What brocho is hydroponic lettuce

My Family doesn’t use it for the seder since there is a shitta that says it is Shakol.

Hold on a minute!

Although most follow the opinion that it is she’hakol…There are TWO opinions!!

People, don’t make up answers based on partial knowledge! If you don’t know ALL about it, your little knowledge is dangerous!

These are the opinions –

She’hakol: Chayei Adam 51:17 & Nishmas Adam 152:1, Yechaveh Da’as 6:12, and Machzeh Eliyahu 25-29

Ha’Adoma: Chazon Ish, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (Vezos HaBracha, Birur Halacha #24), Shevet HaLevi (1:205), Teshuvos V’Hanhagos 2:149, and Rav Shmuel Kaminetzky (Kovetz Halachos, Pesach 24:6)

places – “My Family doesn’t use it for the seder since there is a shitta that says it is Shakol.”

Although you should respect your family minhag, that is not the ruling of other poskim.

Chazon Ish (Kilayim 13:16) conclusively proves from Gemara, Pesachim 35b that wheat that grew unattached to the ground (e.g. in a flowerpot) may be used for matzah at the Seder. Since many of the requirements for marror, including that it must be produce of the “land”, are derived from the halachos of matzah (see Gemara, Pesachim 39a) it follows that hydroponically-grown marror may surely be used at the Seder.

Loshon -” a fruit cannot change its brocho”, going down that road, you need to make a HaEtz on coffee. (comes from tree!)

So loshon, pshat is like this: It is the derecch of using that fruit that matters. No one eats coffee pods. The way it is used is in coffee, which is a drink. Likewise, cocao peas are not eaten but used in chocolate. = where they are unrecognizable. Therefore it is shehakol on coffee and also on chocolate. Got it?

Coffee would be ho’etz if one were eating the coffee itself. It’s only shehakol because one throws out the coffee after cooking it, and one drinks the water, which is halachically considered not to contain any of the coffee’s substance (ta’am ein bo mamosh).

Which leads me to consider the odd question of what exactly is in a jar of instant coffee. It is simply the “ta’am” that was infused into the water when it was brewed, so if halocho considers it not to exist then the jar must be empty! And if it doesn’t exist then how can there be a problem with cooking it on shabbos?

Milhouse, your analysis is slightly off. It isn’t that the coffee does not exist!

Brochos 39a: Mei Silka K’silka-the water that beets were cooked in has the same berachah as the beets themselves. Basically, this means that when you cook vegetables in water, the water itself is infused with the essence of the vegetable.

This would apply too to coffee and tea and beer, EXCEPT –

Rosh explains that the water will only acquire a new Berachah-identity if, and only if, one is cooking the soup in order to eat the vegetables also. Therefore, by coffee and tea, when we do not eat the vegetables (pods / plants) the water/soup remains she’hakol.

Magen Avraham 202:22: Dried fruit such as apples, pears and plums that are poached in water you say “Borei Pri Ha’etz” on drinking their water (juice), and this is how I behave.

Even though coffee and tea are specifically grown and used exclusively as a beverage (which would cause a brocha of ha’etz or ha’adoma, in contrast to beer that barley is used not exclusively for drinking), the poskim state: brocha is she’hakol because the water is the main ingredient (see Shulchan Aruch Harav 202:12, Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 53:3, Yechaveh Da’as 4:42)