Purim - Who Can Get Drunk on Purim

קטע מספר בלבבי-חנוכה (טו בשבט- שבעת המינים ע"ד אגדתא. עמ' קי

“When wine enters, secrets come out.”

There are two kinds of secrets. There is a kind of secret that one should not ever reveal to others, and there is the kind of the secret that we are supposed to reveal through the wine we drink [on Purim].

If a person has an idea that will make him profit him a lot in business, and, while intoxicated, he tells his friend about it, then his friend might go and use his idea to profit for himself. That’s one kind of secret that a person shouldn’t tell another.

But there is another kind of secret which should not be told to others. There are people who, deep down, are seething at some people they know, and they keep all their negative emotions inside of them during the year. When they get intoxicated, and they encounter their friends whom they’re upset at, how do they act…?

If he is a kind of person who has a hard time expressing his emotions during the rest of the year, than when it comes Purim, he will be able to express his love toward everyone. This kind of person will not lose control of his emotions in doing so; to the contrary, he will succeed in expressing them in the right way. When such a person drinks wine on Purim, he is able to knock down all the internal barriers[1] that have accumulated throughout the course of the year. This is the ideal way to utilize the mitzvah of getting drunk on Purim, and this is the intended way to go about the mitzvah.

But if someone’s Torah learning hasn’t been internalized into his inner being, then when he gets drunk, he will let out all his rage and fury at others that he’s upset at. He will let all those people know about all the grievances he really has against them. Such a person is actually not allowed to get drunk on Purim. He is not doing a mitzvah, and to the contrary, he’s making an embarrassment out of himself. His intoxication does not foster any sense of brotherliness and friendship with others. Of him, it cannot be said “And to the Jews there was orah, simcha, sasson and yakar”.

If a person’s Torah’s learning has become a part of his inner self, then when he gets intoxicated and his mind is loose, words of Torah will spring forth from him, and he fulfills the mitzvah of Purim. The secrets that come out of his mouth are essentially secrets that still remain with him even after he releases them, and thus he is permitted to reveal those secrets.

But when a person’s Torah learning isn’t infused into his being, than when he reveals his secrets to others, those secrets don’t remain inside him, because he revealed them only in order to release these feelings outwards. These secrets were not supposed to be revealed. Only a secret that can remain inside the person even after they have been revealed – such as in the case of who has internalized his Torah learning – can come out of one’s mouth on Purim.