Berachos 30b: Even if the king greets him, he may not interrupt Shmoneh Esrei to answer him.

Mishnah Berurah 104:1: Even gesturing during Shmoneh Esrei is forbidden, except to tell a crying child to keep quiet.

ברכות ל: אפילו המלך שואל בשלומו לא ישיבנו. כתב המ”ב בסימן ק”ד סק”א בשם השערי תשובה דאפילו רמיזא בעלמא אסור אם לא לתינוק הבוכה מותר לו לרמז לו בידיו כדי שישתוק.

It was the Friday night meal in the Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem. That Friday had been Purim, so everyone was still in the Purim mood. Eliezer Papelow was asked to get up and say a few words of Torah. He said, “The Mishnah Berurah brings from the Shaarei Teshuvah that if a child is crying in the middle of the silent Shmoneh Esreh, one may make hand signals to him to be quiet. But if you look in the Shaarei Teshuvah itself, you will see that he does not say that the child was crying; he says the child was laughing. Why did the Mishnah Berurah change the case? The answer is that it has to do with the names of the sefarim. The Shaarei Teshuvah gives a case of a child laughing, because when it comes to teshuvah, a child has nothing to worry about – he has no sins – so he laughs. But the Mishnah Berurah says he was crying, because when it comes to mishnah, learning, a child has very little, so he cries!”

Berachos 54a: All blessings in the Beis Hamikdash used to end with the words “Ad Haolam” (for example, Boruch Atah Hashem Elokei Yisroel ad haolam, boruch chonen hadaas). After the Saduccees denied Judaism and claimed that there was only one world, Chazal enacted to say, “Min haolam v’ad haolam” (from this world to the next world).

ברכות נד ע”א: כל חותמי ברכות שבמקדש היו אומרים: עד העולם. משקלקלו הצדוקים ואמרו אין עולם אלא אחד ־ התקינו שיהו אומרים: מן העולם ועד העולם.

Rabbi Pinchus Hirshprung told the following story about his rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Meir Shapiro. Reb Meir served as Agudath Israel’s representative in the Polish parliament. A non-religious Jew once taunted him, “What is a rav and rosh yeshiva like you doing in politics? Go back to your beis medrash!”

Reb Meir replied: The Mishnah says that in the Beis Hamikdash, they used to say only “ad haolam,” but when the heretics denied Olam Haba and claimed that the present physical world was the only world, Chazal changed the words of the blessing to say, “From this world to the next world.” Today, we can explain it the opposite way. Originally, rabbis used to spend all their time on matters of Torah, matters related to Olam Haba. But when the heretics came and got involved in politics, it became necessary to make a rabbi’s job “from this world to the next world.” Rabbis had to go into politics too in order to counter the influence of the heretics.

Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth gave a similar explanation of the story in the Gemara about Rav Sheishes and the heretic waiting for the king to pass (Berachos 58a). The heretic asked why a “broken vessel” like Rav Sheishes needed to come out and greet the king, but Rav Sheishes proved more astute in predicting when the king would come. Rav Sheishes explained how he knew: “Kingship on earth is like kingship in heaven.” Rashi learns that the heretic doubted Rav Sheishes because he was blind. But Rav Kreiswirth explained that the debate was about whether a talmid chacham’s views in politics carry any weight. The heretic said, “You just sit and learn Torah; what do you know about kings?” Rav Sheishes replied, “Kingship on earth is like kingship in heaven, and therefore only we who learn Torah understand what government is about.”   

Source: Mayim Chaim p. 150-152 and note 48

Berachos 6b: When a person needs to accept charity from others, his face changes colors like a krum. What is a krum? When Rav Dimi came, he said: There is a certain bird that lives in coastal cities, called a krum, which displays a rainbow effect in the sunlight.

ברכות ו ע”ב: כיון שנצטרך אדם לבריות ־ פניו משתנות ככרום, שנאמר: כרם זלת לבני אדם. מאי כרום? ־ כי אתא רב דימי אמר: עוף אחד יש בכרכי הים וכרום שמו, וכיון שחמה זורחת מתהפך לכמה גוונין.

Every time Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth traveled to Eretz Yisroel, he would bring along large sums of money that he had raised, and would distribute tzedaka to the needy. Once he was sitting and handing out money to one person after another, when his son Reb Dov asked him, “Doesn’t the Gemara say explicitly that when a person needs to accept charity, his face turns colors like a bird in the sunlight? Yet here in Yerushalayim the takers don’t seem troubled at all.” Rav Kreiswirth answered immediately with a smile, “That’s a Bavli, not a Yerushalmi.”

