Purim, Wine & Dionysus - Shemini - Mythic Torah

The Talmud (Megillah 7b) tells a great story about two rabbis that get drunk together on Purim:

Rabbah and Rav Zeira made a Purim feast together. They got drunk, and Rabbah stood up and killed Rav Zeira. On the morrow, Rabbah prayed for him and he came back to life!

The following year, Rabbah said to him: ‘Come, let's celebrate the Purim feast together again!’ Rav Zeira replied: ‘No thanks, miracles don't happen every day.’

Now that it's a few days after Purim, I hope you've recovered from any ill-effects from over-indulging, though I suspect your hangovers may not compare with Rav Zeira being murdered by his friend, only to be resurrected the next morning - now that's a hangover.

While I suspect that this story is meant to be something of a joke, it highlights a tension in Judaism about wine and alcohol - one the one hand these two rabbis celebrate the festival of Purim together by getting drunk, fulfilling Rava's teaching that you are supposed to get drunk on Purim until "you don't know the difference between 'Blessed be Mordechai' and 'Cursed be Haman'".

On the other hand we see here the potential for drinking, even in the context of religious celebration, to lead to out of control, violent behaviour.

Jews are permitted to drink alcohol, and we use wine as a central part of our most important rituals - shabbat, festivals, marriage and so on - and yet we know how dangerous alcohol can be.

So what is the place of wine and alcohol in Jewish mythology and ritual?

In Shemini, our parasha this week, two of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, are consumed by divine fire as they bring an offering to the Tabernacle, a topic that we will investigate more thoroughly in a few weeks when we reach Acharei Mot.

This is followed by rules that are to bind Priests in their work, including an important regulation about drinking wine (Lev 10:8-11):

8] Then the Lord said to Aaron, 9] ‘You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, 10] so that you can distinguish between the holy and the profane, between the impure and the pure, 11] and so you can teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses.’


This rule is placed so close to the story of the death of Nadav and Avihu that, beginning with Rabbi Ishmael in Vayikra Rabba, their deaths have been attributed to being drunk when they entered the sanctuary.

Why is this rule given? What's the problem with a priest working in the Tabernacle after having drunk wine or strong drinks?



It seems that the problem here is that alcohol blurs the distinctions between things. Once a priest's judgement has been somewhat inhibited by wine, Leviticus seems very concerned that they won't be able to make proper distinctions between that which is kodesh (holy) and that which is chol (profane) or tameh (impure) and tahor (pure).

Drunkenness often functions to blur divisions between things, to make a person less careful in their actions while they may start to see how everything is connected together. In Jewish thought, holiness is all about separation, setting something aside as unique and special - but drinking crashes through all these divisions, both in reality and in the mind of the person. The tabernacle is all about these distinctions, marking out space as holy and devoted to God - it seems that this is the last place that we should be having alcohol.

The Bible as a whole is very ambivalent about drunkenness.

Noah is the first human being to get drunk and this act leads to him getting molested/raped/castrated by his son (Genesis 9:20-29), while Proverbs warns a few times against getting drunk (Prov 23 warns that drunkenness and gluttony lead to poverty).

Proverbs 31 is very interesting in this regard, suggesting that wine makes kings and rulers err in judgement, while for the poor it can help them forget their suffering. We see again the idea of alcohol causing flawed-judgement and the blurring of lines - good for someone who is suffering, perhaps, but not for someone who has to make decisions of law and justice.

On the other hand, Psalm 104 tells us that wine gladdens the heart, while wine is among the produce that God promises is abundant in the Promised Land and a reward for righteous behaviour (Deut 11).

We even see that wine was part of the offerings in the Tabernacle (Leviticus 23).

And yet, the festival of Purim, which is most closely associated with getting drunk in rabbinic Judaism, is in the Bible much more ambiguous. While the characters are often at parties and feasts, the drinking seems to lead to everyone making bad decisions - Ahasuerus and Vashti, Haman at Esther's parties. People get angry, or relax their guard, and trouble follows.

Purim in Judaism today may be a festival of parties, feasting and drinking, but in the Bible any such festival is conspicuously absent, and little mythic power is attributed to wine and alcohol.

Caravaggio's Bacchus

This was not the case for the Greeks.

Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, was the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, a very popular god who had cults and temples across the ancient world. His rites were marked by excess, feasting and drinking into states of uncontrolled abandon. All things that are chaotic, uncontrolled or ecstatic fall under his domain. Dionysus is linked with Centaurs and Satyrs, human-animal hybrid creatures that give themselves totally over to revelry and carnal pleasures, highlighting the animal aspect of this god that we see within ourselves.

In the Ancient Greek world, Dionysian cults were extremely popular and widespread. Apart from the primal joy and fun of indulging, there seems to have been a strong element of the religious, euphoric experience that can be brought on by alcohol, revelry and giving yourself over to your 'animal' side.

If a key aspect of religious experience is feeling part of something much larger than yourself, alcohol cuts through the boundaries your sober self maintains between you and others, between your animal desires and your intellectual restraint, allowing you to lose yourself in an orgy of indulgence.

The Bible seems to be very nervous about this kind of religion. Drink wine, we are told, enjoy it, but don't drink when you're doing something which actually matters. Don't drink when you are serving God, or passing judgements, because that's when we need strict divisions between things, and absolute clarity about what is right, and what is wrong.

Yet we also know that we are to bring this aspect of ourselves to God, to offer wine in the sanctuary, pour it on the altar. Our animal urges are themselves from God, and deserve a place in our ritual lives, even as their use is circumscribed and contained.

Purim, with its drinking and partying culture, is a late Jewish take on the Dionysian revelries, finding religious meaning and significance in the blurring of boundaries, even between blessing heroes and cursing villains.