Printable PDF available here. Previous piece on Shemini available here.

Rav Kook (Based on Ein Ayah, Gemara Berachot 32a)

Do not drink intoxicating wine, neither you nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, so that you shall not die. [This is] an eternal statute for your generations, to distinguish between holy and profane and between unclean and clean… (Vayikra 10:8-10)

Now Hannah was praying in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Sober up!” And Hannah replied, “Oh no, my lord! I am a very unhappy woman. I have drunk no wine or other strong drink, but I have been pouring out my heart to the Lord. Do not take your maidservant for a wicked woman (lit. בת בליעל); I have only been speaking all this time out of my great anguish and distress.” (Shmuel Aleph, 1:13-16)

[Hannah told Eli that she was not a wicked woman (lit. בת בליעל). Rabbi Elazar said we derive from here that when a drunk person prays, it is as if he engaged in idol worship. For the word בליעל also appears with regard to a city that has been instigated to engage in idol worship: “Benei beliya’al have gone out from your midst and have lured the inhabitants of their city, saying let us go and serve other gods which we have not known” (Deuteronomy 13:14). Just like that context deals with idolatry, so too Hanna referring to one who prays drunk as a בליעל indicates idol worship. (Gemara Berachot 31b)

All forms of idolatry share two essential characteristics. The first is an emphasis on man’s emotional and imaginative faculties, untethered from the intellect. Indeed, the idolatrous impulse is based on a superficial, unthinking perspective on reality. Idolatry deifies the powerful and inescapable forces of nature, but fails to see their underlying Divine unity.

Intoxication also enfeebles one’s intellect and ability to perceive clearly. This is what our Sages had in mind when they compared one who prays while drunk to an idolater, based on a verse in Sefer Shmuel. This is more than just exaggeration or a homiletical flight of fancy. Our Sages are identifying the very essence of idolatry, and teaching us that intoxicated prayer shares the same essential characteristic.

This is not to imply that moderate drinking has no role to play in religious life. Indeed, there are times when we are allowed (or perhaps even encouraged) to transcend the world of rationality and tread in the realm of holy emotion and sentiment. But prayer is not such a time. Jewish prayer demands a clear mind, and a razor-sharp focus on the Divine ideals expressed in the world of tefilah. And thus intoxication and prayer are a contemptible combination, barred by the inner truth of aggadah and the world of halacha as well.

A second – and related – characteristic of idolatry is a fissure between the realms of action and thought/ideals. Paganism sees the world as fragmented and divided among warring gods. Some of these gods are (or can be bribed into being) favorably disposed to humanity, and others are full of wrath and vengeance. There is no underlying Divine unity to all of reality. Idolatry’s fragmented perspective on reality results in a similarly fragmented religious personality. There is no need to harmonize what one believes with how one behaves. Paganism’s religious ideas provide no guidance to the individual on how to act, and no guidance to the collective on how to construct a just society. On the contrary, the world of action is abandoned to the stormy and unreliable influence of imagination and raw emotion – which, as we have seen, are the dominant characteristics of idolatry. For this reason, idolatry always results in degenerate and horrible ethical failures – such as child sacrifice, ritual murder, and sexual deviance.

This is what our Sages have in mind when they associate idolatry with the world beliya’al, which has a connotation of ‘bli ol’, without a yoke. Idolatry is untethered from the ‘yoke’ of true ideals and clear thinking. This yoke can only be found in the perfected and holy Divine Torah, which teaches us how to harmonize the world of action with the highest G-dly ideals.

Food For Thought

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (Chorev, pg. 7-8): Nor is this idolatry merely an error, a mistaking of falsehood for truth. In that case, it would be simply an intellectual mistake, a delusion, deplorable indeed, but, even at the worst, not the worst that might happen. For there would still be left human dignity and the purity and uprightness of human action. But this is not the case. As soon as you set anything else beside G-d as G-d, and still more as your G-d, forthwith human dignity, purity and uprightness fall to the ground, the fabric of your life goes to pieces.

