Discussion between Charles Koppelman and Daniel

10:47 PM

A: Why use language of לברוא in brachot?

(What follows is my opinion and no sources) You may as well ask the same question for "shehakol nihyeh biDvaro" - Why do we talk about G-d creating with Words for things like eggs which clearly come from chickens, or Oreos which clearly come from the Oreo factory? (Ok, it's possible that Oreos ...

Daniel

Then what about mezonot? That should be in a similar category to bread w.r.t. its status of "aliveness" yet we still use the language borei minei mezonot

Charles Koppelman

@Daniel No, the wheat was alive. The bread is constructed

Daniel

The bracha for wheat isn't mezonot. The bracha for cake is. If the reason is because of being alive, why is bread different from cake?

Charles Koppelman

@Daniel Why are the brachot different at all? I thought it was the degree of human intervention in the class of food.

@Daniel and what? Your bracha for wheat isn't mezonot? Mine is

Daniel

I don't think so. Bread can be made with flour, water, and yeast. Cake could be made with hundreds of ingredients.

Charles Koppelman

10:47 PM

Where do you get that wheat isn't mezonot? Cakes are only mezonot because they're made from wheat. Bread is specifically a new thing.

Daniel

The bracha for wheat is ha-adamah

Charles Koppelman

@Daniel I meant wheat that has been cooked.

@Daniel It seems like I need to add some clarity to my answer. But I really think that in terms of brachot, cake is just a specialized form of cracker, while bread gets its own merit.

Daniel

I agree with that.

So why is cracker borei but bread is not?

Charles Koppelman

A better question is "why is bread yotzei" since that's the real outlier

And that's the perspective i should have come from

Daniel

But that's not my question

Charles Koppelman

10:51 PM

@Daniel bread has much more processing

Daniel