#31 - Adloyada - Really??

It's one of the strangest of all halakhic rules: "one is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim to the point that one cannot tell the difference between 'cursed be Haman' and 'blessed be Mordekhai.'” Read literally, this is a requirement that we celebrate the joy of Purim by getting ourselves wasted, stinking drunk, which is hardly in keeping with almost everything else the tradition teaches us. So... must we read it literally? In this installment, we'll look at a number of authorities who don't. Which, of course, raises some interesting questions about the nature of halakhic interpretation. Source sheet available at www.freehofinstitute.org/learning.