[Avodah] What beracha does one recite on coffee and tea?

[Zev Sero]

On 6/2/21 7:29 pm, Micha Berger wrote:
> Take a look at Sha'arei Teshuvah OC 202:19, who gives his sources.
> https://www.sefaria.org/Sha'arei_Teshuvah_on_Shulchan_Arukh%2C_Orach_Chayim.202.19

Edible chocolate was invented around 1800, and did not exist in the 
Shaarei Teshuva's day.  He, like his source the Divrei Yosef (R Yosef 
Ergas, 1685-1730), as well as the Pri Chadash on the question of bishul 
akum and other acharonim, were all referring to hot chocolate, which was 
the only kind that existed in their day.  Hot chocolate is a closer 
question than tea or coffee, because the cocoa itself is drunk and not 
removed.  But Divrei Yosef compares it to Shesisa, a drink made with 
flour, which the gemara says is mezonos if it's thick but shehakol if 
it's the consistency of a drink, even though the flour is in it and not 
removed.



> Teshuvos veHanhagos 1:187 says that since cacao wouldn't be eaten without
> all those other ingrediants that make it chocolate, it's a shehakol.

Actually that is not his sevara, but one he quotes from the Minchas 
Shlomo as a suggestion, but that the Minchas Shlomo himself questions 
since it's a clear halacha that ground ginger mixed with sugar is 
ha'adama (it says ha'etz but that must be a typo), since ginger cannot 
be eaten on its own.

Aderaba, that is the greatest argument for it being ha'etz, since that 
is not just the ikar way to eat the fruit but the only way.  Even if the 
sugar is the majority, it comes only to make the fruit edible, so it's 
batel to it.

His own sevara for shehakol is that the taste of the sugar and other 
ingredients is the ikar, and not that of the chocolate at all!  But it 
seems to me that anyone who eats chocolate will testify that it's not 
so.  It's not chocolate-flavored sugar, it's sugar-flavored chocolate, 
even when the chocolate is less than 50%, kol shekein in those bars that 
boast on the label of being 55% or 70% or 90% cocoa solids.

By the way, he quotes Pachad Yitzchak quoting Yad Malachi, a talmid of R 
Yosef Ergas, who paskens (unlike his rebbe) to say Ha'eitz on hot chocolate!


> RMF seems to assume the berakhah is a shehakol.

That's just it.  He doesn't consider the question and pasken on it.  He 
just assumes it.  Who knows whether when he wrote that he had any idea 
what chocolate is.

That's my contention about why the worlds says shehakol; they just don't 
know what it is, or else they're relying on their predecessors who 
didn't know what it was.  None of them considered it.  They came to 
America and found it there in the stores, and assumed it was just 
another kind of candy, and thus subsumed into the question of sugar, 
which we pasken is shehakol.


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
zev at sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"