Drinking and The Middle Way

In the past few weeks, I’ve started preparing (gulp) for my oldest daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. How does this relate to drinking, you ask? Well, sometimes wisdom comes from unexpected sources. I was reading a book called “Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah,” by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, when I came upon the following passage, in a section on the ethics of Jewish celebration, which I felt was illuminating:

“The Czech-born German author Max Brod taught that there were essentially three religious ways of viewing the world: paganism, Christianity, and Judaism. Christianity—particularly early Christianity—believed that man should behave as an angel: Reject good food, fine wine, and possessions. Enter a monastery to be ascetically sealed away from the temptations of the world. Paganism believed that man was an animal: Seek pleasure, good food, fine wine, and possessions.

Early Christianity still has a voice in our world. It is the voice of abstinence. We heard it in the Prohibition movement, and we still hear it in certain quarters…Paganism also shapes our world. We find it in beer commercials, in Food and Wine magazine, in the Playboy ethic, on tabloid television, in the consumerism of American society that proclaims ‘whoever dies with the most toys, wins.’

Judaism’s great contribution to the moral vocabulary of the world was that it produced a middle way between those extremes, the way of mitzvah and kedushah. God made us a little lower than the angels, but much higher than the animals. Judaism advises that we neither reject nor hoard pleasure. We sanctify pleasure. We sanctify what we eat through kashrut (dietary laws), what we own through tzedakah (holy giving), what we drink by kiddush (blessing the wine), and by drinking moderately on Shabbat and on Pesach and other holidays and somewhat immoderately on Purim. We touch a drop of wine to the lips of a newborn baby. We remember the exhortation that goes with the lifted cup—‘Lechayim—To life!’ Wine may sweeten our life, but should not be used to the point that it becomes addictive.”

–From “Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah” by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin (pp.84-85)

I was struck by how much this reminded me of one of my favorite books, “Siddhartha,” by Herman Hesse, and how much Judaism, in this respect, resembles Buddhism’s Middle Way. I realize that this doesn’t apply to those who have already crossed the line into addiction, but it seems instructive for those of us who do drink, and those of us who are raising or mentoring future drinkers or non drinkers.

And P.S. if you’re interested in the similarities between Judaism, Christianity & other religions, my father, Meyer Odze, a documentary filmmaker, has explored, and continues to explore, the subject.