Rava said, “A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim until they are unable to distinguish between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordechai.’” Rabba and R. Zeira made a Purim seudah together and became intoxicated. Rabba got up and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira. The next day [Rabba] asked for mercy and revived him [R. Zeira]. The next year he [Rabba] said to him [R. Zeira], “Let the Master come and make the Purim seudah together?” He [R. Zeira] said back to him [Rabba], “Miracles do not happen all the time” (Megillah 7b).
This story is deeply disturbing on a number of levels. The simple fact pattern is so shocking that many commentaries claim that this never happened. (See the Maharsha and Ya’avetz on Megillah 7b for examples of such an approach.) The power of an allegorical read of this kind of story is that it allows us to pull out a deeper message and ignore the problematics of one rabbi slaughtering another.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe in Likutei Sichos (volume 31, Purim 2) analyzes this story on two levels. He seeks a deeper understanding, a penimiut, while also trying to maintain a commitment to the simple narrative. Part of the Rebbe’s point is that since this story is linked to the halakha regarding inebriation it cannot be read for its penimiut alone; it must also be understood as a story that actually happened. Law must be part of physical reality and may not be understood as pure allegory.
The Rebbe notes the important position of Rabbeinu Ephraim (11th /12th century, Qala’at Chamad, Algeria, student of the Rif), who uses the juxtaposition of Rava’s prescriptive law to get drunk with this tragic story to pasken that one may not get drunk. In an interesting turn, Rabbeinu Ephraim here understands that the gemara told the story with the intention of overruling the law. Here agadda takes precedence over halakha.
Rabbi Dr. Barry Wimpfheimer, in his fascinating book Narrating the Law, uses this passage as an “example of the perceived incoherence of talmudic legal narratives” (pg. 24). Dr. Wimpfheimer notes that “the legal narrative has changed the law from mandate to prohibition!” (p. 25, italics in original). He goes on to say, “The story is made to look like a formal rule that states that one may not get inebriated on Purim.” While we might have thought using the story to reject the law placed the narrative above the halakha, it turns out that such a move actually limits the meaning of the story to ‘just’ another kind of legal data point.
In his subsequent analysis of the story, Dr. Wimpfheimer offers a “thick” reading of the relationship between the story and the legal requirement to get drunk. He notes the comic and carnivalesque nature of the story as a reflection of Purim and the megillah itself. The goal of the drunkenness is to lose the ability to distinguish between Mordechai and Haman:
This confusion perfectly captures the quality of Purim as carnivalesque masquerade. On this day on which people dress up to assume a different identity, inebriation allows for the breaking of personal boundaries. Rabba’s dictum is both an attempt to assert control over the practice of inebriation by legislating it…
If the opening law is attributed to Rabba instead of Rav—which has witnesses in the manuscripts—“the story describes the very rabbi who struggles to control the uncontrollable as being himself out of control” (p.29).
In a fascinating parallel, Dr. Wimpheimer’s thick reading of the narrative touches on the Rebbe’s penimiut approach. For the Rebbe, drinking wine is meant to give us access to the secret truths of life. In a certain sense, that happens by removing certain inhibitions and breaking certain personal boundaries.
In the Rebbe’s read, Rabba need not (only) be understood as actually having killed R. Zeira, but rather having taught him too many of the hidden traditions of our Torah that R. Zeira’s soul was overwhelmed. There are dangerous aspects of our mesora that we must find ways to tame. Rabba, whose greatness allowed him to safely engage with those aspects of Torah (mochin d’gadlut), mistakenly thought that R. Zeira (mochin d’katnut) was on his level. The Rebbe claims that, “there wasn’t even a hint of actual murder, God forbid, for the ‘death’ was really the soul-destruction of R. Zeira as a result of learning the secrets of the Torah (end of section 4).”
The Rebbe understands drinking as a path towards removing the self and cleaving with love to God. He also makes reference to a wondrous passage in the Shulchan Aruch ha-Rav (Orach Chayyim 98:1)
And indeed, this was the practice of the pious ones (chasidim) and the men [distinguished by their] deeds (anshei ma’aseh) they would [sit in] solitude and concentrate on their prayers until they reached a state in which they rose above material consciousness and their intellectual spirit was dominant, and they attained a rung approaching that of prophecy (he is echoing the Tur more than the Shulchan Aruch here).
This lofty vision of prayer is, for the Rebbe, the goal of drinking on Purim. I imagine that for most of us this is aspirational at best. It is not always easy to find the divine presence at a Purim seudah. The wine and the food seem to often be center stage. If we are able to imbibe the Rebbe’s spiritual message, perhaps we will be blessed to have that divine encounter at our tables.
Dr. Wimpheimer and the Lubavitcher Rebbe have different ways of reading this same gemara. However, they both demand more from the text than most others. Neither is willing to cede that the story should be read as ‘just’ a legal statement or ‘just’ an allegory. In addition they both offer a deeper message embedded in this text–one person’s thick reading in another’s penimiut.
A Contradiction in the Rambam
An apparent contradiction within the Rambam might help us weave together the halakha and agadda of this passage. One the one hand, Rambam says:
What is the nature of our obligation for this feast? A person should eat meat and prepare as attractive a feast as his means permit. He should drink wine until he becomes intoxicated and falls asleep in a stupor (Hilkhot Megilla v’Channukah 1:15).
Here, Rambam seems to take the mandate of drunkenness quite simply. Almost implying that a person needs to black out—which is extremely problematic, dangerous, and unhealthy.
However, he also says:
When a person eats, drinks, and celebrates on a festival, he should not let himself become overly drawn to drinking wine, mirth, and levity, saying, “whoever indulges in these activities more is increasing [his observance of] the mitzvah of rejoicing.” For drunkenness, profuse mirth, and levity are not rejoicing; they are frivolity and foolishness. And we were not commanded to indulge in frivolity or foolishness, but rather in rejoicing that involves the service of the Creator of all existence (Hilkhot Yomtov 6:21).
Here, Rambam makes it clear that drinking to excess is nothing more than “frivolity and foolishness.” How can both of these halakhot come from the same pen?
One message of the Purim seudah is that once a year it is okay to leverage “frivolity” as a tool for divine worship. However, we must do so with an understanding that we are using a tool that can be dangerous. Just as Rabba overdid it all those many years, we must all be careful to bring God into the frivolity as we seek the hidden secrets of Torah.
In this way the halakha and agadda of Purim can inform one another and bring us closer to God in love.
1. Note that this can be a dangerous moment creating opportunities for abuse. We also need to be vigilant about our engaging with alcohol in this manner. The gemara tells of one Rabbi killing another and they are clearly aware of those dangers. We dare not close our eyes to those very risks.
Rabbi Jeffrey S. Fox, Rosh HaYeshiva and Dean of Faculty at Maharat, was the first graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. Upon graduation he served as the Rabbi of Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood for seven years. In Rabbi Fox’s tenure at Kesher, the community grew three-fold from 30 families to nearly 100. During that time Rabbi Fox also taught at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah as well as in the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Bergen County. He also served on the board of the Synagogue Leadership Initiative of the UJA of NNJ. Rabbi Fox was a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute and has also been a member of the faculty of the Drisha Institute, the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Westchester County, and Hadar.