Wine, Seder and Secrets

A drop of Shabbat kiddush wine from mother’s fingertip might be a first taste. The four cups at the Seder might be a second and standing under the chuppa might be a third. Memorable Jewish wine-moments thread their way through our lives. For Jews, wine has significance beyond fine bouquets and good years. It is a substance whose subtlety flavors our rituals, life cycle events and holy days. I wonder about the nature of wine and why it is so essential to our practices. Why is it that the Four Cups of wine are at the very core of the Pesach Seder – with liturgy and rituals organized around their being poured, blessed and sipped?
Wine presents early and often in the Torah, Midrash and Talmud. The paradox of wine; it is at once the quintessential primeval fruit of the vine tasted by the first humans, the source of Noah’s drunkenness, the sacred libation offered on the altar of The Almighty, and simply the substance that gladdens the heart of man. Clearly it has a story to tell.
Midrash identifies the fruit of Eden with grapes and the vineyard planted by Noah as having floated forth out of Eden. Two tales of human weakness linked to the vine. But there is more. Another early episode involving exile and new-world building centers again on wine. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot inebriated by wine commits incest. Human failing and the state of drunkenness seem to go together. Wine has the power to deviate the behavior of people.
Following the abrupt death of two sons of Aaron, priests are commanded to abstain from wine when serving in the sanctuary. Fittingly, the nazirite who is attempting to embrace the most scrupulously exemplary behavior is commanded to refrain from eating or drinking grape products. Wine is dangerous, those who pursue the holy, hold back.
Where then is the nobility of wine? Wherefrom its crown like appearance at our weekly Shabbat table? Yes, as a libation it too joins other offerings in the sanctuary, holy sacrifices for The Almighty. But there must be more. The subtleties and delicacies of wine emerge in the writings ascribed to David and to Solomon. Wine makes life merry, wine cheers the heart, and lover’s mouth is like the choicest wine.
This ethereal quality of wine leads Rabbi Samuel ben Nahmani of the Talmud to proclaim that a song of praise is sung only over wine. As priests would sing when the libation is offered, we too offer praise to the Almighty with wine, Shabbat kiddush, blessings at weddings, circumcisions and the four cups of wine at the seder.
Those four cups, they have an order to them, a seder. The first cup launches the dramatic cathartic evening with the sacred kiddush. The second one is in hand as we tell the story of the exodus. After the meal a third cup is poured as we offer thanks to The Almighty Almighty for our food and finally the fourth cup is raised in praise of The Almighty, hallel.
The practice of drinking four cups of wine at the seder is based on these words of The Almighty to Moshe in Egypt, “Therefore say to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you from their slavery, and I will redeem you with a outstretched arm, and with great judgments; And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a the Almighty;” A midrash in Exodus Rabbah notices four expressions of redemption:
I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you and I will take you.
The Sages accordingly ordained four cups to be drunk on the eve of Passover to correspond with these four expressions. They saw in this action the fulfillment of the verse in Psalms, “I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.”
Thinking about the expressions of redemption we begin to appreciate that they are no simple arbitrary words chosen randomly but rather reflect a progression of freedom; the slow unraveling of the bondage which brings the Israelites closer to the experience the ultimate, being taken in and bound to the Almighty. Wine is selected to commemorate this particular aspect of the redemption. According to Rabbi Judah Leove, the Maharal of Prague there is great depth and much of the esoteric involved in the four cups of wine.
Wine and secrets go together, he tells us in his haggadah. The numeric value of wine in Hebrew is equal to the word secret and as the Talmud says, drink wine, and secrets are revealed. As for the elixir itself, it is secretly stored away in the grape. It is the intoxicating nature of wine that indicates its special properties. Through wine the mystery of the exodus is told.
The cups of redemption tell the tale of a people enslaved and then elevated to great spiritual heights. It is a people that sheds its enslavement but preserves its experience, reliving each year and together proclaiming, we were once slaves to Pharaoh but now The Almighty has brought us close to Him.
Four cups of wine is enough to take the edge off the pain of years of persecution but not too much to relegate us to the unreality of irresponsibility. We take our experiences as slaves and use it to fashion a society based on morals and ethics. We move closer to our Creator and become for Him, a kingdom of priests and a nation of the holy.
What is the secret that emerges about the Exodus? Each family probably has its own moment. In our home it is comes very late at night when the Seder is already over. The haggadah is taken again in hand together with the Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs. It is chanted out loud as the dishes are being done. It is the scroll that tells the story of intimacy and love, the great romance of the Bible – the love between The Almighty and the Jewish people. It was in the wee hours of that Pesach night long ago that that relationship began. A battered people scurried out of the only home they had ever known with hearts full of hopes dreams and faith in the good things to come.
Jewish wine moments are lofty and not inebriating; they are the moderation of four cups and the intimacy of home. They reflect the joy of chuppah and the triumph of redemption, the weave their way through our life, l’chaim.