A Taste of Shabbos – Parashat Va’eira

In this parasha we find the source of the four- or five- cups of wine we are directed to drink at the Pesach Seder. There are four expressions and stages of redemption listed. The sages equate the first cup called ‘Kadesh’ to the wine that precedes the meal on Shabbat and other festivals, called Kiddush, meaning sanctification.

 When I was a small child, I had heard the word Kaddish as referring to a prayer for the departed, and when later, not having a father, I learned the word Kiddush in school, I remember imagining that the way to recite the kaddish was to hold up a glass of wine and say L’chaim to the generations of relatives who had passed on. Thinking about that image now, perhaps I wasn’t so far off. Similar to Kaddish taking the soul to a higher realm, Kiddush lifts us up from the weekday world to the Shabbat plane which is a semblance of the world to come. In fact, paralleling the four cups in this week’s Torah portion, there are four prayer services for Shabbos in the traditional siddur, prayer book: Evening, since the Jewish calendar starts at night, and then three daytime prayers- morning, midday and afternoon. Each one is like a rung on the Shabbat ladder of ascendency. Even if you don’t attend or recite the traditional prayers, with some degree of focus and awareness, you may, if only subtly, feel the progression, as you may do more intensely, with the four cups on Passover. Of course, the first stage needs the biggest ‘kickstart’ so that’s the one we are most careful to have a cup of wine or grape juice.

Well, wine you can understand, if you want to feel a tangible high, but where does grape juice, even after the discovery of resveratrol, fit in? Let’s investigate:  The very first sin was eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but the Torah doesn’t tell us what kind of fruit it was. One mainstream rabbinic opinion relates: ‘Chava (Eve) took from the grapes, squeezed out the juice, drank it and gave some to Adam.’ Thus on Shabbat, when we commemorate the renewal of creation, we take the same kind of fruit, this time with an expressed allegiance to the Creator. Furthermore, when reciting Kiddush, we proclaim that G-d created the world and we are the ones who have been chosen to testify both to creation and to our national history that we are here because G-d took our ancestors out of Egypt. As we read in the Haggadah, ‘If He had not taken us and our ancestors out, we and our children and children’s children would still be slaves in Egypt.’ What happens here is a conflating of two events by reciting a prayer over wine or grape juice, thereby rectifying the original mistake. How awesome is it to be able to do that!

The Zohar elaborates by referring to two others who drank wine to a point of intoxication; Noah and Sara. Noah, like Chava, succumbed to negative forces but Sara, according to the Zohar, fell but got back up. What does this all mean? The mystics explain that wine on a non-material level is associated with joy. Its numerical equivalent equals 70 which is the same gematria as Sode, secret. As the sages put it, ‘when wine goes in, the secret goes out.’ This deep spiritual ecstasy can be very holy, but when it ‘takes over’ the person, boundaries fall and the imbiber may succumb to destructive forces. Sara however, as the modern saying goes, was able ‘to hold her liquor.’ This is not the case with other forms of alcohol. In fact, grape juice which may seem like any other kind of fruit juice, has a higher status with its own blessing of Borei Peri Ha’GAFEN.’ Blessed is the One who creates the fruit of the vine.’ When we trace the grapes and the extract back to the Garden of Eden and the substance that could bring a kind of enlightenment to its drinker, it makes sense that grapes and their extract should be singled out for an expression of religious observance that can reverse the downward spiral of disobeying G-d. 

Thus, when tapping into deeper and deeper experiences of ecstasy, we need to avoid being like Aaron’s two sons who later in the Torah perished because they entered the holy of holies in a state of intoxication. So what was Sara’s special quality that protected her? According to the Hassidic masters, the example of her service was similar to what will be the state of the world in the Messianic era. At that point, G-d’s Presence will be revealed and felt, but at the same time, due to the humility of the human race, there will be no thought of disobedience to the Divine will. Kind of like Shabbos, if you think about it. Sara was the initiator of that state; let us try to be the manifestors.