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Should flour receive borei pri ha'adama or shehakol? The sugya in Brachos 36a reveals two ways to view transformed foods: as degraded versions of the original (making flour a worse way to eat wheat) or as new objects with their own status (making flour its own entity moving toward bread).
This shiur explores a complex sugya in Masechta Brachos 36a dealing with brachos on transformed foods. The Gemara (גמרא) discusses whether kimcha d'chiti (wheat flour) receives a borei pri ha'adama or shehakol, with Rav Yehuda holding it gets borei pri ha'adama and Rav Nachman saying shehakol. The fundamental question is whether transformation creates a new object with its own bracha or represents a degraded form of the original food. Rabbi Zweig explains that there are two distinct issues: how we deal with flour as an entity, and how we deal with wheat that has been processed. As far as the original wheat is concerned, making it into flour is an ishtana l'greyusa (degradation) - it's worse to eat flour than wheat kernels. However, flour itself might be considered ishtana l'mayusa (improvement) because it's moving toward becoming bread.
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Brachos 36a
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