By Rabbi Meir Goldberg. The following beautiful idea is based on a class given by Rabbi Yitzchok Feldheim, who used to do Kiruv with me at Rutgers from 2004 – 2007. We use wine for many mitzvos throughout our calendar and life cycles. We bring Shabbos in with wine and we say goodbye to Shabbos with it as well. We make a bris, a chasuna, we bench bircas hamazon, the Pesach Seder, all yomim tovim, etc, over wine. What is so unique about this drink and why is it so special?

Read the label on the back of a wine bottle. It might say something like this: “This wine was grown in the cool temperatures of the Napa Valley. It’s rich with flavors of apple, pomegranate, apricot and a hint of cherry. It has been aged for ten years in special casks which bring out it’s natural flavor. It’s best served chilled with fish or meat.”

Wine is fascinating. It is the product of the totality of its experiences. A wine connoisseur can taste everything that the wine was exposed to. The climate it was grown in, the fruit that grew near it, the amount of time it was aged, the barrel it was kept in, even the temperature that it was served at.

If we did a study of the people least likely to become alcoholics, it might be that wine connoisseurs would be that group. A wine connoisseur drinks wine very differently than an alcoholic. A connoisseur takes the wine bottle with a towel so as not to warm the bottle of wine with his hands. He drinks wine with stemware and holds the glass by the stem for the same reason. He pours the wine halfway up the glass, but before drinking, he sticks his nose into the glass and sniffs deeply, taking in the lush smell. He then sips the wine but doesn’t swallow. Rather, he swishes it around his mouth so as to taste every nuance. A wine connoisseur wants to have the complete experience of the wine. Contrast that with an alcoholic who is only interested in pouring as much wine into his body as possible in order to get drunk.

That is the difference between what the Torah wants us to experience and what hedonists do. The mitzvos in the Torah are not only there to give us olam haba, but they are also there to help us live a rich, real and complete life. The restrictions aren’t there to deprive us, rather they are telling us to hold back on guzzling life like an alcoholic, devouring everything we see, and instead take our time to have the most complete and enjoyable experience possible.

Let us teach this valuable lesson to ourselves, our families and the entire Klal Yisroel.

Rabbi Meir Goldberg is the Director of the Meor Rutgers Jewish Xperience at Rutgers University. He can be reached at [email protected]