Devar/5768/Shemini
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'Drink no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting, that ye die not (Lev 10:9)
The prohibition against the kohanim drinking wine when they are performing work in the Temple stems from this verse: Any kohen who is eligible to work in the Temple -- if he drank wine, it is forbidden for him to enter the Temple from the Altar and inward; and if he did enter and perform work, that work is invalid, and he is liable for a death penalty from God, as the verse says, "that ye die not" (Lev 10:9): (Laws of Approaching the Temple 1:1)
What's so bad about a kohen drinking a cup of wine? Obviously if he was as drunk as Lot, he would be disqualified -- but what's wrong with being a little "happy"?
Indeed, there isn't anything so wrong with a cup of wine: … and that is, that he drinks a reviit (approx 5 oz) of pure wine at once, of wine that is at least forty days old; but if he drank less than a reviit of wine, or if he drank a reviit but interrupted his drinking (so it wasn't all at once), or if he mixed water in it, or if he drank wine from the press, which was younger than forty days old, even if he drank more than a reviit -- he is exempt from punishment, and has not desecrated his work (ibid.)
If so, it seems there is a limit -- "too much" drink, so that he would be 'under the influence', is not appropriate for one who works in the Temple -- less than that, is still acceptable. And this is the meaning of the following verse: And that ye may put difference between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean (Lev 10:10), that the work of the kohanim is to determine and separate and proffer only that which is fitting -- and the one who is intoxicated can't make those distinctions any longer.
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