What to eat first? TB Berachot 39

Today’s daf TB Berachot 39 discusses the question which blessing should a person say first when there many different kinds of foodstuffs before him.

With regard to the appropriate blessing over boiled vegetables: Let us say that this dispute is parallel to a dispute between the tanna’im, as the Gemara relates: Two students were sitting before bar Kappara when cooked cabbage, cooked Damascene plums and pullets were set before him. Bar Kappara gave one of the students permission to recite a blessing. He hurried and recited a blessing over the pullets and his counterpart ridiculed him for gluttonously reciting the blessing that should have been recited later, first. Bar Kappara became angry with both of them, he said: I am not angry with the one who recited the blessing, but at the one who ridiculed him. If your counterpart is like one who never tasted the flavor of meat and was therefore partial to the pullet, and hurriedly ate it, why did you ridicule him? Bar Kappara continued and said to the second student: I am not upset at the one who ridiculed him, rather it is with the one who recited the blessing that I am angry. And he said: If there is no wisdom here, is there no elder here? If you are uncertain which blessing to recite first, couldn’t you have asked me, as I am an elder?

The Gemara attempts to infer from this story to the topic at hand: What? Is it not that they disagreed with regard to the following? The one who recited the blessing over the pullet first held that the blessing to be recited over both boiled vegetables and pullet is: By whose word all things came to be (שֶׁהַכֹּל נִהְיֶה בִּדְבָרוֹ), and, therefore, that which he prefers takes precedence and is eaten first. The one who ridiculed him held that over boiled vegetables one recites: Who creates fruit of the ground (בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה), and over pullet one recites: By whose word all things came to be (שֶׁהַכֹּל נִהְיֶה בִּדְבָרוֹ), and, therefore, the fruit takes precedence, as its blessing is more specific and therefore more significant.

The argument of which blessing to recite revolves around what is the determining factor. Do we recite a blessing over food we like better first or over food which has a more specific and thereby more significant blessing? Tosafot decides when we have two fruits before us, we recite the blessing over to fruit we like better first. When we have a choice between saying the blessing בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה or the blessing שֶׁהַכֹּל נִהְיֶה בִּדְבָרוֹ, we recite the former because it is more specific and thus more important. If one has a choice of the two fruits to eat and is one of the seven species, one should choose to bless the fruit of the seven species first.

This topic brought me back to my year in Israel as a rabbinical student. My friend and fellow student Avi Reisner took me to a Sephardic synagogue one Shabbat morning. At the Kiddush everybody was handed a cracker so we could say the blessing בּוֹרֵא מִינֵי מְזוֹנוֹת. Next we are given a fruit so we could say the blessing בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָעֵץ. Then we were given a vegetable like a carrot so we could say the blessing בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה. Finally we were given a hard-boiled egg so we could say the blessing שֶׁהַכֹּל נִהְיֶה בִּדְבָרוֹ. As you can see we were given the opportunity to say many different blessings in descending order of importance and specificity. That was a fun Kiddush!