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Berachos

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Rabbi David Sperling

Elul 13, 5776
Question
Regarding hilchos berachos, a fruit salad with both haetz and ha’adama, the beracha follows the majority of the salad. If there is 51% ha’etz then you make that beracha. My question is what happens if you receive a second helping and the ratio is reversed? Do you now make a ha’adama or did the first beracha take care of all future helpings? Tied to this same question I guess is do you examine the ratio in your own bowl or do you examine the ratio in the main serving dish where the mixture was taken from??? TF
Answer
Shalom, Thank you for your question. The laws of brachot are particularly intricate, and your question is a good one. When we have a mixture of two types of food, each with their own different blessing, many Rabbis rule (as you have written in your question) that when neither is subordinate to the other (such as cream on strawberries), but they are equally important, then we say the blessing on the type that is the majority. [Although there are opinions that rule differently, this is a major opinion that is followed by many authorities]. The basis for this ruling is that the blessing also covers the second (minority) fruit. Thus, the one bracha covered both types of food. This being so, even if you ate all the ha'etz, for example, and had only some pieces of melon left over, they do not need a separate bracha (see Mishna Brurah 168, 46). In general one does not need to say a blessing on a second serving of the same food, as it is covered by the blessing said over the first serving. Based on this we can answer your question. After you said a bracha on your fruit salad, the bracha covered the second (minority) ingredients also. This first bracha also covers additional servings of the fruit salad – even if the minority food is now the majority. Just as during eating the salad, you do not reassess the ratio of the foods after each bight, so too you do not need to reassess each serving, because the first bracha covers the entire act of eating the food. As too your question if we follow the majority of the food in the main serving dish, or in your plate – I did not find this mentioned explicitly in the sources. If the salad is well mixed it would seem that the ratios should be the same. If they are not mixed, then it is not so clear that the two types of foods are considered as a mixture to be covered by one blessing. However, if by chance it happened that your serving had a different ratio of the foods than the main serving dish, it would seem to me that you should follow the majority of the type in you bowl, as the blessing is initially over the food in your plate. May you be Blessed with only good.
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