Get Drunk on Virtue

Some say Charles Baudelaire was the father of modern poetry. I say that he would have understood the poetry of Purim deeply. Many years ago, I composed the music to the Hebrew translation of a poem by Baudelaire entitled “Get Drunk!” for a wild retelling of the Book of Esther. That tune is lost to my memory like a 3 am toast by my best pal after a few too many, but I have Baudelaire’s words right here for you in full:

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: ‘It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.’

Drink if you want this Purim, but even though it’s a mitzvah, the drinking of the day is not the point. Better to focus on downing a full glass of passion for the gift of life, for the opportunity to connect with others and do good, for beauty, for justice, and—as the poet says—for virtue.

I can barely stand to look at today’s culture of carelessness and narcissism on the one hand and weasley virtue signaling in support of hateful people on the other. The world is hammered and slurring its words. Somebody needs to take away the keys to the car of many of our leaders and throw those keys in the lake.

But in the little world I chose to focus upon in parallel, looking out the window of my office at work today, I was buzzed by what I saw. First, one of our educational tourism staff, with a big smile and contagious enthusiasm, prepped students from a visiting Jewish day school for an intense day of encounters in the holy city of Jerusalem. And then, like clockwork, as these kids from America boarded their bus, a group of Druze young men in white knitted head coverings from a high school in the north of Israel that stay in our guest house annually were given their own pep talk for their day in holy city by a teacher who reviewed the rules, got them to put away their phones, and made them laugh in a mix of Arabic and Hebrew before they began their journey.

I chose to fill my cup with virtue this year, which means raising a glass to making room for difference even as we celebrate the uniqueness of our tribe, for protecting our holy places fiercely even as we share them, for working tirelessly for the needs of young people so that they don’t inherit a world in which leaders drunk on power forget the people they are supposed to be leading, forget what nations and tribes and traditions should be for, and forget that what matters is facing hard truths with the greater whole in mind, not their own narrow interests.

It’s getting close to last call, my friends—for the hostages, for the reasonable use of law and leadership, and for an Israel that guards and nurtures its uniqueness unequivocally but also respects all people of good will within and beyond her borders. So choose your drink of choice this year, and forget what you must, but remember to get drunk on virtue, to get drunk on hope, to get drunk on justice, to get drunk on helping someone who has been forgotten before our collective glass is empty and our well runs dry.