A major principle of the Jewish faith is the belief that God created a world for us to enjoy. In that world He presents us with opportunity after opportunity to find happiness, kindness and laughter. God expects that we will benefit from His world, and that we will embrace all of the blessings that he has set before us.
One of those natural blessings is the grape. Grape juice and wine are considered not only the drink of kings, but also as a gift to all mankind. Man is expected to partake of that blessing, no matter his or her station in life. To refuse is not only an opportunity missed, but also an offence before God.
However, there are people who, for their own reasons, do not know how to enjoy God’s blessings. They believe that lathe meaning of life can only be discovered through suffering and denial of pleasure. Some of those people, to live out their beliefs, take vows to abstain from that which they believe is too worldly, too much filled with joy.
In Biblical times those people, called Nazirites, took vows promising to refrain from practices that would bring them happiness. The Torah, which cannot legislate how people feel, allows those vows but demands that when the vow is completed, the Nazir was commanded to bring a sin offering, because the vow that he engaged in, the vow that he thought brought him closer to God was sinful.
Judaism holds that it is sinful to refrain from any blessing that will do you no harm, which comes from God.
Ours is a faith that affirms God’s goodness and blessings both in this world and in the world to come. God gave us this world with ethical and moral challenges, but He also gave us this world with the promise that we could create a utopia, and that we can find certain utopian pleasures in every generation.
Indeed, Shabbat, which begins with a glass of wine, is one of those utopian pleasures.