Drunkenness

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1. Alien Fire and Religious Passion

   Rabbi Alex Israel | 32 minutes

   Shemini includes the sudden death by fire of the sons of Aharon, as they bring the “strange fire”. What did they do wrong? While looking at related texts, we explore several different approaches to what happened, why they died, and the difficult messages that emerge.

2. Yeshayahu 27-28

   Rabbi David Sabato

   The first pasuk of perek 27 continues the same prophetic thread expressed by the two closing pesukim of perek 26. These pesukim describe the destruction of the world’s evil through vivid, symbolic images that connect the future redemption with the Exodus from Egypt and which hint to a war between God and His rebellious early creations. Pesukim 2-6 detail a positive ‘parable of the vineyard’ which contrasts with the critical parable detailed in perek 5. The rest of the perek describes the fortification of Israel in its land and the blessing the other nations will receive as a result. The prophecy concludes with the ingathering of the exiles in the land of Israel following the redemptive blast of the shofar.

   Yeshayahu 28 discusses the people and leaders of Ephraim (1-6), the leaders of Yehuda (7-22), and includes harsh rebuke of their drunkenness and exaggerated confidence. This perek also teaches us about the leaders’ mocking reactions to Yeshayahu’s prophecies of calamity, which warned the nation of Assyria’s imminent arrival. The perek’s conclusion includes a parable borrowed from the world of agriculture.

3. The Descendants of Rekhav

   Rabbi David Sabato

   The descendants of Rekhav, who abstain from drinking wine and do not settle down permanently, symbolize absolute adherence to the ancient ancestral command. This is a lesson for Israel, that they must keep God's commands. But why does this adherence deserve an extreme Divine promise?

   The prohibition against settling down might not stem from a nomadic perception, but rather from experience that teaches that settling down leads by necessity to forgetting God and ultimately to idol worship, as the book of Devarim warns many times in anticipation of Israel's entry into the land.

   Additionally, farmers whose lives were dependent on the seasons of the year and on the forces of nature deified these forces and worshipped them. Therefore, the Torah is concerned about the dangers of agricultural life in the land of Israel, the chief of which is immersion in idolatry, which will lead to the removal of the people from their land.

4. A Message from Rekhav's Commandments: What can Israel Learn?

   Rabbi David Sabato