Polish Hasidut and Alcohol

Aryeh Sklar

Polish Hasidut and Alcohol Consumption

Arnold B. Ehrlich, born in Poland in 1848 and died in New York in 1919, was an extremely interesting and multifaceted individual. A scholar and polyglot, he wrote a commentary to the Bible incorporating his Bible critic views called “Mikra ke-Peshuto.” Having lived in Poland until only 17, he then went to Germany for several years, finally settling in New Rochelle, New York around 1880. His aforementioned commentary, written in Hebrew, was published in Germany and then in New York, and includes comparisons to other languages and scripts. Among his sometimes dry comments on grammar are indeed humorous ones as well.

One of these occurs in his commentary to Deuteronomy 31:16. The verse states that God says to Moses, “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and will rise the people...” Thanks to the lack of punctuation in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmudic sage Rabban Gamliel declared that this was proof of the revival of the dead in the end of times, since the sentence could be read, “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and will rise…” Ehrlich states,

This is not because ‘will rise’ is capable of applying to the preceding clause, but rather that when the Sadducees questioned Rabban Gamliel where there is proof for the resurrection of the dead in the Torah, he pushed them off by reading the verse as such, where ‘will rise’ can be seen as applying to the previous clause, wherein God was hinting to Moses that he will rest with his ancestors and then rise (TB Sanhedrin 90b). And then, because of Rabban Gamliel’s apologetic response, his students lost the appropriate way to treat the clauses of the verse (TB Yoma 52).

Ehrlich goes on to describe his times as related to those times (and this is why we are mentioning it here):

I will mention here something that happened regarding Polish Hasidim, sheep of our holy people, who love the times of Purim more than any other holiday, since they are commanded to be drunk, and out of their love for it they uphold those days for three days. And they give a reason for their adding [to the one day of Purim], saying, “We act this way because the it is a question in the Talmud regarding the 16th day and the 17th day (Megillah 2b).” And not only that, but when they drink and get drunk, they turn that question of the Talmud into song, and they sing, "And I'll say the 16th and the 17th!?" So too, were the students of Rabban Gamliel, who drank from the cup of his consolation, they drank and got drunk, and turned his words into a song, “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and will rise!”

Beside for the humorous and denigrating view of Ehrlich toward the contemporary Hasidic groups in his homeland of Poland, his report that Hasidim were particularly known for their love of drink, and therefore their love of the merry holiday of Purim, deserves some research. Regarding this particular story, we should suspect it an exaggeration. Ehrlich’s connection to Hasidic Jewry, especially in Poland, was tenuous at best, and hostile at worst. True, he was originally from there, and he may have heard stories, or seen certain people who celebrated Purim this way, this story still cannot be taken as fact. Indeed, his main point was to connect it in a somewhat homiletical manner to the pain of the exile in Talmudic times, which does not necessarily make for factual reporting. In fact, after much research, I have found this story repeated in only one other place, in another context of great derision toward this act, and also a generation later, in Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook’s Sihot al Erez Yisrael, in an essay entitled “Hakol Ma’alin le-Erez Yisrael.” (The reason this is so interesting is that it is far more likely that Rabbi Zvi Yehudah read Ehrlich, than the supposition that they share the same source or rumors. See the following picture of the paragraph in question:)

There are, then, two questions to ask when reading this story. Firstly, is the historical reality true, i.e. that Hasidim in 19th century Poland would have been known for their love of strong drink, such that a story like this can be evidence of a common occurrence? And secondly, given that Hasidim are devout followers of their Hasidic leaders, do the rabbis of Hasidic sects in Poland provide guidance or justification in any way toward the consumption of alcohol? If these leaders glorify the consumption of alcohol, we would expect that the followers would respond in kind. And so, the story would be assumed to be correct enough, given the historical and ideological circumstances. However, if the ideological stance of the leaders is found to be much more of a forbidding type when it comes to the consumption of alcohol and drunkenness, then the questions begin to arise whether this story can be seen as within the realm of possibility. If the Hasidic followers were disobeying their leaders and drinking, then we must then question why this should be so. In this paper, we will endeavor to explore these questions in depth.

