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JACS: Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others

JACS LIBRARY - ARTICLES

SUBSTANCE ABUSE - PARSHAT NOAH

NOVEMBER 1, 1997 - BAT MITZVAH OF MICHELLE SCHWARTZ

Amid all the exciting stories in this morning's Torah portion - like the great flood and the Tower of Babel - a short passage in the middle is liable to be overlooked. That is chapter 9, verses 20 and 21: "Noah, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and he uncovered himself within his tent." In its context in the Torah, this passage would seem to have two functions. One is to give an account of the beginning of viticulture, the cultivation of the grape vine and wine-making. The beginning of the Book of Genesis served our ancestors as an explanation of how various parts of their world came to be the way they were. The second function was to explain the relationships among various groups of people in terms of the behavior of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Yaphet, toward their father when he was incapacitated. The different peoples of the Near East and its vicinity were supposed to be descended from Noah's sons, and the "pecking order", as understood by later Israelites, was established through this and other stories at the beginning of Sefer Bereshit. Our sages and commentators, besides explaining the matter of the sons' behavior, used the passage as an opportunity to comment on the problems associated with wine. In that vein, I would like to consider some issues connected with the use and abuse of alcohol and other substances. I shall first say something about the way in which issues connected with drinking and alcoholism have been dealt with by Jews. Then I shall give a Jewish religious perspective on the subject, and, finally, I shall make some practical observations. I must say that the dominant Jewish approach to problems connected with alcohol and other drugs has been myth and denial. It is (or has been) nearly a universal belief that there are no Jewish alcoholics. That belief has been held by non-Jews as well as by Jews, and it goes back for some time. In the 18th century, the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that Jews do not become drunk because their marginal position in society requires them always to be in control of themselves. Fascinating as that observation is, the falsity of the generalization can be shown from Kant's own time; Solomon Maimon, one of the first Jewish interpreters of Kant's philosophy, suffered, in his later years, from the effects of excessive drinking. When I said here, several years ago, that there are Jews who abuse alcohol and drugs, two congregants told me flatly, after the service, that they didn't believe me, and one went further to say that Jews don't have problems with substance abuse because of our close family life. In addition to the fabled Jewish family life, Jewish religious practices are supposed to ward off alcoholism. It has often been said that using wine at kiddush and at the seder, connecting moderate drinking with religion, fosters a responsible attitude toward the use of alcohol. There may well be some truth to this idea, but some Jewish alcoholics have reported that they started drinking by finishing off the bits of wine left in people's glasses after kiddush, something which their relatives thought was cute. Perhaps the most extreme example of this Jewish denial of the problem is the story of a Jewish alcoholic who went to his rabbi to talk about the problem. The rabbi asked the man questions about his background, suggesting that maybe he wasn't really Jewish.

If denial and myth have been the most common Jewish approach to problems of substance abuse, some people seem to have gone to the other extreme. It has been argued that Jews suffer from alcohol abuse as much as anyone else, the evidence being that some Alcoholics Anonymous chapters in New York City have many Jews in them. This report is what is called anecdotal evidence; it will serve to refute the idea that there are no Jewish alcoholics, but it certainly cannot be generalized. Similarly, the Jewish Family Service of Cincinnati, to its credit, ran a program a number of years ago to raise the consciousness of our Jewish community to problems of drug and alcohol abuse. However, the social workers who came here to present the issue said as part of their introduction, "When we [Jews] go to visit each other, we don't offer tea and coffee, but immediately bring out the liquor." There are certainly exceptions, but most people I know offer tea and coffee. I have never seen scientific statistical data about the prevalence of substance abuse among Jews. Such data would be useful for epidemiological and social research. However, for our purposes this morning, the statistics are irrelevant. It is a fact that some Jews have problems with alcohol and other drugs, and I would now like to address that substantive issue, first from a theoretical religious point of view, and then from a practical point of view.

In presenting some Jewish religious teachings on the subject, let me first give you some halakhah (Jewish law) and then some aggadah (sayings or discursive material). There is nothing in Jewish law which prohibits the drinking of alcoholic beverages. In this respect, the rarity of Jewish teetotalers fits the tradition. Indeed, there are occasions when it might seem that drinking wine is required: kiddush at the beginning of Shabbat and Festivals, havdalah at their end, brises, weddings, and, of course, the seder. In fact, however, while there is a traditional preference for wine on such occasions, strictly speaking, grape juice may be used for any of them. This provision is very important to remember when we consider the dilemma of Jews with drinking problems, and it may keep us from airily dismissing arguments for total abstinence from alcohol. I might note that, during prohibition, there was a racket of selling wine for "sacramental purposes", and some Jews took part in it. When some rabbis supported the racket by claiming that Jews are required to drink wine on these occasions, Prof. Louis Ginzberg of Jewish Theological Seminary refuted the claim. There are two occasions in the Jewish year when drinking in larger quantities might seem to be called for: Simhat Torah and Purim. The practice of drinking on Simha Torah is pure folklore, but, with regard to Purim, there is a passage in the Talmud, Megillah 7b, which holds that "on Purim a person should drink so much that he doesn't know the difference between ÎBlessed be Mordekhai' and ÎCursed be Haman'". however, whatever that passage may have meant in the context of the Talmud, the main thrust of Jewish law is not to take it literally; we are never required to get drunk. There is a negative law concerning drinking. The priests in the ancient Temple were not allowed to drink when they were "on duty", and, by extension, rabbis are not supposed to give halakhic decisions while under the influence of alcohol. The reason is fairly obvious, but it is worth making explicit, because of something that I shall say later. It is that teachers of Judaism have to make distinctions, between the sacred and the profane, between the permitted and the forbidden. Anything whic impairs the faculty of judgement, which leads to a breaking down of boundaries, is a problem.

