[Avodah] soup

[David Riceman]

RZS:
> When proposing such a radical chidush that nobody has ever heard of,
> you may have to.

> <snip>
>
> We *know* that bread covers all liquids except wine.  That's primary.
> Any understanding of the given reason must be secondary.
>
>
I'll summarize what's happened, since you seem to be entering in the middle.

I suggested that we treat soup like food rather than drink, and asked 
for a source.

Several people objected: RAZ cited RYK that we don't make a bracha on 
soup after wine; implying either that it's a mashkeh or a safeik mashkeh 
(I don't know which).

RCB and later RZS objected that after we eat bread we don't make brachos 
on drinks.  I cited the SA which says that's a machlokes, and for the 
opinion that we don't (which the Rama certifies as the normative 
Ashkenazi opinion) it's because "ain derech le'echol b'lo shtiyah" 
(incidently the SA HaRav citing the Rosh goes further and says that "i 
efshar la'achilah b'lo shtiyah").

The problem in metzius is that that doesn't describe how we eat soup.  
People who do not serve drinks with the meal do not serve them with 
soup, and people who do do.  RZS's claim "bread covers all liquids 
except wine" assumes that that mashkeh means liquid, which is precisely 
the question I'm asking, and ignores that we don't treat soup as the SA 
says we treat mashkim.

RAM suggested that the bracha of bread covers soup because soup is 
meizan zayyin.  This is the opinion of the Mahzor Vitri cited in the 
Bach ad. loc., and revived by several aharonim.  The problem is that the 
rishonim (and the Bach) view the SA's first opinion and the Mahzor 
Vitri's opinion as contradictory: they claim that we cannot say both 
"meizan zayyin" and "ain derech le'echol b'lo shtiyah" are reasons to 
cover drinks under bread, since they are contradictory explanations of a 
gemara.

RAM may have a leg to stand on, since one can argue that the two 
interpretations are supplementary rather than contradictory, but that 
seems unjustified by the historical record.

David Riceman