Source: Mayim Chaim, p. 41

[Rabbi Shmuel Nussbaum, author of the biography Mayim Chaim, raised a question. The Yerushalmi (Orlah 6a, quoted in Tosafos on Kiddushin 36b) makes a similar statement: that one who is supported by another person is embarrassed to look him in the face. (This fact of human nature is used as a device to remember that when a live grapevine is buried in the ground and then sprouts up again, as long as the new sapling’s leaves point away from the old vine, it is still deriving its nourishment from the old one, so it is not considered a new tree, and is therefore permitted. But once its leaves point to the old vine, it is growing on its own, so it is forbidden for three years.)

But there is a difference between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi. The Yerushalmi only says that one can’t look his benefactor in the face, but Rav Kreiswirth wasn’t the benefactor. He was only a middleman, distributing funds he had collected from others. The Bavli, on the other hand, says that even in such a case, the recipient is embarrassed to have to live off tzedaka, and his face turns colors.]

Berachos 61b: Once the evil government decreed that Jews were forbidden to study Torah. Papus ben Yehuda found Rabbi Akiva gathering groups in public and teaching Torah. He said to him, “Akiva, aren’t you afraid of the government?” He said to him, “I will give you a parable: A fox was walking on the bank of the river, and saw the fish gathering in one place and then another. ‘Why are you fleeing?’ he asked them. ‘From the nets cast by men,’ they said. He said to them, ‘Would you like to come up onto the dry land, and I will live with you just as my fathers lived with your fathers?’ They said to him: ‘Are you the one they call the wisest of the animals?’ You are not wise, but foolish. If in our element of life we are afraid, all the more so in our element of death!’ So too with us: if now, when we study Torah, our life and the length of our days (Devarim 30:20), we are killed, all the more so if we ignore Torah study!”

ברכות סא ע”ב: תנו רבנן: פעם אחת גזרה מלכות הרשעה שלא יעסקו ישראל בתורה, בא פפוס בן יהודה ומצאו לרבי עקיבא שהיה מקהיל קהלות ברבים ועוסק בתורה. אמר ליה: עקיבא, אי אתה מתירא מפני מלכות? אמר לו: אמשול לך משל, למה הדבר דומה ־ לשועל שהיה מהלך על גב הנהר, וראה דגים שהיו מתקבצים ממקום למקום, אמר להם: מפני מה אתם בורחים? אמרו לו: מפני רשתות שמביאין עלינו בני אדם. אמר להם: רצונכם שתעלו ליבשה, ונדור אני ואתם כשם שדרו אבותי עם אבותיכם? אמרו לו: אתה הוא שאומרים עליך פקח שבחיות? לא פקח אתה, אלא טפש אתהִ ומה במקום חיותנו אנו מתיראין, במקום מיתתנו על אחת כמה וכמהִ אף אנחנו, עכשיו שאנו יושבים ועוסקים בתורה, שכתוב בה (דברים ל׳) כי הוא חייך וארך ימיך ־ כך, אם אנו הולכים ומבטלים ממנה ־ על אחת כמה וכמה.

Before Theodor Herzl became a Zionist, he contemplated assimilation as a solution for anti-Semitism. He thought that Jews had devised the Jewish religion as a response to their rejection by the hostile outside world. Now, however, the outside world had since changed for the better, granting equality to the Jews, yet the Jews remained separate; this aroused anti-Semitism. The solution, therefore, was for Jews to assimilate.

In a conversation with his friend Ludwig Speidel, he compared Jews to seals which, according to the theory of evolution, were originally land animals that evolved to live in water. They could therefore evolve back into land animals again.

“However, anti-Semitism, which is a strong if unconscious force among the masses, will do the Jews no harm. I hold it to be a movement useful for the development of Jewish character. It is the education of a group by the surrounding populations and will perhaps in the end lead to its absorption. We are educated only through hard knocks. A sort of Darwinian mimicry will set in. The Jews will adapt themselves. They are like the seals, which a natural catastrophe cast into the ocean. There they took on the appearance and property of fish, which of course they are not. If they ever return to dry land and are allowed to remain there a few generations, they will do away with their finny feet.” (The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 10)

Amazingly, Herzl’s argument is exactly that of the fox in Rabbi Akiva’s parable. The fox says, “Come and live on the land with me, just as my fathers lived with your fathers.” In other words, the fox is arguing that the fish were not really created for the water. They originally lived on land, and only adapted to live in water due to the circumstances.

