T26 (Tinyana) PNC - Distance from Drunkenness — Daas Clothed in Chasadim

(This first 'segment' in the source is just a header citing Sefer HaMidos, alphabet-of-the-new edition, entry shichrus item 4. The substance follows in the next segment.)

Stay far from drunkenness; measure yourself carefully so as not to slip past your capacity. A small amount of drinking, when there is a real need, is good — it expands the daas. Daas is clothed in chasadim (kindnesses); when you drink in a measure that fits you, your mind is lifted, daas opens up, and the chasadim are amplified. The Gemara (Eruvin 65) reads 'kol ha-mispateh be-yeino — yesh bo mi-da'as kono': someone who is mispateh (literally 'persuadable, melted') by his wine has something of his Creator's daas. Mispateh exactly: chasadim through wine make him forgivable when ordinary chasadim would not have sufficed; he could have stayed angry and instead he relented. But cross the line into shichrus and the dynamic flips — gevuros are amplified, anger and rage emerge, and sometimes the gevuros of the sitra achra are strengthened, leading to actual evils (rachmana litzlan).

Through drunkenness one forgets all the mitzvos and warnings that Moshe rabbeinu commanded. Why? Because Moshe is clothed in every Jew, in every limb, and reminds each limb to perform the mitzvah pertaining to it — the 248 mitzvos correspond to the 248 limbs. Mechokek (lawgiver, Devarim 33:4) gematriyas to 248. Drunkenness erases this clothing: 'pen yishteh ve-yishkach mechokek' (Mishlei 31:5) — through drink and drunkenness one forgets the 248 mitzvos of Moshe. The clothing of Moshe in the limbs is itself the clothing of daas in chasadim; Moshe is daas, and the limbs (248) are the form of Avraham, ish ha-chesed, who also gematriyas 248.