I come from humble roots. My Dad sold toys and stationery goods as a wholesaler in New York City's Lower East Side, working six days a week for his brother. My parents did not go to college. We were not well-connected. Simply put, we were not connected. When I wanted to go to Columbia for college, I had to figure out how to get accepted on my own, and I had to figure out how to pay my way through the Ivy League. No one helped.

Later, when it came time for Yeshiva University (YU) to place me after I had studied for smicha (ordination), I had no well-connected relatives, no big donors, no name rabbis in my family pulling for me to get a desirable synagogue placement. So YU's rabbinical placement office tried to farm me off to a synagogue in Christchurch, New Zealand. I could have been the “Grand Rabbi of Christchurch.” (Say that out loud.)  When I refused, they tried to sell me on Cape Town, South Africa, where Steve Biko was starving to death on a hunger strike. And then one last option: Wichita, Kansas. They would not give me a shot at anything near a significant Jewish community, choice rabbinical ground reserved for the chosen and the nepotistically well connected.  (Yes, one need not go to medieval Europe to find nepotism. There is ample nepotism even in the institutionally organized American rabbinate.) So I had to find a big-city congregation on my own. And to me, having finally made it, that is the American dream: making it on one's own.  So, as someone who came from no great amount of money, and had no help outside of nuclear family, and had no family strings, I approach the question with agreeing prejudice: I admire the self-made man.  Like the questioner, I am appalled by society’s worship of celebrity, stardom, and money — all vacuous traits that come, go, and usually leave little behind except for some very imposing concrete gates and walls at cemeteries.

Many institutions select the people whom they will honor at their annual banquets based on the honorees’ wallets, not on their hearts or deeds of kindness.  In one shul where I was rabbi, the person elected Shul President actually was — and still is — the subject of a public internet warning by the County District Attorney, advising the public of a $100,000 settlement and eleven-point injunction that bars the person from engaging in one-after-another form of deceit and business fraud. Yet that person was selected as President of the synagogue, and the person’s spouse now sits on that same Shul Board, even though the spouse was and is named equally in the injunction, monetary settlement, and on the warning website. People value access to money.

There should be a problem with the calculus that if I steal $10 million dollars and keep $9 million of the loot for myself but disperse the remaining $1 million to charitable causes, then I deserve to be guest of honor at an institution's annual dinner dance. There seems something far more noble in the person who never gets honored but who awakes at 5:30 in the morning, dons tefillin, prays to G-d, goes to work, works hard and accounts for every penny, davens again, feeds a family honestly though humbly, comes home late at night, perhaps after finishing a second job because it takes two jobs to break even, then davens a third time and drops into bed from exhaustion after spending a few moments with the children to teach them values like love, honor, respect, honesty, loyalty, trust, devotion.

The people who score the most “Likes” on Facebook and “Hits” on Youtube are idolized.  Psy has half a billion hits on one of his posts. Miley Cyrus over a million for her VMA performance.  Many of our athletes, who will turn down a one-year-contract offer of $5 million or $10 million because they feel they can command more, are not stars off the field.  Is their charity proportionate to their earnings?  Are their deeds commensurate with their influence?  What have they done to inspire the teenagers who drop out of school classes to watch and imitate them on the playground basketball courts?

It is true that societal values are convoluted.  And that brings us back to the Torah, where Judaism’s values are emphasized: Abraham and Sarah for hosting wayfarers and Abraham praying desperately for the survival of people in two cities he barely knew.  Moses living the life of humility and teaching.  Aaron the life of duty.

If there was one Biblical figure uniquely wealthy beyond all others, it would seem to have been King Solomon.  Yet, in his Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), he recalls all the vain pursuits he tried to enjoy thanks to his wealth, and he looks back on a lifetime of vanities.  Again and again, he laments that they all were and are vanities.  In the end, this wisest of all men figures out that life is about serving G-d, living by His commandments, devoting oneself to one’s spouse and family.  In the end, that is what matters.  The glory and gold is left behind, to scatter in the wind as in the final scenes of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (John Huston, 1948).  In the end, the idols crumble.  The legends are forgotten.  As they age, the celebrities desperately hide from the tabloids.  The athletes in their 60s sue their professional sports leagues for early-onset Alzheimers.  The idols crumble.  Norma Desmond is a recluse.  But rabbinic scholars will be mulling the thoughts of Rambam and Rashi from a thousand years ago.

