There was a period on Shabbat morning, where I used to pray at the Yeshiva Chafetz Chaim. It was a beautiful, quite inspiring service. I got to know and eventually became good friends with a Rabbinical student named Noam Abramchic. One Shabbat morning, our conversation centered around food. Perhaps the reason the conversation gravitated toward food was because it’s at the end of the prayer services and everybody is hungry. Or perhaps those who know me understand it’s a predictable part of my nature to talk about food. The topic was deli. “I know of the best delicatessen that would beat any of New York’s establishments”, he ranted. “There’s a place in Chicago called Romanian and it’s out of this world.” I did not take Noam seriously, considering I’ve been eating fine deli since I was in diapers. “Do you really think any place on earth will compare to a New York deli?” I said to him. Soon after visiting his parents for the holidays, he brought me packaged pastrami from Romanian Delicatessen. “Try this” he said proudly. So I came home and I tried it. WOW! It’s amazing! This is really, really good pastrami.
A few years ago a friend David Bodenhiem said he received Romanian’s famous hotdogs (there are four kinds) from a pal coming back from Chicago. David said numerous friends of his in the Five Towns get packages through friends from Romanian for their special occasions. It reminds me of a particular popular 1970’s TV episode of M*A*S*H. The show takes place in Korea during the war in the 1950’s. The characters are doctors in a medical unit. The main character, Hawkeye gets a craving for “Adams Ribs” located – out of all places – in Chicago, and throughout the half hour episode goes through a lot of red tape to get this anticipated delivery. Finally, the package arrives. He and his companions are in the mess tent anxiously and triumphal opening and smelling the aroma of the food. The final scene has Hawkeye nervously going through the delivery bags in frustration. “What’s wrong Hawkeye?” one of the colleagues asked. Hawkeye replied, “They forgot the coleslaw!”
If we appreciate what G-d has done for us and are committed in acknowledging Him before we eat, then we should do it right. We have to try to give the proper blessing. We know if we have pastrami on club or rye, the blessing is Hamotzi lechem min hararetz. Bread is the most significant blessing you can recite. But what about sandwich wraps? One should know, this too is the blessing of hamotzi as well. Even though content of some wraps is mezonot, since you have the intention of having a meal as opposed to a snack, one would require to wash and recite al netilat yadayim and then hamotzi.
Bread and mezonot are considered in the category of important foods. The Torah attributes significance to the mezonot grain, wheat, and barley (INCLUDED IN WHEAT IS SPELT, INCLUDED IN BARLEY IS OATS AND RYE). These grains have an intrinsic importance because of their role in sustaining human life. There are rare times where one would eat bread and not recite hamotzi. These examples require the understanding of the concept in Jewish law called Ikar-main food and Tofel–secondary. Let’s say I’m sampling a taste of hot chili, one eats a bit of bread for no reason other than to soothe the harsh taste in his throat. Since the bread was not eaten to satisfy his hunger nor for his enjoyable taste, he is not required to make a hamotzi on the bread. The bread is included in the ha’adama blessing made on the chili.
Another example is with ice cream. Most people eat ice cream cones to enhance the taste of the ice cream. Therefore, the ice cream would require a shehakol and the cone (even though it is tofel) will require a mezonot. However, if one were to use an ice cream cone merely in place of a cup rather than enjoy the flavor, the cone will not require a separate blessing.
The mechanics of ikar and tofel are: Even though the tofel is subordinate to the ikar, the tofel is not considered to be so insignificant as to not require a bracha. Rather, we consider the bracha made on the ikar to extend to ‘cover’ the tofel as well. According to this approach, when a blessing of the ikar cannot be applied to cover the tofel, a separate bracha on the tofel will be required.
There is an art in the preparation of certain deli meats. Who out there remembers Bernstein’s on the Lower East Side? I would always put sweet red peppers on my big shmulk which consisted of four different kinds of meats on club or rye and, in addition, potato salad and coleslaw as sides. We always had a certain pride going to Bernstein’s because it was named, one year by the New York Times, as the best deli in the city. New Yorkers as well as Chicagoans take their deli very seriously. |