How Would You Respond? 1. Noticing a slight swagger in the gait of your sixteen-year-old child, you smell the alcohol on his breath. He is clearly not drunk, yet you admonish him for imbibing at the class’s year-end party. He challenges your rebuke.  He notes that he neither drank to intoxication nor sat behind a steering wheel. However, he argues, his drinking a couple beers is surely no different that your glass of wine (or two) at the Shabbat evening meal. 2. You have read the source materials again and again. While selected rabbis disagree, most assert that the proper observance of Purim requires you to drink wine to a state of intoxication. A Jew getting drunk! And a mitzvah, too! This rule seems so contradictory to your recently acquired appreciation for the discipline, thoughtfulness and rationalism expected of a Torah Jew. 3. You have noticed that the delivery of your Torah lecture seems to flow so much more coherently after a small sip of schnapps. And a glass of wine at the synagogue Kiddush or social function makes you so much more relaxed and witty. But are you becoming an alcoholic? And is an artificially induced mood, even a slight alteration, really what G-D wants of you?
|
520.gif){kind=small}