In these two weeks' worth of pages, most of the discussion has been about blessings over food - both before we eat and after we eat. The rabbis discuss the importance of the 7 species indigenous to the land of Israel (wheat, barley, grape, pomegranate, fig, olive and date honey) and how they supersede other foods eaten at the same meal. The rabbis discuss eating in groups of three in order to invite the group to recite the grace after meals and who should be the one to do the inviting. And the rabbis discuss the minimum amount of food to be eaten to require a blessing (an olive or an egg - answer is olive).
Over the course of these 14 pages of lengthy discussion of details a few interesting side stories emerge:
1. What was the fruit eaten in the Garden of Eden? Was it grape since wine leads to trouble? Was it wheat since a baby doesn't talk till it eats grain? Was it fig since that is what God dressed Adam and Eve after they ate? (Answer is fig.)
2. The discussion of the blessing over spices leads the rabbis to discuss how scholars should properly go out in public. They can wear perfume on their body but not on their clothes because that would be effeminate. Scholars also shouldn't be seen with patches on their shoes, shouldn't be seen with a woman in the marketplace, and shouldn't be seen with an "am ha'aretz" (an ignoramus).
3. Which leads the rabbis to discuss what is an ignoramus. They answer that an ignoramus is one who doesn't pray 3 times a day, or doesn't put on tefillin, or doesn't have a mezuzah on his house, or who doesn't provide a Jewish education for his children, or even doesn't have students of his own. This discussion is fascinating because it reflects the rabbis' different attitudes of who they can be associated with. Some are elitists and expect everyone to be like them (to be scholars and have students) but others are realists and are willing to set the bar really low.
4. Only at the end of these pages do the rabbis finally explain why we say the blessings we do in the grace after meals. We are to be reminded of Moses, Joshua, David & Solomon and the martyrs of Beitar (the last community to fall to Rome in 135 CE).
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