Today's daf goes into some of the detailed reasons that we recite specific blessings over certain foods. For example, what blessing do we say over date honey as opposed to dates themselves? What do we say over shetita, roasted barley where honey or vinegar is added? Sometimes rabbis wonder if we should say sh'hakol h'hiya bidvaro, by Whose word all things came to be, or boreh miney m'zonot, Who creates various kinds of nourishment. To settle this type of argument, rabbis suggest that both are accurate in different situations.
The rabbis discuss hamotzi, the blessing over bread. Hamotzi is taken to mean brought forth, and that is connected to the Jewish people being brought forth out of Egypt as much as it speaks of bread being brought forth from the ground. Rabbi Zeira calls on Rav Zevid, brother of Rabbi Shemuel bar Rav Zevid, an expert on the halachot of blessings. He says motzi rather than hamotzi over the bread. Does this solve whether we use the blessing as a verb, of the past, or as an adjective free of any time or place? The rabbis concur that it should not matter. And that we are to say hamotzi moving forward.
Does preparation of vegetables change the blessings that we recite over them? Are boiled vegetables fundamentally different that broiled or fresh vegetables? We are to say "Who blesses fruit of the earth" as vegetables are considered to be similar to bread. Or perhaps we are to say "by Whose word all things came to be". And what about pickled vegetables or pitted olives? Have these foods changed fundamentally from their fresh states?
Today's daf is a reminder of how much thought has gone into each small halacha. These laws are tenacious. They continue until today. One of the main reasons that I enjoy learning Talmud is to understand where our laws originated; how they came to be. And today's daf demonstrates the answer: through debate, discussion, more debate, and final decisions that often are ritualized and repeated for millennia.
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