Your very moving question reflects why Judaism requires that, when someone wishes to convert to Judaism, both spouses must be on the same page.  Think about it: How can only one spouse adhere with fealty to the laws of family purity if the other spouse does not?  How can one spouse build a Jewish home with a proper Shabbat home environment while the other is watching a college football game on TV in the next room?  Is one parent going to be strictly kosher while the other brings the kids to McDonald’s?  How rear Jewish children properly in such an environment?

Yes, the same problem arises in a two-Jewish-parent home when one opts to begin observing the Torah and mitzvot, while the other refuses to evolve.  That is horrible, emotionally wrenching for the observant party.  But such a situation is completely outside the pale if someone non-Jewish wishes to convert, to come into a Covenant to which the spouse is not willing to adhere.

In my rabbinical career of thirty years, I have experienced wonderful situations when the demurring spouse, with some rabbinical pastoral counseling and lots of encouragement and love, came “on board.”  But if (s)he will not agree to live the Torah life, then we will not proceed with the conversion.  We will not bring someone into the Covenant between G-d-the-Creator and the Jewish People if the Covenant will not be lived and honored at home by both members of the couple.

The first baby steps for the recalcitrant spouse may be accepting the baby naming, your candle-lighting, and the Jewish preschool.  But in time a Jewish home also needs a proper Shabbat each and every weekend, from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall; a strictly kosher home and kosher-eating lifestyle outside the home; inclusion of mikveh in the marriage; commitment to the Jewish calendar, rearing children to live the life of practicing Jews.

If you really want to be Jewish – authentically a member of the Torah Covenant, beyond a pro forma conversion that will not be regarded for yourself or your children by wide swaths of the Jewish People – then your spouse would need to work through his issues.  With the right rabbi, I have seen this effort succeed.  Otherwise, we could not put you through to conversion, and – even if we could – your children would emerge so very confused.  In Orthodoxy, it tragically would have to be a “No Go.”  Which is the reason that a sensitive and gifted rabbi, and a loving spouse, potentially could overcome the challenge.  It is not clear whether you have those ingredients in your recipe.  From your passion, you clearly deserve those ingredients.

An alcoholic in recovery may not drink wine on Purim and should drink only grape juice at the Passover Seder.  Others need not drink wine on Purim if they prefer not to do so.  Teens in particular should not be plied with wine.  Any wine that one drinks on Purim is meant to be drunk specifically during the special Mitzvah Feast – the Purim Seudah eaten during Purim Day, replete with the careful recital of all brakhot (blessings) for washing one’s hands preparatory to eating bread, for eating the bread itself, and for thanking G-d after the meal during the four brakhot of the bentching grace after meals.  One also may drink wine during any Purim celebratory meal on Purim night after Megillah reading.  Again, however, the wine drinking must be tempered and must be only an adjunct to eating a mitzvah meal marked by the recital of brakhot.  It is forbidden to drink too much, and Judaism points to Noah and Lot as examples of what happens to degrade the sanctity of the human spirit when one overindulges.  One absolutely should withdraw from environments where celebrants drink too much.  That is not Judaism.  It is “Jersey Shore.”

The tradition of drinking alcohol, particularly wine, on Purim stems from the centrality of wine-drinking throughout the Megillah narrative.  Stem?  Where? (ware?)

The encounter begins with King Achashverosh staging a massive empire-wide party of wine-drinking and eating for 180 days, followed by seven more days of wine partying for his inner circle and residents of his capital.  The Megillah text and the Talmudic and Midrashic commentaries tell us how detailed the wine aspect was.  Each party-goer was served wine carefully selected for each participant from the vineyards of the respective province in which he lived.  People were served wine aged longer than their respective ages.  No one was forced to drink.

