116 Joan S. Friedman
should say]“... who creates many living beings. Rabba bar Rav Hanan said to Abaye , and some say[he said it] to R. Yosef: What is the law? He said to him: Go and see what the people do”?
The Mishnah gives two opinions regarding the correct blessing to recite before drinking water, that of the anonymous Mish nah and that of Rabbi Tarfon. The Amora Rabba bar Rav Hanan asks which is the proper procedure. This is a logical question, because the Mishnah here gives two individual opinions?" and does not decide between them or offer a more authoritative statement from the Sages. Abaye (or Rav Yosef) responds,“Go and see what the people do.” In other words, the people’s actual practice will determine what the halakhah should be in this case. Their actual practice was, presumably, the way in which the halakhah was eventually fixed: one recites Rabbi Meir ’s version before drinking water and Rabbi Tarfon’s version after—even though Rabbi Tarfon was of the opinion that this was the blessing before drinking, and neither Tannaitic opinion says anything about a blessing after drinking. In this case, the“normative practice” of the people was apparently the source of the rabbinic law as it was eventually codified.”
Is this a case of minhag creating halakhah? It is to the extent that “custom determines which view is to be accepted when the halakhic authorities disagree as to what the law is with regard to a particular matter.” It is impossible to see this, however, as an example of Freehof ’s“people’s creativity.”“The people” did not formulate either of these blessings. The rabbis did. Nor did the people even originate the idea that one must recite a blessing before and after consuming food. The rabbis did, through their exegesis of Torah . The people, in other words, were already operating within parameters defined for them by rabbinic scholarship.
2. Pesahim 66a