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ALCOHOL AND THE JEWS
The last number of decades has brought to light an increasingly difficult problem in Jewish life both here in Israel and in the Jewish world generally. It is the rise of alcoholism and its related tragedies. There is also a considerable amount of drug use among Jewish youth and it is not restricted to particular groups within that society. It would be simple to say that these problems are restricted mainly to the secular and non-observant Jewish society. But that statement would not be a true one.
There was a time not that long ago – I recall it from my youth when Jews who were alcoholics or even regularly drunk were a rarity. Jews drank on Simchat Torah and Purim but were sober the rest of the year. Jews prided themselves on their sobriety and scorned their Eastern European non-Jewish neighbors because many of them were always drunk.
There were even Jewish folk ballads in Yiddish that highlighted this difference between Jewish and non-Jewish societies. It was not only that being a drinker was dangerous to health, family and economic well being that prevented Jews from indulging in alcohol. It was because it was socially unacceptable in Jewish society.
A drunkard was never a hero or a role model in the Jewish world. From the story of Lot and his daughters onwards the avoidance of the evil effects of alcohol became the norm in Jewish society. Though Jews in Eastern Europe were heavily involved in the production and sale of liquor, Jewish society served as the social brake on drinking itself and thus the rate of alcoholism in Jewish society was extremely low and far below the average of the general society in which they found themselves living.
All of that has changed dramatically in our time. While the advertising of liquor has been severely curtailed and the harmful effects of the drink are spelled out clearly on every liquor bottle, drinking, like smoking tobacco, apparently has not been severely affected by these warnings. This is especially true among the young who do not yet appreciate their own mortality and health.
The bar, the pub, even the Shabat kiddush are all the in-places in today’s society to drink without social disapproval. Here in Israel, the traditional Friday night family dinner, observed for decades even in non-observant homes, has given way to the melees and stabbings and drunkenness of the pubs and bars. Friday night and Shabat are the most horrendous times of the week for traffic fatalities here in Israel, many of them induced by alcohol.
Jews have become experts in single malt liquors bought at outrageous prices and displayed as a sort of trophy testament to one’s success in life. The goal of twelve and thirteen year olds at Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties is to drink hard liquor, and their parents indifferently acquiesce to this pending disaster.
Somehow the yeshiva world has allowed Purim to morph into a drunken orgy which also has consequences later on and not only next day’s hangover. The rate of alcoholism in the Jewish world is now at an all time high, equal to if not even higher than the average in many countries. It is one of the many unseen or purposely ignored elephants that now appear in our room.
Alcohol like drugs and tobacco is addictive. Therefore alcoholism has to be defeated before it really takes hold. This can only be accomplished by a change in social society’s attitude towards drinking. As long as it is viewed as being socially acceptable, nay even desired, all of the radio ads against drunken driving and all of the warnings on the labels of the liquor bottles will be of little avail.
There are finally synagogues in the United States that ban liquor entirely from its premises even for catered affairs in their social halls. This was as a direct result of the weekly drunken behaviors by teenagers and even pre-teenagers on its premises. It was at least a statement by the congregation that drinking is no longer socially acceptable behavior.
Of course the rabbi of the congregation that initiated this action was roundly criticized for curtailing the private lives of others. However all of Torah is based on the necessity of curtailing imagined private freedoms. The problem of alcoholism in Jewish society is not one to be ignored.
It is not only a personal problem; it is one that affects countless Jewish families and Jewish society generally. Judaism is not for absolute prohibition of alcohol. Wine is an integral part of Jewish ritual. But like all matters in life, Judaism preaches good common sense, necessary restraints and discipline and a social responsibility for the general welfare of all society. Alcohol has to fit in to that pattern.
