The Cup Spills Over    

It starts with a few shots at a kiddush club, and then a few more. Before long, it’s turned into a serious drinking problem. The conversation is not about alcoholism per se, but about the dangerous culture that is not only tarnishing the holiness of Shabbos but crushing the foundations of the Jewish family

ITwas Rosh Hashanah, just moments before the chazzan began Mussaf.

Shevy, a young newlywed married just a month to Yossi, peered into the men’s section with an uneasiness. Yossi’s seat was empty. She glanced around, but he didn’t seem to be inside the shul. Concerned, she closed her machzor and walked out of the ladies’ section. Several minutes later, she spotted him. Her husband was in a side room with several other men making Kiddush. She watched him take shot after shot of whiskey.

“I slowly walked back to my seat,” Shevy relates. “Here I was, a Bais Yaakov graduate with my fresh machzor. And my husband of four weeks was drunk in the middle of Rosh Hashanah davening. I covered my face with my machzor and cried and cried.”

During the walk home from shul, Shevy sensed that Yossi was not himself. “My usually gentle-mannered husband was a different person. He was talking loudly. We met a cousin on the street, who jokingly asked him, ‘So how’s married life treating you?’ My husband began spilling the beans and answered with a series of gripes about me that I had never heard before. I was so shocked that I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was just the beginning.”