Study Berakhot folio 38A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
thick [ke’avin], so that they appear like loaves of bread, they are obligated in ḥalla, and if he shaped them like boards [kelimmudin], they are exempt, since they will certainly only be used for kutaḥ. Abaye said to Rav Yosef: What blessing is recited over the dough of the ground? Rav Yosef said
Mar Zutra based his meal on this dough, and he recited: Who brings forth bread from the earth, beforehand and the 3 blessings of Grace after Meals thereafter. Since he based his meal on it, he considered it to be bread.
Mar bar Rav Ashi said: With these types of bread, a person fulfills his obligation to eat matza on Passover. What is the reason? Because we call it bread of affliction, and in that sense, it is in the category of matza.
And with regard to blessings, Mar bar Rav Ashi said: Over this date honey one recites: By Whose word all things came to be. What is the reason that one does not recite: Who creates fruit of the tree, as he does over the date itself? Because date honey is not the essence of the fruit, but merely mois
In accordance with whose opinion does he recite that blessing? In accordance with the opinion of this tanna, as we learned in a Mishnah: If a non-priest ate date honey, apple wine or vinegar made from grapes of autumn that grow stunted at the end of the season and are unfit for wine production, or a