It is clear that associations of Hasidut and alcohol are not historically unfounded. Glenn Dynner, a scholar who has spent much of his academic energy on the question of Hasidic history and alcohol, has written several articles and books about this topic. In particular, his article, “Jewish Drinking Practices and the Sobriety Stereotype in Eastern Europe,” is a goldmine of information, particularly relevant to our examination of Poland in the Hasidic community. Interestingly, the article notes, the existence of Jewish-owned taverns was commonplace in Poland in the 19th century. However, many outsiders viewed the Jews as tee-totalers, completely sober even as their common profession was often to serve strong drink. Polish noble Antoni Ostrowski described the Jews as, “always sober, and this virtue should be conceded: drunks are rare among Jews.” Father Karol Mikoszewski writes, “a Jewish drunk is hard to find.’’ Apparently, this was generally meant as an anti-semitic view of the Jews. They were viewed as such so as to portray them as sober exploiters of the drunk, better able to part the gentile peasant from his hard-earned cash, while the Jew would not touch the stuff. A common peasant proverb was, “the peasant drinks at the inn and the Jew does him in.” Indeed, partly because of this, there was a kind of prohibition on Jewish alcohol sale.

This reality, posits Dynner, was the cause for Jews to portray the gentile in contrast to them. In Dynner’s words, the Jews, “countered accusations of sinister sobriety with a demeaning stereotype of drunken gentile profligacy.” Indeed, there was a popular Jewish song called ‘‘Shiker iz der goy’’ (The gentile [goy] is drunk), that placed this contrast in its fullest. Dynner translates it this way:

The goy goes to the tavern/ he drinks a glass of wine/ oy, the goy is drunk, drunk is he/ drink he must, because a goy is he,’’ the first verse proclaims. The next verse presents his mirror opposite: ‘‘The Jew goes to the studyhouse/ he looks at a book/ oy, the Jew is sober, sober is he/ learn he must, because a Jew is he.

However, the outsider’s perspective of the Jews was not always the same as the internal awareness from others. Tzevi Hirsch Kaidanover’s Kav ha-Yashar rails against what he viewed as a problem of alcohol in Jewish society. ‘‘I have noticed that many people in this region are so enslaved to their appetites that immediately upon awakening, hours before dawn, they believe they will die if they do not drink hard liquor.’’ He also called praying while drunk, ‘‘a terrible sin . . . which many luminaries have committed.’’ Dynner notes that the rarity of such protests in 19th century Jewish Polish writings, especially contrasted with the much more common Christian sermon mentionings of the ills of alcohol, means that alcohol was hardly a Jewish societal problem.

However, he waffles on this point. He states that the influence of Hasidic glorification of drinking definitely contributed to drunkenness being more common than not. In fact, some portrayed Hasidim as always being drunk. The Maskilim, enlightened Jews, saw the Hasidim as drunkards as well. The maskil Yehezkel Kotik accused the Hasidim of his town of having ‘‘spent days and nights on end in the shtibl, dancing, singing, eating, and drinking, while their wives and children all but starved to death.” Additionally, though we have seen Ehrlich’s colorful description above, but still others had more visual ways of displaying their view of Hasidic drinking in 19th century Poland. The below picture was meant to be a Jewish stereotype of a Hasid in that time and place. Dynner wants us to notice the bottle in the Hasid’s bottle, but also notice his ruddy nose:

Not only did enlightened Jews denigrate the Hasidic Jew as mired in drink, but so was this an accusation from the opponents of Hasidut, the Mitnagdim, directed toward the Hasidim. The common diatribe was regarding the Hasidim’s customary “imbibing of wine and dancing, and in their dancing like rams, each man grabbing his neighbor’s neck, and chanting and singing, ‘The Rabbi ordered us to be joyful.’” Satire and parodies from the mitnagdim making fun of Hasidim sometimes made up, in Dynner’s words, “some of crudest, unrestrained satires in the history of Jewish literature.”

To Dynner, the explanation of the difference between the outsider’s view and the insider’s view comes down to how much access to knowledge of rituals in which Hasidim participated. Since, Dynner posits, most Hasidic drinking took place in ritualized and spiritual contexts, the outsider would not necessarily have seen these situations. However, the insider would know of these contexts and therefore see the Hasid as using his religion to be drunk all the time. In Dynner’s words, “The Jewish sobriety stereotype seems to have been sustainable throughout the rise of Hasidism because Hasidim confined the heaviest drinking to sacred times and spaces like the prayer house (shtibl) or the tsadik’s court.”

