Between Blessed be Mordechai (article summary)

My Purim-related article from this past week can be read online in several ways — unlocked Substack post, Jewish Link HTML, and flipbooks. I recommend the Substack way because it has working hyperlinks. Also, in the image below, under which I’ll break the article down into an outline.

So, here’s the outline:

Section 1, Introduction.

1. Enumerate mitzvot of Purim day as listed in the Megillah, including י֖וֹם מִשְׁתֶּ֥ה וְשִׂמְחָֽה, a day of feasting and merrymaking. These don’t explicitly include getting drunk at all; certainly not until you cannot distinguish Arur Haman from Baruch Mordechai.

2. Rava mentions the obligation: מִיחַיַּיב אִינִישׁ לְבַסּוֹמֵי בְּפוּרַיָּא עַד דְּלָא יָדַע בֵּין אָרוּר הָמָן לְבָרוּךְ מָרְדֳּכַי. We don’t see drunkenness mentioned in Mishnah, or Yerushalmi, or in Talmud Bavli until fourth-generation Rava mentions it — unless it is Rabba and Rabbi Zeira who get drunk, which would push it one generation earlier. That’s an absence of evidence.

3. We might also have evidence of absence because the fifth-generation Tanna, Rabbi Yehuda, enumerated limited instances during the year he became drunk, and skipped Purim.

4. A medium generation Amora like Rava won’t fabricate a new obligation from nothing, so maybe he understood it from י֖וֹם מִשְׁתֶּ֥ה וְשִׂמְחָֽה, taking mishteh more literally instead of a mere feast. Indeed, from context on the same daf, Rava amplified the role of the Purim feast.

Section 2, Obligation not Absolut — :-)

1. Taken most literally, someone would have to get drunk out of his mind, a dangerous level of blood alcohol level. Did Rava intend this literally?

2. Discuss Rishonim and Acharonim who did not take it most literally. Rambam saying drink until falls asleep prompted my father to explain that פוּרַיָּא also means “bed”. Tosafot talk of an expansive liturgy of things to say, based on a Yerushalmi. Others say it’s not literal, but more than his usual. What gives?

3. My intuition, developed by reading lots of Talmud, and being sensitive to literary forms, is that the Rishonim and Acharonim are tapping into this being a poetic way of expressing the idea of getting quite drunk. I point to another example, from Sanhedrin, of Rava using clever language in expressing a halachic position.

Section 3, Interjecting Arur Haman

1. Here is the big innovation of the article. I tracked down the Yerushalmi and a related Bereishit Rabba, which is the midrash aggadah of the Amoraim of Israel, thus of the Yerushalmi. From there, I think I understand what practice Rava referenced.

2. Rabbi Yitzchak discusses an obligation, based on Mishlei, to bless a tzadik when encountering his name, and to curse a rasha. זֵ֣כֶר צַ֭דִּיק לִבְרָכָ֑ה, וְשֵׁ֖ם רְשָׁעִ֣ים יִרְקָֽב. Thus, Rav said cursed be Haman and his sons when encountering Haman in the megillah; Rabbi Yonatan for the sole instance of Nevuchadnezzar in the megillah; and Rabbi Pinchas would say zachur latov about Charvona. By extension, and by context, they could / should have blessed Mordechai when encountering his name. And the same for Esther, Zeresh, and so on. The megillah was thus participatory.

3. Taken literally, Rava referenced this practice and held that one should be so soused that he messes up and calls out the wrong Arur or Baruch at the wrong place.

4. You might have halachic problems with this, so see footnote 3 that addresses some of this. (E.g. there was no Taanit Esther before the night reading, and yes, you could eat or drink before fulfilling a mitzvah.) Alternatively, it is still poetic, and describes how a drunk person would have erred.

Section 4, Revisiting Rabba and Rabbi Zeira

1. I’ve been discussing Rabba / Rava / Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Zeira I / II regarding the golem in recent articles. See Who Fashioned the Golem and then The Fellowship of the Golem. And I connected it to this sugya about the disastrous Purim feast of Rabba (?) and Rabbi Zeira.

2. I discuss the few manuscript variants in Megillah about the people’s identities. The Vilna printing (and not other earlier printings) seems almost alone in saying it was Rabba. But then, there is also Munich 95, an important manuscript, that agrees. If Rava throughout, it is a smooth reading. But I dislike smooth readings, under the principle of lectio difficilior. I consider, though, why a scribe might move from one variant to the other. Rava is smoother, but does the scribe know of Rabbi Zeira II’s existence?

3. Contra some others, I don’t see Rava / Rabba’s ability to resurrect as having any bearing on the halachic acceptablity of creating a golem. Their argument is: why didn’t Rava just resurrect the golem? I’d answer: who says Rabbi Zeira’s words disassembled the golem? And even if so, Rava didn’t use sefer Yetzira to resurrect Rabbi Zeira. He davened, and Hashem answered; and Rabbi Zeira didn’t even think that such prayer would necessarily work a second time.

4. Finally, the identification of this as Rabba puts the drinking practice one generation back. The identification as Rava makes the actor consistent with the speaker of the obligation to become drunk.