha Berger wrote:
>> If the tree's major consumable is something other than a fruit, it
>> could still be a ha'eitz. (However, they still are exempt from orlah -
>> YD 294:2.)

> How can this be so?  How can the tree itself be called its own fruit?
> Surely it's the fruit of the ground that produced it.  Where is the  
> source for this?

Sugar cane is the same sugya but simpler in two ways:

1- Do we consider heart-of-palm palm trees distinct from date and coconut
palms? If not, then heart-of-palms are not the primary produce. Sugar is.

2- Sugar is generally made from canes cultivated for that purpose.

R' Bodner is quoted on brachot.org as holding that Brazilian hearts of
palm are cut from wildly grown palms trees, and therefore are shehakol
as per the SA (and Shemuel in the gemara), whereas those from Ecuador
are cultivated, and are ha'adamah.

Not an issue for sugar. And that makes sugar an easier place to find
rishonim, since many assume that #2 points to a change in metzi'us -- the
SA was talking about wild palms, whereas most of ours are farmed. (Except
R' Bodner who says that if the label says Brazil, assume they weren't.)

WRT sugar, the Rambam (Berakhos 8:5) records a machloqes ge'onim between
those who say ha'adamah and those who say ha'eitz. The Rambam himself says
that the need for fire to produce usable sugar reduces it to shehakol,
but says that hearts of palm are also shehakol -- not explaining why
sugar needs a reason to be shehakol, the flowers of a caper are haadamah,
but hearts of palm are shehakol even without fire.

I got lost in the Tur, but it's clear from him and the BY that ha'eitz
are among the possibilities for can sugar. For that matter, the SA 202:15
rules that one makes a shehakol, but haadamah and ha'eitz are okay
bedi'eved bercause those are the options. See also the Biur Halakhah ad
loc.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
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