All of this creates a context for Ehrlich’s story. Even though outsiders saw a very sober society, and even many Jews considered themselves sober in contrast to the gentiles, those in the know, like Ehrlich, could describe a situation from the inside where the whiskey flowed freely. However, there is still an issue we must tackle. Does alcohol play a large role in Polish Hasidic writings?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Polish Hasidut is a mixed bunch when it comes to the consumption of alcohol. Given this, the ebb and flow of support and disapproval of alcohol consumption can be useful to us in gauging the changes in Polish Hasidic understanding of their culture, as well as how it might have been seen by outsiders. In the 18th century, early Hasidic leader R. Elimelekh of Lizhensk spoke out strongly against alcohol consumption. He writes in his Hanhagot Adam #18, “It is essential that one guard himself from alcoholic drinks, since this is a terrible sickness, and brings one to a great downfall.” One of R. Elimelekh’s closest disciples, R. Kalonymus Kalman Halevi Epstein, takes a slightly softer stance on alcohol. He writes in his Maor va-Shemesh, Parashat Vayeshev, s.v. va-yesaper, that,

Wine can be good for a person, but it can also be bad for a person. The books say that wine represents din, such that so long as the wine does not go from potential to reality, like the grape vine, that is good… When it transforms from potential to reality, that is din, like the books say that Eve squeezed out a cluster of grapes… and Noah, who became drunk through his wine, which is represented by din.

However, a bit later in Poland, things start to change. Hasidut in Ger begins to look more supportive of alcoholic drinking. Dynner already remarks regarding R. Simha Bunem of Pshyskha (Przysucha), that he “recalls that when spending a Sabbath evening with the tsadik Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudilkov (Suzylkow) in the home of the latter’s patron, R. Moses ‘ordered his attendant to prepare him a big goblet of liquor for the night.’” We can add that R. Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk, known as the Kotzker Rebbe, in several places, considers drinking a valuable aspect of religious life. In his Emet mi-Kotzk Titzmah (158), he comments on the verse in Esther 5:10, “And the king asked in the feast of wine, What is your request?” There, he is quoted as saying that, “Israel is not only answered during their prayers, but even when they gather for a meal celebrating a mitzvah, eating with fellows, and drinking l’chaim, the Holy One, blessed be He, asks, ‘What is your request?’”

The l’chaim seems integral to Kotzk life. In the biography ha-Rebbe mi-Kotzk, there are several stories of R. Menachem Mendel’s l’chaims. For example, one story (127) reports that R. Menachem Mendel entered the study house on the night of Simhat Torah with a large bottle of strong drink, and proceeded to proclaim what the Torah taught him was “L’chaim”, to which he poured the drink into a cup, raised it up, and drank it.

Around this time, elsewhere in Poland we find a hemming back and forth, with R. Shmuel Bornsztain, the author of Shem mi-Shemuel, quoting his father R. Abraham Bornsztain (late 19th century), who seemed both lenient and restrictive when it comes to alcohol. A Talmudic passage states that, on the holiday of Purim, one is, in the Talmud’s words, “obligated to drink until he does not know between ‘Blessed be Mordechai’ and ‘Cursed be Haman.’” In much of Hasidic texts about this obligation, it is celebrated and the concept of intoxication is glorified in the context of Purim. However, in his Shem mi-Shemuel, commenting on the portion of Toldot in Genesis, he quotes his father that this obligation is absolutely not about getting drunk, but that one is obligated just to drink. That said, he writes, the obligation is the let go of inhibitions in knowledge, and this can be accomplished by alcohol. Thus, both sides of the coin are represented.

Similarly, back in Gur, we have the Sefat Emet writing against the concept of getting drunk on Purim. He writes in his commentary to Talmud Megillah (7a), s.v me-hayav, that, "It seems appropriate to explain this passage that it is not the intention to obligate one to become so drunk that he does not know, but that he is obligated to spend all day in feasting, to the point that he's not sure if he's accomplished the obligation of feasting. But even before he gets to that point, so long as he spends the day in feast, he has accomplished his obligation. So it would seem to me.” Thus, the unrestrained permission for alcohol is restricted and a person is focused less on inebriation, but in celebration.

