#803: What brachah on seedless fruit?
There are poskim who argue that seedless grapes are not considered part of the gefen species and we should therefore refrain from saying borei pri hagafen on their wine. The responsa of the Ohr Gadol of Minsk (19th century halachic authority) is well-known, where he ruled that the wine in his community should no longer be produced from seedless grapes; he had wide support for this position among his contemporaries.
Some authorities go so far as to argue that if a fruit does not have seeds, it is not a fruit according to halachah. This is based, in part, on the pasuk (verse) in Bereishis, "Oseh pri l'mino asher zaro vo" ([a fruit tree] producing fruit according to its kind in which its seed is found)—to be considered a bona fide fruit, a species must contain seeds. However, there is no real source to support this interpretation as the definitive meaning of the pasuk; the reality is that there are many types of fruit that are seedless.
There are esrogim from Morocco that have no seeds, but they are nonetheless accepted by most poskim to be kosher for arba’as haminim (the Four Kinds [on Sukkos]). Some of the esrogim of that locale do produce visible seeds. In fact, some posit that the “seedless” variety has seeds so insignificant as to be unnoticeable, but they are technically present.
A parallel argument for seedless grapes has been put forth in halachah. There is also scientific support for this phenomenon—esrogim have been tested and the DNA found to be identical in both seeded and seedless varieties; in other studies, genetic mutation has been hypothesized to cause seedless fruit to fail to produce the thick outer layer that defines its seeds, but they are allegedly there.
The halachic majority rules that both seedless and seeded grapes produce wine that is borei pri hagafen. In fact, we find Rishonim who regard seedless grapes as more meshubach (praiseworthy) than their counterparts, referring to a special name given for this variety in the Torah: soreik. (Some might continue to argue that since it’s called soreik it’s not hagafen, but this is not supported in halachah. Soreik is simply a name for a particular strain of the general gefen species.) Indeed, some Rishonim say that the grapes that Noach planted in his vineyard after the Mabul (Flood) were seedless.
In practice, we recite the brochos of borei pri haetz and borei pri hagafen over seedless grapes and their wine, respectively, as has been the custom for many generations.