Wine On Purim

Drink, and do me a favour friends, drink alot!


Every year in the run-up to Purim, I hear the same convoluted narishkeit about no you dont have to get totally plastered on Purim. A jewish guy of mitsvah age has a mitsvah to get drunk on Purim, and lets not go litvish and start digging in the air with our thumbs until weve watered it down and twisted it around, and come out that one can drink one cup and then immediately go to sleep and like this be yotsei. For that matter oh great minds, thumb-swingers, do us all a favour, and just go to sleep and be quiet. Go to sleep and then you will be patur from this wonderful mitsvah which you denigrate, since while you sleep you obviously cannot fulfill it.


     If they cant manage to denigrate and reduce the scope of the mitsvah, so then they exempt themselves since "they get sick" or "they do aveirot" when drunk. Oh please, would you listen to yourselves already. Perhaps while drinking you are obscenely dishonest, avoid the truth, and lie to yourselves and everyone else, since this is what you are doing while sober, in the waking hours, when the wine goes in that is what will come out in spades. Jews are full of Torah and Mitsvot, and time and again that is all I see come out from MY drunken brethren on Purim. Shoudst there be a crass undeveloped individual out there who engages in lashon hara and motsei shem ra, and other sins throughout the year, even from them I have heard Torah come out like a river with tears and joy on Purim.


     If you need a clear indication of just what Hazal intend for us drinking-wise on Purim, even though the Gemara is scant and tells us almost nothing about it, you with your sharp Gemara-student Gemara minds are hereby called to judgement by me! The moment yoy FEEL a certain way about something you readily turn your Gemara mind off so as to avoid contradicting your heart with what your mind will then know.


     In Megilllah 7B we are told by Hazal that one is obligated to purfume oneself on Purim until one doesnt know the difference between Blessed is Mordechai and Cursed is Haman (actually the other way around vehafochu). For me and MY Rashi the Gemara is quite clear, no thumb in air up and about needed. No wavering and intoning of voice and kippah sliding forth and back and chin grabbing. No need to swing on a shtender and deliberate ade ad. The next part of the Gemara when read by a Gemara student whos head rules over their heart, who follows truth over passion, will read the story of Raba and Rabi Zeira who eat together one Purim and the one shechts the other, killing him, dead, thats right, dead. The next morning he prays for him and H' gives him life back. The next year dear friends when the one says to the other lets do our Purim feast together, the other does not say, yes, but we should follow the Rambam, or the this or that that, or we should but should fulfill the mitsvah by drinking less. Oh no, none of that hoopla! And I am certain these Hahamim new what the mitsvah was all about! The one says no, we cannot rely on miracles. They both seem to have the intention to drink just as readliy and heartily as the previous year, dispite one having murdered his comrad while drunk. They completely intended to DRINK and get DRUNK!


Purim Sameakh!