Changing Minds

This Shabbos I was waiting for mincha to start with my son Shmuli and we learned a shtikel from Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank  הפלא ופלא. Sharing the Torah we learned together should be a huge zchus for him that he should grow up to be אחד מן הגדולים אשר בארץ.

There is a famous tshuvos harashba [about to become more famous:-)] that says that we don't make a bracha on tzedaka lest the עני change his mind and decide not to take the money and the bracha will be לבטלה G-d forbid.

There is a famous [ditto] Raavad that we don't make a bracha before marriage lest the girl change her mind and the bracha will be לבטלה G-d forbid.

The question is, how come a shaliach can make a bracha? For example, if I appoint someone to check my house for chametz he makes a bracha. But maybe I changed my mind in the interim and I don't want him to be my shaliach after all?! Here we are not worried that I changed my mind. Odd.
 
This brings us to a more basic question: We know that we always follows chazakos. Chazaka is the principle of remaining the same [עקרון אי ההשתנות" כלשונו של הגר"א וייס שליט"א"]. Unless we have reason to believe otherwise we assume that nothing changed from the way we knew it was in the past. That is why I can wear my tefillin every day without checking them. If it was kosher yesterday there is a chazaka that it is kosher today. So in the tzedaka and marriage cases why don't we trust the chazaka that nothing changed since they expressed an interest in receiving the money and getting married respectively?

Here Rav Tzvi Pesach says a beautiful svara. In order to have a chazaka there first has to be a חלות .חלות  is a really yeshivish word which means "halachic status". There must be some sort of halachic status in order to employ the concept of chazaka.

Now everything will become clear.

There is NO חלות when an עני asks for money or when a girl agrees to marry a boy. Therefore, we can't apply the concept of chazaka to their cases and there is no bracha because we are concerned that they will change their minds.

When I appoint a shaliach, there IS a חלות. He now adopts the halachic status of being my agent. Since there is a חלות we can apply the concept of chazaka and allow him to make a bracha without having to worry about the משלח retracting his appointment.

You hear aza svara you just want to go out and buy yourself a הר צבי to partake of more of his delights - no??

:-) 

[מצוטט ע"י בעל הציץ אליעזר זצ"ל בהספדו עליו בחלק יח מספרו הגדול]