Continuing on my theme of growing up in the ’70s, recall the Flinstones Chewable. Every morning before school, I would have a bowl of cereal and a Flinstones Chewable – a multivitamin shaped in the form of a Flinstones character and tasting more or less like a sweet tart. The current official description of Flinstones Chewables reads, “A wide range of nutrients in an easy-to-chew, fruit-flavored tablet to support overall wellness in growing bodies.” We did not think we were “eating” the vitamin, rather we thought we were taking a medicine-like substance for our health. Still, the Flinstone Chewables were not unpleasant. They were like candy and sometimes we would eat several at a time because we thought they were candy. Should I have said a blessing before ingesting a Flinstones Chewable? If so, which of my six blessings was appropriate?

Today’s Daf answers these questions for me. First, note that generally we do not say a blessing on medicines. When I take my synthetic thyroid by swallowing a pill before I brush my teeth, I am not going to bless it as food. Some foods, however, are taken for therapeutic purposes. For instance, people drink cranberry juice for urinary tract issues. If I just wanted to enjoy a glass of cranberry juice, everyone agrees I should bless it first. However, if I am drinking it to help with urinary tract issues (perhaps I don’t even like the taste), do I need a blessing. The Talmud concludes that foods that have medicinal purposes should be blessed before we ingest them whether our intention is to eat them as food or to consume them for a medicinal purpose.

We get some examples of therapeutic foods in Talmudic times. For instance, we learn of Shattisa, which was flour made from moist kernels that are toasted and then mixed with oil, salt and water. We are not told the medicinal qualities of Shattisa, only that when particularly loose people generally made it for therapeutic purposes and when it was thicker people usually made it for food. We also learn about a laxative called “Egyptian Zisom” made from wheat or barley and saffron and salt. Some people drank this mixture as a beverage (the equivalent of the way we regard prune juice today). We also learn some other ancient food customs. For instance, we learn that cabbage, beets and pumpkins were generally eaten cooked, not raw. I love raw cabbage and raw beets. I am not sure why the assumption was that they would be cooked before being eaten.

There are two Talmuds – the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. There are two Talmuds because there were two ancient centers of Rabbinic learning. There is a lot of overlap between the two Talmuds, but there are some differences. We learn sometimes that our Babylonian scholars (we generally read the Babylonian Talmud) would receive a scholar from Israel who would offer an opinion on an unresolved dispute in the Babylonian academies. We get a couple of instances of this practice today. However, there was a difference between a scholar and someone who memorized large portions of texts. We are dealing with oral law and we are also dealing with a society that had not developed printing or cheap paper. When a visiting reciter of law contradicts the Rabbis of Babylonia in today’s Daf, the Rabbis dismiss the messenger saying he must of mis-remembered the ruling. This shows the difficulty of communication over long distances in an age without reliable printed materials.

I am not a Rabbinic scholar. If you really want to know whether we are required to recite a blessing over our Flinstone Chewables, then you should consult a real scholar. Based on today’s Daf, however, I suspect that we would say a blessing over the vitamin. We regarded them as a treat. Unlike liquid medicines that were disgusting, the Flinstones Chewables seemed like candy to my siblings and I. Occasionally we would sneak to where they were stored and eat them as candy. I am not sure blindfolded that I could tell the difference between a Flinstones Chewable and a Sweet Tart. In truth, I am not sure they had much more beneficial health effects than a Sweet Tart, but that is for another blog.