If a man follows after any being as G-d except G-d, he necessarily sinks to a lower level. As soon as a man thinks of any being as independent and as belonging only to itself, it must appear to him as tyrannical, intent only on self-aggrandizement and producing only for self gratification. Hence the man who reveres such beings as gods must of necessity regard unbridled violence and self-indulgence not as something bestial and so beneath man but as something Divine and so above man, and pursue them as such. Nay, more; when the law of Unity has vanished from his conception of the world and the universe breaks apart for him into isolated deities which serve only themselves, he will soon count himself among the gods, and, recognizing no law in his own life either, he will break out into all kinds of excesses and abandon himself to arrogance and dissoluteness.

Dr. Hylton I. Lightman (Ou.org): Judaism has a not uncomplicated relationship with alcohol. We Jews start drinking young, real young. There is the wine at the Bris when the baby is only eight days old. Then there is wine at the Pidyon HaBen. The two sips at the Chuppah. The focal point of our week is the Friday night Shabbos meal when typically Abba or another post-Bar Mitzvah male will sanctify the wine. Havdallah. Yom Tov Kiddush. The famous Four Cups at the Seder. Is there a Jewish simcha that is without the raising a glass of schnapps and proclaiming, “L’Chaim”?

No shul or yeshiva would want its members or students to become alcoholics. But let’s be honest. Many shuls and others create a social life around alcohol and to be cool and in (are those words current?), you have to partake. Think Kiddush Club when men, typically at some point during the layning and definitely before the rabbi’s speech, exit the sanctuary and call to order their own private gathering of booze and food.

Our Torah is filled with references to wine so clearly wine is important and plays a major role in Judaism. Sefer Shoftim describes wine as “bringing joy to G-d and man.” Every sacrifice brought to the Mikdash was accompanied by a wine libation. Likewise, there are times in our Torah when wine has been mishandled – actually, let’s call it accurately – abused. Our Torah does not sanitize those times and their consequences. Noach was disgraced by excessive wine consumption. Ahron’s sons’ faux pas stemmed in part from intoxication. And these are only two examples. Then there’s Purim. This day suffers such a bad name because of the drinking. Let’s not forget Simchas Torah. A nurse on staff in an area emergency room once told me that she and her colleagues call it “The Other Jewish Halloween.”

Like anything else in life, balance is a good thing. Alcohol, when imbibed appropriately, can enhance our Ruchniyus. By the same token, when treated inappropriately, it can make for a Chillul HaShem, G-d forbid. Kohanim were not allowed to serve in the Beis HaMikdash while drunk. We are forbidden to daven while drunk. A kohen is not allowed to “duchen” after having even a single glass of wine. The Tree of Knowledge in Gan Eden, according to one opinion, is both “good and bad.” When utilized properly, its potential for good is infinite. By the same token, if not used for good, the negative consequences are of equal proportion. It is up to each of us to choose how it should be used. Hopefully, we will choose to choose to make a Kiddush HaShem.

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch: (Collected Writings Vol. II, pg. 143-144): Not “belief’’ but “knowledge,” not “sentiment” but “determination and accomplishment;” these are the energies through which the “Jewish religion” becomes manifest. And for that very reason Judaism is not a “religion.” It has no part with any of the facets that other “religions” emphasize as the “essence of religion.” He who would drag Judaism down to the level of “belief’’ divorced from knowledge, who would place also at the head of the “Jewish faith” all the nebulous subjectivism which indulges in “devout impulses” and have these notions constitute the basic requirements of the Jewish “religion,” cannot be one of the “priests of the Lord.” He is in reality one of the priestlings of paganism who exploit vague sentiment and sensibilities for the worship of their own delusions, whose harvest, therefore, has mostly been grief and mourning, misery and distress…. This is probably the reason why [non-Jewish clergy] are called כמרים, “hierophants of sentimentalism” or, more accurately, “fishermen of sentimentalism” (In Tanach, the root כמר denotes both stirrings of sentiment and the fisherman’s net.) They prey upon the “feelings” of the people and catch their fish in the muddied waters of sentimentalism. By contrast, G-d requires of His priests that “the lips of the priest shall preserve knowledge and they should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of G-d” (Malachi 2:7). And similarly, “Our G-d did not speak from amidst mystical murkiness, “not in the darkness of night. I did not say to the sons of Jacob: Seek Me in the waste places. I am G-d, speaking of right; proclaiming that which is straightforward and clear” (Isaiah 45:19).

