Q&A: Regarding the blessing “Who has given the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and night”
Regarding the blessing “Who has given the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and night”
Question
I wanted to ask the Rabbi about what is written in the Talmud: when one hears the sound of a hen, one recites, “Who has given the rooster understanding.” According to the views that specifically only if one heard it does one recite the blessing, but if one did not hear it then one does not recite it (and one does not just recite it in general “for the way of the world,” as those who disagree maintain), I was wondering: is this a law of hearing like that of hearing the shofar blast, where the sound has to come directly from the shofar into his ear? And if so, is one also required here to hear the actual rooster itself? Or is the whole point here to reach a level of feeling of gratitude and then recite the blessing in that emotional mode, and if so, then perhaps one could also reach that through hearing a rooster on a recording or on YouTube or from a successful imitation by a rooster impersonator (David the impersonator and the like)?
Answer
I don’t know. In practice, everyone recites the blessing without hearing a rooster, and not an imitation or a recording either.
Discussion on Answer
Serious questions in Jewish law. 🙂
My intuition is that it requires a live rooster, but maybe an illusion that causes it to crow is also fine. You can of course argue the opposite, and that would also be fine.
In short, what is needed here is the discernment of the human “sekhvi,” not that of the rooster “sekhvi,” in order to answer the question of the illusion — to distinguish between your reasoning and my ability to suggest the opposite reasoning, so as to decide the practical law according to that view. Otherwise it really would turn into a serious question in Jewish law of a blessing recited in vain, which as is known, at the moment the Holy One, blessed be He, said “Do not bear [the name of the Lord your God in vain],” the world trembled… five hundred parasangs by five hundred parasangs. Apropos “serious questions in Jewish law,” this is not even a light question, since it is not practical Jewish law; but if the Rabbi is specifically looking for a serious question, I have an example of that from just this past Sabbath: I saw in the Hidabroot leaflet, in Rabbi Abraham Yosef’s Jewish law column from Holon, a discussion of the law regarding cleaning ears with cotton swabs on the Sabbath, with the issue there being from the standpoint of the prohibition of squeezing. That is a serious question in Jewish law because it is a practical question — which, as stated, is not true of my question, and so its seriousness completely disappears.
Right, I know that in practice it has been ruled that one recites the blessing for the way of the world. I emphasized that I am asking according to that view which holds that one should recite it only when one actually hears it. And I will add another aspect to the question: even if you were to say that it has to be specifically the live sound of a rooster, what would the law be if someone put the rooster in a lit place in order to confuse it into thinking that day had arrived (as is done today in coops so that the hens will lay eggs), and because of all that the rooster crowed, even though this did not come from its own distinguishing between day and night — would one have to recite the blessing over such a crow?