Halakhah su Genesi 24:33

A person ought to be modest in his eating and drinking, not be short-tempered at the table,⁴Derekh Eretz Rabba 6. not eat or drink standing, nor eat before the fourth hour of the day.⁵Derekh Eretz Rabba 7, around 10:00 AM (van Loopik, 115). When two are eating, each one waits for the other to take from the plate, but with three, one does not wait. A person should not grab in his hand a serving larger in size than an egg, because that is being a glutton.⁶Derekh Eretz Rabba 6. One should not wipe the plate with his fingers, not eat from a head of garlic or onion but from its leaves.⁷Ibid. And one should not bite from a piece of food and then give it to his companion, because not all creatures feel the same way [about how hygienic this would be].⁸Ibid., 9. One should not bite off piece of bread with one’s teeth and then return it to the table. Once it happened that there was someone who picked up a piece of bread and let it hang from his teeth. R. Akiba said to him, “Not so, my son. You might as well put your heel on it and rip it off.”⁹Ibid., 7. A person should not drink his cup in one gulp, and if he does so, he is a glutton. Two sips are polite; three sips, vulgar.¹⁰Ibid., 6. One should not drink from one’s cup and then give it to his companion because of the health risk. Once it happened to R. Akiba when he was a guest at someone’s house that his host gave him a cup from which he had sipped. R. Akiba said to him, “Drink it yourself.” Ben Azzai said to him (the host), “How long will you keep giving R. Akiba cups that have been sipped from!?”¹¹Ibid., 9. A person should not put the plate on top of the bread. Once it happened to R. Akiba when he was a guest at someone’s house that his host took a piece of food and put the plate on it. R. Akiba grabbed it and ate it. He said to his host, “How could I imagine that you would be hurt by lukewarm water when you’re not even hurt by boiling water?”¹²Ibid. The story “proves” that it is wrong to cover food with the plate. Following Chavel’s explanation, I think Rabbi Akiba reproaches his host for ungraciously not offering him the piece of food and trying to hide it under the plate. R. Akiba explains his own bold gesture -grabbing the food and eating – euphemistically. In other words, with someone as rude as you who doesn’t know better than to put a plate on a piece of food, only something as rude as what I did (“boiling water”), not a gentle or subtle hint (“lukewarm water”), could get it across to you just how wrong and rude you were to put the plate on top of the food.

Five are the things they said about bread: (1) Don’t put raw meat on bread; (2) don’t put the cup on top of the bread; (3) don’t put the plate on top of the bread; (4) don’t throw the bread; and (5) don’t sit on the food – so it is taught in the laws of Derekh Eretz.¹³Ibid.Rejoice over your table when the hungry come and enjoy from your table, for that will lengthen your days in this world and earn you life in the world to come. And so also from Derekh Eretz we learn: “Let no guest say, ‘Give me and I shall eat,’ until they speak to him, though it is not necessary to say explicitly that he should eat when on the table in front of him is whatever he needs and is able to eat. For thus it is written in the Torah: “But when food was set before him, he said, ‘I will not eat until I have said what I have to say.'”¹⁴Gen 24:33. Who said anything to Eliezer about eating that he should reply, “I will not eat,” unless he was responding to the fact that the food was prepared, set before him, and up to him to eat? There was no one putting himself between him and his food for him to say to him “I will” or “I will not eat.”