Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Eikev

Just Desserts

August 14, 2025

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Rav Ari Stauber

And you shall eat and you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless Hashem, your G-d, for the good Land that He gave you.

Dvarim 8:10

According to one stage of the Gemara, this pasuk serves as the source for reciting a bracha rishonah, based on a kal vachomer (an a fortiori argument).[1] In cases of uncertain obligation, the Chayei Adam, Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, and Mishnah Brurah advise that one take a sugar cube and make shehakol over it to exempt the uncertain food.

The most common contemporary application of this involves ices and ice cream. According to the Shulchan Aruch (O.C. 177), dessert (kinuach seudah) is not classified as part of the meal, so one recites a separate bracha rishonah on it. But Acharonim suggest two reasons that one should not make a bracha on ice cream: First, it is more common to eat dessert today than it was in earlier times, and it has now become part of the meal. Second—cited in the name of R’ Moshe Feinstein—frozen desserts melt in the mouth and thus are swallowed in liquid form, as a beverage.[2]

Some people make shehakol over a piece of candy or chocolate, which certainly requires a bracha, and exempt the ice cream thereby. One could argue that both the suggestion of the Acharonim to use sugar and the contemporary practice of using candy are questionable, due to concerns about the correct bracha on those foods. Some poskim recommend using salt instead, to avoid a safeik bracha. But others defend the practice and explain that candy is preferable to salt, from which one generally derives no benefit whatsoever.

[1] The Gemara concludes that simple logic is the true basis for reciting a bracha rishonah.

[2] Some talmidim of R’ Moshe argue that this applies only to ices, which melt into liquid, while others hold that it applies also to ice cream, though it contains other ingredients as well.