ACUTE ANGLES: Drinking on Purim

Dear Rabbi.   Our Rabbis tell us we must drink on Purim until we no longer know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. This to me sounds like an awful lot of booze. How can we justify this in an age where alcoholism appears to be such a social problem, even among Jews?  (Rhyme unintended.) Yours,  Isaac M.

Dear Isaac,

You have it slightly wrong.

The Talmud in Megila 9b – cited verbatim by the Shulchan Arukh (695:2) – states: One must drink on Purim until one doesn’t know the difference between “arur Haman”, “cursed is Haman” and “barukh Mordechai” “blessed is Mordechai” Note well those extra words arur and barukh – they are tremendously important! Because I think every Jew knows the difference between Haman and Mordechai, or between, say, Yahya Al-Sinwar and Agam Berger, even when blind drunk!

The most satisfying explanation of this directive that I have heard  is redacted in Sefer Toda’a by Rav Eliahu Kitov from an unstated classical source or sources. (Cf. also Taz and Sfat Emet)

As background, there is a well-known principle cited in Mishlei, the Book of Proverbs (24:17): Do nor rejoice when your enemy falls. A well-known practical outcome of this injunction is that we spill wine from our cup at the Pesach Seder when reciting the Ten Plagues which befell Egypt and abridge the full recitation of Hallel on the seventh day of Pesach, anniversary of the drowning of the Egyptians in the Reed Sea.

However this principle does not apply to one kind of enemy in particular.  Writes Kitov:-  

The downfall of Haman is not like the downfall of  other enemies. The joy which results from this downfall is a perfect as that which results from the  victory of the just. For Haman is a descendant of Amalek of whom it is said “When the wicked perish – there is joy! (Proverbs 11:10). And whenever Amalek is wiped out, it is as if the Divine Presence is revealed in the world.

 In other words, the downfall of Amalek and his ilk represents the downfall of pure, unadulterated evil which equals the triumph of good!

We have drunk enough as soon as we grasp (and it shouldn’t take more than a couple of generous glasses of Shiraz or Pinot Noir)  not only intellectually but also emotionally, that arur Haman is the same as Barukh Mordechai.

When Haman is blighted (arur) and vanquished, Mordechai is homoured (barukh) and triumphant. The two go hand in hand. There is indeed no difference.

Remarkably, the sacred Hebrew tongue affirms this. The gematrias (numerical values) of ארור המן and ברוך מרדכי are identical! Both compute to 502. This has to be more than coincidence. We have certainly drunk enough when we cannot do the arithmetic in our heads!

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Do some people drink on Purim to the point of intoxication and even a little beyond? Yes they do. But if they do, they’d better have internalised the first rule of drinking: Know yourself!

 While we’re on the gematria kick, our Sages teach that “when wine (יין) enters, a secret (( סוד emerges!”.  Again  the Hebrew language demonstrates it, as the Hebrew words for “wine” and “secret” have an identical gematria of 70.

When wine enters a person, their real inner character is revealed. That is the “secret” to which our Sages were referring!

 Many will have read the sordid news story of Australia’s most famous female soccer player’s dramatic fall from grace. After a drunken night out with her lesbian partner, she declined to pay a taxi fare and racially abused a policeman. Her partner smashed a window of the taxi and refused to pay for the damage.

I wouldn’t like to encounter this pair in a dark alley near a pub at night. These women obviously did not know themselves very well!

At the other extreme end of the spectrum, in contrast, I recall well from fifty-plus years ago as a yeshiva student in Jerusalem, walking the streets around Sanhedria late on Purim afternoon with a group of friends.  A tall, broad, wide-hatted, full-bearded man whom none of us knew, with a smile as wide as a Paris boulevard, approached us with an unsteady gait, clearly heavily inebriated, and embraced each of us in a paternal bear-hug, his stentorian voice ringing out with the heartfelt (albeit slurred) words “my dear kinderlach, may you be gebensched”  I was later told that this man was the highly-respected dean of one of Jerusalem’s most prestigious yeshivot.

Indeed, wine reveals and exposes the inner man and woman.

Of course, anyone who knows that wine is injurious to him (or her), whether physically, emotionally or psychologically, or that he will act with dangerous irresponsibility, may take the advice of the Remo (R’ Moshe Isserles), namely drink a very small amount and take a nap, whereupon he will not know the difference between anything and anyone.  People with a toxic alcohol problem should not drink at all

It is very regrettable that, as you say, drinking to excess has become a social challenge especially among young Jews.  At some kiddushim, alcohol flows like water! As I wrote in my book Fragments Of The Hammer (Naso): “wine, as well as being the staple of several mitsvot ….is regarded as the elixir which ‘gladdens the heart of man’ (Psalms 104:15), drives away melancholy, heightens the intellect and even prepares the mind for prophecy (Radak)”. On the other hand,  it also “reddens the faces of the wayward in this world and whitens their faces (embarrasses them) in the world-to-come …..If [a person] drinks sensibly, wine will ‘gladden’ him (mesamkho) but if he drinks irresponsibly it will destroy him (meshamemeihu) (Sanhedrin 70a).

In summary: The bottom line, when deciding how much or little to drink on Purim?  Know yourself!