[Avodah] Practical Problems of Mezonos Bread

Akiva Miller akivagmiller at gmail.com
Sun Feb 10 11:38:27 PST 2019


For as long as I can remember, Misnagid poskim and rabbanim have been
warning people about the halachic problems of bread and rolls that are
marked as "mezonos". And for the last several decades, I haven't seen
their hechsherim on such products either.

But I *have* seen such products in the stores, and invariably they
have a chassidishe hechsher. Not only on the bread and rolls
themselves, but even on prepared ready-to-eat sandwiches. I prefer not
to believe that the poskim of those hechsherim are blind to the
problem. Rather, I would like to believe that they are following a
different shita.

Specifically, I have heard over the years, that they hold that Pas
Habaa B'Kisnin retains its mezonos status as long as one eats less
than the shiur of 3-4 kebeitzim, EVEN if one eats it with other food
as a normal meal.Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any posek who
says that in writing.

It's not difficult to open the Orach Chaim 168 and find that the Shiur
Kevias Seudah is 3-4 beitzim. The tricky part is applying that rule to
this makom and this zman, where the definition of seudah is not
necessarily the same as it used to be. The misnagdishe poskim have
come down on the side of saying that the definition of seudah has
indeed changed, and the opportunities to say mezonos on a roll are
very limited. But what do the chassidishe poskim say? I haven't seen
anything, but I'm sure that's because I don't have much access to
chassidishe poskim at all.

Can anyone offer any insights?

Thanks

Akiva Miller


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