How Alcohol is Killing Thousands Everyday! (Copy)

(9) Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages,

(20) Noah, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

(7) A Nazirite who drinks wine every day is only liable for one. If they said to him, "Don't drink! Don't drink!" and he drank, he is liable for each and every one.

(7) The mourners are comforted with bread and wine, as it is said, "Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul" (Prov. xxxi. 6).

The Gemara relates that Rabba and Rabbi Zeira prepared a Purim feast with each other, and they became intoxicated to the point that Rabba arose and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira. The next day, when he became sober and realized what he had done, Rabba asked God for mercy, and revived him. The next year, Rabba said to Rabbi Zeira: Let the Master come and let us prepare the Purim feast with each other. He said to him: Miracles do not happen each and every hour, and I do not want to undergo that experience again.

(3) Why did Ahashverosh get so angry with Vashti? The Talmud ascribes a curse that Vashti made against Ahashverosh—he was the son of her father’s stable master. I have read some research noting that this was a Persian type of curse. Interestingly, the rabbis while denigrating the old Persian king, are influenced by Persian culture itself.

(4) The king turns to the sages who are identified as rabbis for they know how to intercalate years and months. He wants them to put Vashti on trial for disobeying the king. They wisely avoid the matter, sending him to other nationalities to do the dirty work. There is even a pun here in the midrash. Moab has “settled on his lees” unlike Ahashverosh whose lees were just shook up by getting so drunk.