Why We Drink on Purim

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Welcome. With Purim coming I would like to speak to you about the topic of Purim. What is Purim? So let's start with the Gemara. The Gemara says that a person has to be so intoxicated on Purim, so intoxicated that he cannot tell the difference between Arur Haman and Baruch Mordechai. What does that mean? Chas V'Shalom it doesn't mean that you should say Baruch Haman, or the opposite, it doesn't mean that. There are different explanations. I think the Taz says that you should not be able to tell which is more important, the fall of the wicked or the lifting of the righteous. Others say it means because there's a Gematria here, they're equal, you should not be able to calculate the Gematria. It's all a point where you're not able to do your normal mental functions, you should be intoxicated. So the question is why. Why should you be intoxicated? If it's because you should be happy, so this is only d'rabanan, simcha on Purim is rabbinic and simcha on Yom Tov is d'oraisa, from the Torah, so even more so, on Yom Tov you should have to be so intoxicated, but it's not so. You just drink a certain amount of wine till you feel good and happy, but to get so fluey that you can't tell the difference one thing to another, you can't add up numbers, you can't do anything, there's no reason to get that drunk. And also some of the sages ask, I mean all the prophets speak against drunkenness, so why over here all of a sudden there's a mitzvah to get drunk? So in Shulchan Aruch it says that you could fulfill ad delo yada by sleeping a little bit. I think the Magen Avrohom says it's better to sleep than

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1. 0:00Welcome. With Purim coming I would like to speak to you about the topic of Purim.…
2. 2:18to drink. So what's the idea of of ad delo yada? Apparently it's not simcha. I…
3. 4:23Midian, go take those those pagans in Midian and convert them. And what does converting them…
4. 6:35of Israel. The person who made the sea split, who took the Jews out of Egypt,…
5. 8:54than all the gods. Because this that He turned the tables on Egypt, this was like…
6. 11:45a great great great God and not only that He was the only God. The idea…
7. 14:02There's nothing else that exists besides God. So we have a world, okay, it's a question,…
8. 16:17Being, He is great, He is powerful and wise and everything, but this time I got…
9. 18:35his father-in-law. He had to honor him. He couldn't sideline him, he couldn't ignore him, he…
10. 20:45He's the Creator, there was nothing before Him and even after Creation. Before Creation there was…

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