The fish’s response, and our response to Herzl is no! The Jewish people were created to live by the Torah. The Torah is not just a temporary response to circumstances. Therefore, leaving the Torah is like a fish leaving the water. Without Torah, the Jewish people would be unable to breathe and would certainly die out. Herzl thought you can take away Judaism from the Jews, and they can continue to be Jews. With his subsequent idea of Zionism, he, and his successors, continued to think the same way, except that the abandonment of Torah would take place on a national scale. The response to him is that Torah is the defining feature of Jews, and without it, there will be no Jews.

But there is more. The fish made a “kal vachomer” – they told the fox that coming onto the land would solve nothing as far as the fishermen, and it would create the additional danger of lack of oxygen. Here too, time proved that Jews who assimilate – whether on a personal or a national level – are still attacked by anti-Semites, and even if they escape, die out spiritually. Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, died personally at the hands of the Romans, but kept Klal Yisroel alive by passing down the Torah to the next generation.

Berachos 38a: On dates that were pounded into a paste, one says the bracha, “Borei pri ha’eitz.” Why? Because they are still in their natural state.

Rashi: Somewhat pounded but not completely pulverized.

ברכות לח ע”א. והלכתא תמרי ועבדינהו טרימא מברכין עלוייהו בורא פרי העץ, מאי טעמא במילתייהו קיימי כדמעיקרא.

רש”י: ושם טרימא כל דבר הכחוש קצת ואינו מרוסק.

שו”ע או”ח ר”ב ס”ז: תמרים שמיעכן ביד ועשה מהם עיסה והוציא מהם גרעיניהם אפילו הכי לא נשתנית ברכתן ומברך עליהם בורא פרי העץ ולבסוף ברכה מעין שלש: הגה ולפי זה ה״ה בלטווערן הנקרא פאווידל״א מברכין עליהם בורא פרי העץ וי״א לברך עליהם שהכל (ת״ה סי׳ כ״ט וב״י בשם הטור) וטוב לחוש לכתחלה לברך שהכל אבל אם בירך בפה״ע יצא כי כן נראה עיקר.

שם ר”ג ס”ז: בשמים שחוקים ומעורבים עם סוקר, הבשמים עיקר ומברך עליהם כדין ברכת אותן בשמים.

מ”ב שם סקי”ב: שחוקים – היינו אף כשהם שחוקים ונימוחים לגמרי עד שאין ניכר בהם תארן הראשון כלל אפ”ה לא נשתנית ברכתן עי”ז לכו”ע דדרך הבשמים לכתוש באופן זה. סקי”ג: הבשמים עיקר – היינו אפילו כשהיה צוקע”ר הרוב ומעט בשמים וכעין שנוהגים בינינו וכו’. 

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach held that the bracha on chocolate is borei pri ha’eitz. He printed this psak in Minchas Shlomo (v. 1 page 610) and followed it himself. Once, his grandchildren were visiting him and chocolate bars were served. One of them asked, “Zaidy, what bracha should I make?” “Go ask your grandmother,” was his reply.

When he reported back that she had told him to make “shehakol”, R’ Shlomo Zalman said, “So why are you coming back to me again?”

Source: Making of a Godol, p. 139

[The logic for saying “shehakol” is, apparently, that the chocolate is completely ground up and bears no resemblance to the original cacao bean. This is similar to the date paste mentioned by the Rema in 202:7 on which one makes “shehakol” when the dates are completely pulverized.

The flaw in this, says R’ Shlomo Zalman, is that while dates can be, and in fact are, eaten in their natural state, cacao beans are bitter and impossible to eat as they are. They must be ground up and mixed with other ingredients to be edible. In this respect they are similar to spices, on which one makes “ha’eitz” even when they are mixed with a majority of sugar.

Furthermore, he argues, Sephardim should definitely make “ha’eitz” since they follow the Mechaber who says that even on completely pulverized dates, one makes “ha’eitz”.

As to the reason why he didn’t pasken for his grandson, perhaps he held that since his psak ran counter to the world’s custom, it would not be right to confuse children with it, especially since one fulfills his obligation in any case with “shehakol.” Only those capable of understanding the reasoning should follow it.

One additional point: R’ Shlomo Zalman begins his piece by writing that he understands why people make “shehakol” when drinking hot cocoa, based on the Shaarei Teshuva 202:19. The Shaarei Teshuva does say that “shehakol” is what the world makes on coffee, tea and hot cocoa. But looking at the Panim Meiros 2:190 he quotes on the subject of coffee and tea, it’s far from clear why that practice is correct. The Panim Meiros gives many reasons to make “ha’adamah” on tea and mentions a great man, Rabbi Shmuel Shatin, who did so; when asked why he went against the prevalent custom, he replied, “Any custom not established by chachamim is not a custom.” Still, the Panim Meiros concludes that he personally says “shehakol” because he does not want to do anything that looks strange to people.]