Since the mitzvah of birchas ha'mazon is in this week's parsha I want to focus on a question that can come up on shabbos and y"t. The basic rule is that when eating bread is obligatory, like on shabbos, you must repeat bentching if you forget to mention the day, e.g. you omit ritzei. When eating bread is not obligatory, e.g. on rosh chodesh, if you leave out yaaleh v'yavo, you don't repeat bentching.
What happens if a person is unsure if he said yaaleh v'yavo on yom tov in bentching, or is unsure if he added ritzei on shabbos? Does he have to repeat or not?
Shu"T Yechaveh Daat is built around topics that R' Ovadya discussed in a weekly radio address he used to give. R' Shalom Messas, whose derash I quoted last week, writes in Shemesh u'Magen #13 that he was listening to the radio on erev yom tov and heard R' Ovadya pasken in his Pinat Halacha program that if someone forgot yaaleh v'yavo or not in bentching, he should not repeat birchas ha'mazon. R' Messas strongly disagreed.
Before getting into the thick of the issue, a background point that is an interesting tidbit in its own right: R' Yosef Messas (R' Shalom's father) was asked why we need a rule of safeik brachos l'hakeil. Given that the chiyuv to say brachos is derabbanan, shouldn't any safeik fall under the rule of sfeika derabbanan l'kula? (Pnei Yehoshua in Brachos does entertain the possibility of it being d'oraysa, but this is a minority view). R' Yosef Messas answered that ain hachi nami, we have only one rule of sfeika derabbanan l'kula. There is not a single place in shas, he writes, where the gemara refers to a rule of safeik brachos l'hakeil. That phrase is found only in poskim, and is just used as a shorthand way of invoking sfeika derabannan l'kula in the context of hilchos brachos. R' Yitchak Yosef, however, in his Ein Yitzchak, suggests that there is in fact a nafka minah between the two rules (R' Messas agrees l'dina with this conclusion) in a case where there is a rov on one side of the safeik. Were we to treat this as a regular sfeika derabbanan, the rov would win. However, when dealing with hilchos brachos, we still avoid saying a new bracha. Even with a rov to justify it, the d'oraysa risk of bracha she'aina tzericha is too serious to gamble with.
Getting back to the main story, with respect to a person who is unsure whether he said yaaleh v'yavo on Y"T (or even if he knows he left it out, according to R' Ovadya Yabi'a Omer 7:28), even though the mitzvah of birchas ha'mazon is d'oraysa, the specific text that we say is a takana derabbanan. We are therefor dealing with a sfeika derabbanan. Since there is a minority of Rishonim (e.g. Tos Sukkah 27a - see also Kaf haChaim 188:24) who hold that there is no obligation to eat bread on y"t, and we invoke safeik brachos l'hakeil even against a rov, bentching need not be repeated.
Rav Messas (Shemesh u'Magen #13) countered with a nice lomdus. Safeik brachos l'hakeil only applies when the issue at hand is a hilchos brachos question. The question of whether you have to repeat bentching, however, is really a hilchos yom tov question -- are you obligated to eat bread to be yotzei simchas y"t or not? Since the majority of Rishonim hold that one must eat bread, one must repeat bentching if yaaleh v'yavo was omitted.
What about if a person realized their error before starting the next bracha? The SA writes that in such a case there is a special bracha that can be inserted in which shabbos or y"t is mentioned, but the SA is predicated on the assumption that there is a chiyuv to eat bread on Y"T, so mentioning the day is necessary. One would think that according to R' Ovadya this still falls under the umbrella of sfeika derabbanan l'kula and no bracha should be added. R' Yitzchak Yosef writes that his father held that way at first, but then apparently changed his mind, as in Yabi'a Omer he paskens to follow the SA. Why? The logic here is that we have to also weigh the other side of the safeik, i.e. the potential that one was not yotzei if yaaleh v'yavo was omitted. In this case it is impossible to be compeletely shev v'al taaseh and not do anything, as safeik brachos l'hakeil would dictate, because by continuing the final bracha of bentching without the necessary inclusion of yaaleh v'yavo one is willy-nilly doing something and risking bracha l'vatalah. Therefore, one should try to cover his bases as much as possible and add the bracha quoted in SA.
Maybe more to come bl"n on the question of what to do if one is unsure if he said ritzei or not.
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