While the Jewish laws specifically relating to drinking are important, I believe that a more general Jewish law is the most relevant teaching on this subject. That is that we are forbidden to do anything which is harmful or dangerous. To do so is to violate the Torah's commandment of shmirat hanefesh, taking care of oneself. This commandment clearly proscribes excessive drinking, drinking before driving, taking of other drugs, and many people would add smoking cigarettes to the list. I believe that is the essential teaching; this law covers the permissibility of moderate drinking in general, the problem of excessive drinking, the case of individuals for whom even moderate drinking may be harmful or situations in which any drinking is a problem, and the use all kinds of other chemical substances as well.

There are two other Jewish laws which apply to some special cases. One is the mitzvah not to put a stumbling block before the blind. This mitzvah has been understood to prohibit playing to anyone's weakness. It teaches us not to give alcohol to someone who has a drinking problem, and not to give it to someone who might be driving soon. The last legal principle which I shall mention is "dina d'malkhuta dina", the law of the government is law. That is, it is against Jewish law to violate the law of the country. There are some exceptions to this principle, but its applicability here is that, whatever we may think about the use of marijuana and some other drugs, if they are illegal, then their use is against Jewish law as well.

Let me now turn to some broader Jewish teachings, to aggadah. On the one hand, we read in Psalm 104:15, "Wine makes the human heart rejoice", and this thought was carried further by the Talmud (Pesahim 109a), "there is no joy except in wine". On the other hand, one Ubar the Galilean commented on our original passage (Sanhedrin 70a): "There are 13 instances of the letters vav-yud (which spell "vay", or woe - in Hebrew as well as Yiddish) in the passage dealing with Noah and the wine." In the Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah 10:6-7, we read that wherever there is wine, there are lust and immorality. These sayings, and many others in the same vein, are consistent with the guarded attitude toward alcohol conveyed by the halakhah.

Let us now broaden our focus further, and consider some very general aspects of Judaism. One is a general ethical principle propounded by Maimonides in his Shemoneh Perakim, the introduction to the commentary on Pirkey Avot. There, the Rambam, obviously influenced by Aristotle, states that the right path is usually found in the middle. For example, it consists of neither complete abstinence from alcohol nor drunkenness. The Rambam recognizes, however, that people who are sick (either in body or in soul), must deviate from the mean in order to compensate for their sickness. For example, alcoholics or people who have trouble with drinking have to minimize drinking or abstain altogether. The second general observation is based on the point which I mentioned above - that the reason for the prohibition of a rabbi's teaching while intoxicated is the necessity of maintaining distinctions and boundaries. The most characteristic Jewish form of spirituality is not reaching for mystic communion with God, perhaps through altered states of consciousness, but rather living our daily lives with the understanding that we have various responsibilities to fulfill, both toward god and toward other people. Fulfilling our responsibilities, doing mitzvot, with the consciousness that the metzaveh, the commander, is God, is the most characteristic Jewish way of drawing close to God. This is a very sober approach to life, in more senses than one. The theoretical Jewish approach to drinking, therefore, is a quite consistent teaching of moderation. How do we deal in practice with the use of alcohol and drugs in the Jewish community? First, we should abandon the idea that Jews don't have these problems. Jewish alcoholics have suffered, not only from their disease, but also from the feeling that they are somehow unJewish, and from the refusal of much of the Jewish community to acknowledge their problem.

Second, we should recognize that the most consistently successful way of dealing with alcoholism and chemical dependency is the twelve-step program developed by Alcoholics Anonymous. Often Jews are put off by AA and the twelve-step programs. They seem Christian: groups often meet in churches, they recite the so-called "Lord's prayer", and much of the rhetoric about spirituality sounds strange to Jews. In part, aa chapters meet in churches because some synagogues would not let them in. In part, it is simply that the great majority of people in the United States, alcoholics or not, are Christians and not Jews. In fact, rabbis across the spectrum, from the very Orthodox Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, a psychiatrist and specialist in chemical dependency, to Rabbi Neil Gillman of the Conservative movement, to Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, now president of HUC, have endorsed the twelve-step approach. There is an organization called JACS - Jewish Alcoholics, Chemical dependents, and Significant others - which fills in some of the specifically Jewish needs of its members.

Third, the synagogue should model the responsible use of alcohol. Our rules for weddings and other such functions specify that a bar shall close one half hour before the end of the function. We do not serve alcoholic beverages to minors. Our youth groups have zero tolerance for drug use. Some people have argued that, recognizing that some people have problems with alcohol, synagogues should be "dry" altogether, in line with the Jewish teaching not to put a stumbling block before the blind. We have not taken that step, and I am not inclined in that direction, but the concern behind the suggestion is certainly in order. Sometimes people are surprised to learn that the characters at the very beginning of the Bible, Adam, Noah, and so on, were not Jewish. In fact, the stories about those times present Jewish views of human life and its concerns, issues, and problems. At the end of Parshat Noah, we do find mention of the people often called the first Jews, Abraham and Sarah. We Jews have our own special concerns, but we grew out of the same human stock as everyone else. In many ways, for better and for worse, we are the same as other people. One of these ways is susceptibility to abuse of alcohol and other chemical substances. With regard to responses to this problem, too, Judaism is not absolutely unique; we have no monopoly on good sense. However, the uniqueness of Jewish teaching is not the issue; we are Jews, and our question is what Judaism has to offer. The general ethos of moderation and responsibility Judaism, together with various specific laws and teachings about alcohol and shmirat hanefesh, fit well with the general medical and cultural approach which can help make wine, for most of us, a source of joy and not of sorrow.

Rabbi George (Gershom) Barnard