Q&A: Holding food in your hand before making a blessing
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Holding food in your hand before making a blessing
Question
Is holding the food in your hand before making a blessing a rabbinic law? And is holding it in your right hand also a rabbinic law? And similarly, if this is ruled in the Shulchan Arukh but is not itself a rabbinic law, am I still obligated to do it?
Answer
The source of this is in Berakhot 43b, regarding wine and oil. It seems that the rule is to hold whatever one is making the blessing over. The practice of holding it in the right hand is because everything is done with the right hand, and the Talmud itself there seems to indicate this, since it distinguishes between the right and the left and says that one makes the blessing over what he is holding in his right hand.