Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: Limiting Pleasure in This World

When a second bottle of good wine is brought to the table, there is another bracha to make: haTov v'haMeitiv [Sh. Ar. OC 175].  The Mishna Brura gives two reasons.  First, to give thanks for the abundance of wines at his table.  (Wine is by nature chashuv; having more varieties of quality wines is something worth giving thanks to heaven, apparently.)  Second... hang on, this needs a new paragraph.

Ok (this is pretty much a direct quote): s'farim note the reason to use this particular wording (haTov v'haMeitiv) is because it is well known that a person must limit worldly pleasures and wine brings a person to rejoice and can bring him to light-headed/frivolous behavior.  Therefore the sages chose this particular bracha because everyone knows that it was added to birkas hamazon in commemoration of those murdered in Beitar and were finally allowed to be buried.  That, of course, will bring a person to think about his own day of death and so he won't drink too much.  Basically you are saying, "Enjoy this nice wine, but don't forget: you'll be dead someday."  Maybe the Torah should have just made wine forbidden and be done with it.  Why did HaShem make wine strong enough to bring us to bad behavior, then tell us to think about death so we won't come to bad behavior?  Just make the wine weaker; then we could have the wine with no worries.

Another chazal (Chullin 109b): for everything the Torah forbade, something similar exists that it permitted.  For example, blood is forbidden, but liver is permitted (Rashi says since the liver is filled with blood, it has the taste of blood).  Why make two things that taste the same, one forbidden and one permitted?  Just make one thing, permit it, and be done with it.

The answer is, that would miss the point.  We are in this world not so much to do Torah and mitzvos as to choose to do Torah and mitzvos.  It is our choices that make us into the people we are.  By spending 70 or 80 years of making choices -- which means having to turn down things we like and having to choose things that aren't necessarily what we want  -- we transform ourselves from smart animals to human beings, then from human being to Jews.  That's why HaShem, b'chasdo, gave us so much Torah and so many mitzvos; so that every moment of our lives can be spent acquiring Olam haBah.

Now that's drinking responsibly.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more