Questions for Discussion

1. Rav Kook writes that idolatry inevitably results in ethical failures because it severs the world of action from the intellect. Do you agree? Could there be other explanations for the ethical failures of paganism?
2. What distinguishes an appropriate level of drinking from the kind of intoxication that Torah Judaism dispproves of or prohibits?
3. See the excerpts from Rav Hirsch above in “Food for Thought.” Is he saying the same thing as Rav Kook? If not, how is his analysis of idolatry different?
4. What are some events on the Jewish calendar or life-cycle events where alcohol plays a role? Why is it given a role?
5. Were Nadav and Avihu drunk when they brought their offering to the Mishkan?
6. Why do people leave davening to go to kiddush club?

Printable PDF available here.

Translation (Ein Ayah, Berachot 16a):

A person who becomes tamei can only attain purity by tevilah, immersing in water. This alludes to a profound spiritual lesson. All immoral deeds, character flaws and corrupt ideas stem from the same root. And that is a person’s failure to realize the transitory character of existence in this world.[1] Everything in this physical world is meant to be a vehicle to serve a higher and more eternal purpose.

But we lose sight of this truth and come to see ourselves as permanent residents. Immersing in water recalibrates our perspective. A person cannot survive underwater for an extended time. Thus, immersion forces us to confront the fleeting nature of life in this world. We emerge from the water invigorated to strive after eternal values and aspirations, to imbue our lives with goodness, wisdom and righteousness.

However, tevilah is not the only way to attain this recalibrated perspective. Our Sages hinted to another way when they compared Torah study to a purifying stream of water:

Why does Bilam [in Bamidbar 24:6] compare the tents (lit. אהלים) of Israel to streams? This teaches us that just as a stream brings one from impurity to purity, so too the tents of Torah study raise one from guilt to merit. (Gemara Berachot, 16a)

Throughout midrashic literature, we find that places of Torah study are referred to as ‘tents.’[2] Tents are the paradigm of a transient dwelling. By using this terminology, our Sages highlight a unique aspect of Torah study. Torah study is more than just another religious obligation or a how-to manual for the mitzvot.Studying Torah refines our sensibilities and raises our aspirations to the realm of the eternal. Like a mikveh or a natural spring, Torah purifies us and lifts us out of the smallness of being mired in this world.

Commentary/Insights

Rav Kook doesn’t go into detail about how exactly Torah study raises us out of the smallness of the physical world. It could be a simple process – i.e. Torah is the unchanging word of the Eternal G-d, so studying Torah forces you to confront eternal, spiritual matters. Or maybe Rav Kook has in mind a more mystical explanation.[3] However, there may be a different expression of the transcendental nature of Torah, which I think is illustrated by a description that Rav Soloveitchik gave about his experience of giving shiur:

I start shiur…I don’t know what the conclusion will be. Whenever I start the shiur the door opens another old man walks in and sits down. He is older than I am. He is my grandfather, Rav Chaim Brisker, without whom you cannot learn nowadays. The door opens quietly again and another old man walks in. He is older than Rav Chaim. He lived in the 17^thcentury. What’s his name? Shabbesai Cohen, the famous Shakh who must be present when dinei mamonot are discussed… More visitors show up, some from 11^th, 12^th, 13^thcenturies, some from antiquity: Rabbi Akiva, Rashi, Rabbenu Tam, the Ra’avad, the Rashba, more and more come in. What do I do? I introduce them to my pupils and the dialogue commences. The Rambam says something and the Ra’avad disagrees: sometimes it’s very nasty; the Ra’avad uses very sharp language. A boy jumps up to defend the Rambam against the Ra’avad and the boy is fresh. You know how young boys are. He uses improper language so I correct him. Another boy jumps up with a new idea, the Rashba smiles gently. I try to analyze what the young boy meant… another boy intervenes… we call upon Rabbenu Tam to express his opinion and suddenly a symposium of generations comes into existence. Generations, young boys twenty two or twenty three, and my generation, the generation of Rav Chaim Brisker, of the Shakh… of Rabbenu Tam, Rav Hai Ga’on, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Elazar, and Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai… We all speak one language… We all chat. We all laugh. We all enjoy the company. We all pursue one goal. We all are committed to a common vision and we all operate with the same categories. There is Mesorah collegiality, friendship, comity between old and young between antiquity and Middle Ages and modern times… This unity of generations, this march of centuries, this conversation of generations this dialogue between antiquity and presentwill finally bring the redemption of the Jew.