In Poland around this time we have R. Tzvi Elimelech Spira of Dinov, author of "Bnei Yisaschar" on the times of the year, writing that Purim is an exception to the rule in Judaism that one should not drink and get drunk. Drunkenness, declares R. Spira (Purim, Maamar 4), is a “disgusting character trait (middah megunah)”, but is allowed on Purim for certain reasons of divine judgement on that day. The fact that he calls this a “disgusting character trait” certainly implies that normally, one is expected to refrain from drunkenness.

Another Hasidic leader from this stock is R. Zadok of Lublin. In his plethora of writings, he refers to the nature of alcohol often. One prime example of such a balanced view of alcohol comes from his Mahshevot Haruz, 160, where he speaks of alcohol as only worthy to lift depressed spirits of mourners. “But someone who has joy, he should not seek extra joy in this world, while God cannot be completely joyous in His world… Wine is said to give reward only to the wicked, for they trade in the joy of the world to come for extra joy in this world.” Thus, strong drink is ill-advised for the regular person.

Another Ger Hasidic leader, R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, speaks of similar themes of the nature of alcohol. In his commentary on the Torah, Mei ha-Shiloach, he refers to the needs of higher religious leaders of the Jewish people needing to have clear heads not only to lead the people properly, but to worship God correctly. Thus, in the beginning Parshat Shemini, he explains why, in the aftermath of Aaron’s sons dying, the priests were forbidden from drinking during the priestly service. In context, he says that drinking can make one angry and too particular against people’s mistakes. Thus, Aaron and his children as leaders were enjoined against drinking, as being sober would prevent the rigidity that comes with drinking.

In the next comment, R. Leiner hedges. He comments that in general, drinking is not good for religious worship because it “makes one’s head heavy.” This is why it is forbidden for a priest to drink “in order to get drunk, since the priest needs to constantly be in a state of awe and knowledge.” He goes on to note that the tribe of Judah is blessed by Jacob in the end of Genesis regarding the drinking of wine, since the religious king is constantly aware of God just by being a king. Since kingship belongs to the line of Judah in that blessing, wine will not affect him and cause him to be drunk, since knowledge of God is constantly on him.

Thus, to R. Leiner, there are two leaders, of spirituality and of society, and each one has a different aspect of drinking in relation to them. Not only this, but permissibility of wine is limited to those leaders who can maintain their knowledge of God. But what of regular people? It is apparent from another comment of of R. Leiner that alcohol is considered to have extremely negative effects for regular folks. In his commentary to Parshat Shelach, s.v ve-hakriv, he notes that the command to libate with wine onto the altar during the sacrifice rituals is to symbolize that even though Jews may metaphorically be lacking knowledge (by turning away from God), they can still be full of praise. Wine, he says, “represents forgetfulness and burden,” since that is its effect on a person. By relating wine to forgetfulness of God regarding the regular person, we see that the properly religious person should avoid it at all costs.

What we have found in this study of various writings of Hasidic leaders of Poland in the 18th century, is that there is a decidedly negative view in general of the place of alcohol in religious life. Instead, it is limited to certain times or to certain people, and certainly praise is not granted to its inebriating powers. So we return to our original set of questions. If the mitnagdim and the maskilim could see the inner goings on of the Hasidic life, and were accurately describing (if polemically exaggerating) the commonplace nature of alcohol consumption in Hasidic life, why were the Hasidim generally defying their leaders?

We would like to suggest that we should connect two strange facts we have seen so far. Hasidim drank a lot, that is clear. And yet, they also generally viewed themselves as sober in contrast to the disgusting drunkard gentile. This likely occurred because of the widespread Hasidic idea of the tzaddik. The tzaddik was capable of reaching great heights, which the Hasidic follower could never dream of reaching. In this paradigm, the idea of abstention from the drinking of alcohol was perhaps considered ideal, but impossible for anybody but the Hasidic tzaddik and leader. If so, the praising of the sober Jew who studies in the study house all day, as the folk song went, was meant wholeheartedly, even if it was considered a realistic goal for the average Jew in Poland. The Hasidic leaders may have described the ills of alcohol, perhaps indeed as a response to those viewing them as drunks, but the followers may not have been able to resist the temptation that alcohol held. As time went on, the leaders would shy away from a fully explicit condemnation of drinking, but certainly limited it to religious and ritual contexts.