Berakhot 39
There are so many rules for what blessing to say for each food source and in what order. How do observant people keep it all straight? There is so much to consider – whole bread, wheat bread, barley bread, sliced bread, dried bread, fruits – both sliced and whole, oils taken for pleasure and oils taken for medicine, cooked and raw cabbage, Damascus plums, pomegranates, bitter herbs, olives sized small and large with and without pits, onions, dill and the essence it leaves behind, turnips and beets – boiled, cooked, and simmering on the stove.
I love beets. The Talmud today outlines their benefits: “A cooked dish of beets is beneficial for the heart, good for the eyes and all the more so, for the intestines.” I grew up on my grandmother Ida’s borscht, which was a labor of love from her (she was always trying to feed her skinny granddaughter.) And the Talmud indicates that beet water has the same status as beets, which I assume covers soup.
My grandmother would have approved of fruit taking precedence over other foods. Whenever she greeted me at her door the first words out of her mouth were “you are too skinny, have a piece of fruit.” She was not a wealthy woman, but her refrigerator was stuffed with all kinds of fruit. I was a skinny teenaged girl who worked hard to achieve my thinness – I was proud to be among the thinnest girls in my school. My zaftig Jewish grandmother with all her fruit and east European food was a threat to me and we were in a constant tussle involving her offerings of food. My relationship with food was complicated at that age. Even today, I do not consider myself a “foody” and mostly eat for subsistence without thinking deeply about the food I eat and where it comes from. Today’s reading reminded me of the gift my grandmother gave me through all those offerings of fruit – a gift I did not appreciate very much at the time.
I will leave the story about Bar Kappara to those wiser than I am to decipher. He intervenes in a dispute between two students: one who says the prayer for chicken out of order and the other who mocks him for doing so, The Rabbi seemingly taught both students a lesson through the feedback he gave them. But when they both die the implication is that it is a result of the Rabbi’s anger. It is hard to make sense of the appropriateness of the punishment.
On a more positive note, here is a recipe for borscht in case anyone is inspired by today’s reading about beets: