[Avodah] Berachot in the Course of a Meal

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 07:30:00PM +0000, Gershon Dubin wrote:
: Clearly the Mechaber in 177:2 says that it does in fact depend on the
: eating style prevalent at that time and place. Since "we" never stop
: eating pas (the style you refer to) it's always lelafes. Same would
: work in the other direction; in the USA in 2012 nobody (who doesn't
: have a berachos cheshbon) would ever eat bread with their dessert.
: So the dessert is NOT lelafes and requires a beracha.

There is a gap between the Mechaber's "we" and how we eat in the US
today, even before dessert. The Mechaber is saying it's normal to eat
lelefes, and in his (and chazal's) milieu, it would be abnormal not to
eat everything together with bread. We would not find it abnormal. Yes, we
wouldn't find it strange to have bread with the meal (up to dessert). But
we wouldn't find it strange to omit the bread either.

Hilkhos berakhos appear to assume it is not only be a socially acceptible
option to eat with bread, but strange not to. Which is why the berakhah
on the bread subsumes foods normally eating to accompany it. We don't
make a meal by accompanying bread with other things; it's not the way
we think about meals.

Ironically, except perhaps a meal of pizza.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha at aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
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