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Thought for the Day: A Kula in Brachos is a Chumra in Sukkos

Before benefiting from this world, one must make a bracha.  That, of course, is why we make a bracha  before eating.  So far so good.  One may ask, however, how much benefit are you allowed per bracha?  Obviously you don't need to make a new bracha every time you chew, even though you get additional enjoyment by the fresh flavor released.  Just as obviously, you can't make one bracha upon becoming a gadol and use that as carte blanche for the rest of your life.  Somewhere between those extremes the answer lies.

The basic answer is that the bracha covers a single eating adventure.  The adventure is usually ended amicably by deciding you are finished eating and (when appropriate) reciting the appropriate bracha acharona.  However, an eating event can be prematurely ended by "shinui makom" -- changing location.  The rules of how much change and for which kinds of events and foods are not trivial (shocking, eh?), but the guidelines are pretty simple.  If you abandon your place of eating, then your bracha rishona has expired and to eat more would require at least a new bracha rishona (and sometimes also a bracha acharona).  What is called "abandonment" is also not trivial, but again in broad strokes: snacks of foods that are eaten on the go (fruit, candies, drinks, etc) are easily abandoned, formal sit down meals are pretty hard to abandon, and snacks of foods that would qualify for "kiddush bimkom s'uda" occupy a middle ground.

To be more concrete, suppose you are drinking (one of) your morning coffee(s).  If you would step outside to get your mail or change the sprinkler, then you would need to make a new sh'ha'kol on your return to drinking.  On the other hand, if you were eating (one of) your morning danish(es) and were to step out, you would not need to make a new m'zonos; because there is more k'vi'us (you are more settled) when eating the danish.  Suppose you are drinking coffee with the danish?  Now you can step out and come back with no new brachos at all; the event is "danish with coffee", so they both have a k'vi'us.

Now comes sukkah.  A man is allowed to drink coffee outside the sukkah; it has no k'vi'us.  A danish, on the other hand, must be eaten in the sukkah.  It is going to come out, then, that if you are drinking coffee with a danish in the sukkah, that you would not be allowed to finish your coffee outside the sukkah.  Since the event was "coffee with danish", and that even has k'vi'us, the event must be completed inside the sukkah.  Even if you finished the danish, the coffee is still part of the initial event.

Isn't that a cool example of "wake up and smell the coffee"?

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