Reply To: Ladies First – Is it respectful or not?

Joseph: My impression is that your position the whole time was: Why should we care what the Goyim do, and base our ideas of wrong and right on the Goyim?

This is a very valid point. I think the answer is that I think we do find that according to Halacha, there are times we are supposed to base our actions on common custom.

One example would be in terms of Hilchos Brachos, determining if pizza is a “pas haba b’kisnin” in which case you only wash and say Hamotzi if you are eating 2 slices or if it’s not a “pas haba b’kisnin” in which case it is like bread and you wash and say Hamotzi for any amount the same as you do for bread.

According to Rav Moshe Feinstein,zatsal, pizza is “pas haba b’kisnin” and you only wash and say Hamotzi for 2 slices. This psak is based on the fact that at that time, it was normal for people to eat pizza as a snack. I think someone told me that at that time, people used to buy pizza from vendors on the street or at baseball games and eat it as a snack.

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zatsal, (as quoted in Rav Bodner’s sefer on Hilchos Brachos) poskened that in EY, pizza is not “pas haba b’kisnin” since it is not normally eated as a snack, and t/f in EY, one has to wash and say Hamotzi on any amount of pizza. He was unsure about the US, because at that time, it wasn’t clear what the custom was in the US regarding how common it was to eat pizza as a snack.

A few years ago, Rav Forscheimer and Rav Bodner poskened that pizza is no longer “pas haba b’kisnin” in the US and one must wash and say hamotzi on any amount of pizza. Their psak was based on the fact that a survey was done showing that the vast majority of Americans do not consider pizza to be a snack. In their psak, they wrote that until now, it was impossible to determine if pizza is considered a snack in the US or not, but now that a survey has been done, we have proof that it is not ordinarily eaten as a snack and t/f it’s not “pas ha ba b’kisnin” and it is pure hamotzi.

I was very surprised by this psak, as well as the ones from Rav Moshe, Zatsal and Rav Shlomo Zalman, Zatsal, since it means that we base halacha on what the Goyim do. Apparently we do, even when it comes to eating habits, which is something which I would have thought should be determined by your community and not the wider goyish world. It is interesting to me that the way a goy in the US eats pizza makes a bigger difference than what the Yidden in EY do (in terms of determining the halacha for Jews in the US). Like, why should we care that goyim eat pizza on the streets or at baseball games? We’re not even supposed to eat that way. But apparently, according to Halacha it does matter.

In our case (of ladies first), we are talking about manners and politeness. To me, it seems pretty obvious that manners are determined by the general society that we live in. I think in general, all our standards of politeness are based on the general society in which we live.

(To anyone reading this: please note that I live in Israel, and Shabbos has been over for a while)