Drinking & Praying? How Do the Rabbis Approach Drunken Prayer?
With Purim upon us this week and the attendant drinking that occurs, it’s fitting to wonder about the appropriateness of praying while intoxicated (or its inappropriateness). So: what do the Talmudic rabbis have to say about it? Tannaitic Exemption One clear tannaitic text that discusses this issue finds that one should not pray while drunk […]
Blessing for Different Wine
While there is a well-known tannaitic teaching that one says a blessing – בורא פרי הגפן (Creator of the fruits of the vine) – over wine (mBerakhot 6:1), one of the interesting blessings that is created during the period of the amoraim is that over drinking different wine (bBerakhot 59b): אמר רב יוסף בר אבא […]
Purim Drinking II: Which Beverage(s) to Drink?
Having begun a discussion of drinking on Purim, (and what got me re-interested in this topic), I wanted to do an initial post on which beverage one should drink in order to intoxicate oneself on Purim. Curiously, in neither Rabbi Jacob, son of Asher‘s Four Divisions1 nor in Rabbi Joseph Karo‘s Set Table2 is any specific beverage mentioned in order to intoxicate, […]
Bentsching Over A Cup
If one were to open the Shulhan Arukh on the topic of saying the ברכת המזון (grace after meals) with a cup (for instance, see Berakhos 51a), one would find that Rabbi Yosef Karo wrote the following (OH 182.1): יש שאומרים שברכת המזון טעונה כוס אפילו ביחיד, וצריך לחזור עליו, ולא יאכל אם אין לו כוס לברך עליו אם הוא מצפה […]