The Gemara in Berachot is not the only place where our Sages compare Torah to water. Consider the following additional sources:

Gemara Ta’anit 7b – “Why are matters of Torah likened to water, as it is written “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come for water! (Isaiah 55:1)”? Just as water leaves a high place and flows to a low place, so too, Torah matters are retained only by one whose spirit is lowly [i.e., a humble person].

Shir haShirim Rabbah – “Just as water is a source of life, so is Torah a source of life…Just as water comes from heaven, so too is the Torah’s origin in heaven… Just as water originates in tiny drops and accumulates into mighty streams and rivers, so the Torah is acquired word by word and verse by verse… Just as someone who does not know how to swim will drowned in water, so too with Torah, if one doesn’t know how to ‘swim’ and issue proper halachic guidance, he can drown in it.”

Later sources elaborate on this imagery as well. In the words of R. Aharon Lichtenstein:

Water represents primal existence. Even before Creation, God’s spirit hovered over the water. Water is the most basic necessity for man and for all life; it therefore expresses naturalness. There is nothing more natural, more primeval, than a spring gurgling in a place that no human eye has ever seen and where no human foot has ever trodden. Fire, in contrast, is a product of technology. Fire expresses creativity, innovation, and dynamism. The discovery of fire is one of the most important revolutions in human history, the basis for all subsequent technology. Unlike water, which is to be found around us in nature, a person who needs fire must seek it, pursue it, work to create it. The Torah, given in fire and in water, shares characteristics with both of them. Like water, the Torah too preceded the creation of the Earth. The world was created only for the sake of the Torah, which is called “reshit” (the first). The Torah is primal and natural: God “looked into the Torah and created the world” (Zohar, Teruma 161a).

[1]In the Hebrew original, Rav Kook uses the language of כגר ולא כתושב.

[2]A familiar example – midrashim about the Torah’s description of Ya’akov as an איש תם יושב אהלים. If you have a copy of the authoritative source Little Midrash Says, look up the illustration contained therein.

[3]In the Hebrew original, Rav Kook describes this property of Torah as a ‘סגולה’, which implies that it’s not something entirely rational.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. What does it mean to be overly rooted in physical, this-worldly matters? What can we do to make sure we maintain a proper perspective?
2. Why is it important to study Torah? And which is more important, the experiential dimension of Torah study or the pragmatic goal of absorbing information? Do we have to choose?
3. Rav Kook explains that tevilahcomes to dislodge a perspective of excessive rootedness in this world. That seems to associate tumah with a flawed mindset that needs correction. But we find that tumah is associated with biological realities which we have no control over (i.e. niddah, zav, yoledet, etc.) How can Rav Kook imply that tumah involves being overly rooted in this world?^[A]
4. Our Sages refer to Shabbat as מעין עולם הבא, a semblance of the World to Come. Based on Rav Kook’s teaching about the spiritual meaning behind tevilah, can you suggest an explanation for the practice (common among Chasidim) to immerse in the mikveh on Erev Shabbat?
5. The second pasuk in the Torah reads וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָֽיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְח֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹקים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם. How might this support Rav Kook’s understanding of tevilah?

[A]In his commentary on the Torah, Rav Shimson Raphael Hirsch develops the notion that tumah is a symbolic system for emphasizing the value of moral freedom. Moral duties and spiritual values are entirely incompatible with a purely physical conception of existence. Death is thus the highest form of tumah, because it “awakens the idea that Man has altogether no free will… that Man is a mere puppet in the hands of the physical powers of Nature.” All other forms of tumah, even those beyond one’s control – especially those beyond one’s control– can awaken a similar reaction, as Rav Hirsch discusses at length. Regarding childbirth, for example, Rav Hirsch writes that “Man originates, grows and exists like a plant and the noblest and most glorious name that the human tongue can utter, the name ‘Mother,’ reminds one at same time of the purely physical unfree process of human origin. If anywhere, it is surely here, that the fact must be established, that, in spite of this, once he is born, Man is a morally free agent. Above all, the Mother herself, under the fresh impression of her physically completely passively and painfully having to submit to the forces of the physical laws of Nature at the most sublime procedure of her earthly calling, has to re-establish again the consciousness of her own spiritual height.” Are you convinced? Why or why not?