Q&A: Eating Before Prayer
Eating Before Prayer
Question
Hello Rabbi, I am organizing an intensive conference lasting several days.
The place where the conference is being held only provides breakfast at a very early hour. Is it permissible, ab initio, to pray after breakfast?
Answer
That is problematic. At most, arrange something for yourselves afterward. If you are organizing the conference, I would expect them to be willing to accommodate you—at least to let you prepare something for yourselves.
In a pressing situation, perhaps there is room to be lenient, as the authorities were lenient for someone who is ill or hungry and cannot concentrate in prayer without eating first (Orach Chayim, sec. 89:4, and Mishnah Berurah there, s.k. 26). The basis for the leniency is not the pressure itself, but that because of the pressure, eating first does not express haughtiness, and therefore there is no prohibition in it.
Discussion on Answer
What do you think of the reasoning that the nature of the prohibition in the Talmudic passage in Berakhot sounds aggadic and is not a full-fledged prohibition?
Possible. And this can be reinforced by the fact that in Sanhedrin 63 all the prohibitions derived from this prohibition are brought, and eating before prayer is not mentioned. True, this can be rejected, since according to most opinions this is only an asmachta. Only Maimonides brought it there as a prohibition.
What counts as very early? Now in the summer sunrise is a little after 5, and in certain situations you can even pray before that. Are people there really getting up that early?
Let them immerse in a mikveh and pray according to Nusach Sefard—Hasidim eat before prayer. http://www.chabad.org.il/Magazines/Article.asp?ArticleID=5616&CategoryID=1249
Incidentally, in the second part of the ninth root in Maimonides, it seems that “You shall not eat over the blood” is a Torah-level prohibition and not merely an asmachta.