“What I admire about you, Nathan,” Brady said, “is that you can hold your liquor so well. In my ethnic persuasion, that would be considered a badge of honor. In yours, probably not so much.”
“True, especially since I am a rabbi.”
“A rabbi?” Brady responded in disbelief. “During my days in Washington, I ran into lots of Jews who could drink with the best, but none of them was a rabbi.”
“A heavy drinking Jew is the quintessential assimilationist. If he can drink like a goy, he can pass for a goy, so deep is the Jewish inferiority complex,” Ginsberg replied. “But passing for a goy doesn’t work well in the rabbi business. Congregations want rabbis not only to be Jewish, but to look Jewish and smell Jewish. That means, horseradish on your breath…yes; liquor on your breath…no. Fortunately, I am retired. I took up drinking after my working years. All that being said, there is precedence for having a drunken leader in the Bible.”
“Is this going to be a sermon on the virtues of drinking?” Brady asked in expectation of some witty Talmudic offering. “Being of Irish heritage and having labored in some of the best bars in D.C., I can say I need no conversion.”
“In your case, no conversion, just a little Jewish perspective,” Ginsberg responded. “I think you already understand the sins and virtues of alcohol. In Genesis, God decides he doesn’t like the life He has created on earth with Adam and Eve, so He tries again. He floods the world, and drowns everybody except for one righteous man, his family and a bunch of animals—there is some dispute as to their number—but in the end, all are saved, and life begins again on this lonely planet.”
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.