Under the influence of the wine, as partiers were arguing whether Medean women or Persian women are more beautiful, the King drunkenly decided to demonstrate that his wife’s looks surpassed all and demanded that his Queen Vashti appear completely undressed – wearing only her tiara – before his advisors.  According to the text, amplified by the Midrashic tradition, she refused and sent back a sharply worded response that her husband should be ashamed of himself for losing his sobriety in a way that her family never would.  The King became enraged and, as he lost his head in anger, he had her beheaded.

Later, when the King selected Esther from among the huge selection of women with whom he was spending respective nights, he made a wine party, the “Esther Party,” also accompanied by a tax holiday in her honor.  In time, as Haman emerged with his genocidal plan to murder the Jews of all the King’s 127 provinces, Esther devised a strategy to save her people.  She invited the King and Haman to a private wine party in their honor.  As amplified by the Midrash, that party made Haman oh-so-proud, but it planted concerns in the King’s mind:  “What the heck was Haman doing at the private party? Why is my wife inviting this guy to our little private cozy wine party?  Is something up between them?  Are they having an affair?  Are they planning to kill me?”

It really bothered the King. That night he couldn’t sleep, maybe because he was afraid his wife and Haman were plotting his assassination.  Maybe it was his Circadian rhythm.  So, to calm himself down, and lacking a television to watch, an Ipod to hear, a Twitter account to Tweet, a computer to Facebook, or anything else, he turned to his favorite pastime:  having his aides read him his favorite stories – namely, stories about himself, from his royal diary.  They pulled out the book and started reading.  It may even be that he worried whether he had failed in the past to show ample gratitude to someone who had saved his life by conveying an insider’s tip of an assassination plot.  “Perhaps,” he may have thought, “if I demonstrate that I never forget inside-tippers, I can encourage someone to tell me whether Haman and my wife are conniving against me.”  With G-d’s hidden face guiding the course of events, the reader turned to a long-forgotten entry about a murder plot that had been thwarted thanks to an inside tip that had come just-in-the-nick-of-time to save the King’s life.  Hearing the story, he was reminded that he owed his life to Mordechai the Jew but never had done a thing to show gratitude.  The time now was well into midnight, and he suddenly hears noise outside his window, in his courtyard.  “Who in the world could that be at this time of the night?” he asks.  It is Haman, so excited about hanging Mordechai the Jew tomorrow on the scaffold he has erected in his backyard, that he can’t sleep either.  So Haman has come past midnight to ask the King’s OK to kill the Jew, even as the King is unable to sleep at midnight, perhaps concerned that Haman is planning with Esther to murder him . . . like, maybe, at midnight when he is sleeping?  Or whatever.

The story unfolds into the next day, and another Esther wine party.  Again, just the three of them: the triangle of King, Haman, and Esther.  And it is there, under the influence of that wine, that Esther reveals her nation, her place of birth, and that Haman is planning to murder her people. As she reveals to the king, for the very first time, that she is a Jew, a member of that people whom Haman has undertaken to obliterate, the King goes into a rage, loses his head augmented by the wine, and orders Haman hanged.

So that is the reason that our Rabbis encouraged us to drink some wine at the Purim feast.  They gave gifts of food to one another, so we give mishlo’ach manot.  They circulated the Megillah narrative among their 127 provinces, so we assemble to read it and to hear every word. They drank some wine, so we drink some wine.  In a famous aphorism, they said we should drink enough wine so that we would not be able to discern between “Arur Haman” (Cursed is Haman) and “Barukh Mordechai” (Blessed is Mordechai).  Babylonian Talmud, Mesechet Megillah 7b; Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chaim 695:2.  In one particular outlier incident, the Talmud in Mesechet Megillah recounts that two rabbis, Rabbah and Rav Zeira, made for themselves a private Purim feast, and one got so drunk that he inadvertently killed the other.  When he sobered, he was so remorseful, prayed so hard, and called upon all his holy merits from an otherwise spotless life that he succeeded in bringing about the miracle of a lifetime, as his deceased rabbinic friend returned to life. The Talmud continues, recounting that the next year the same rabbi invited his same friend to another two-man private Purim party, but this time his friend turned him down, explaining: “I can’t count on miracles every year.” (Literally: “Miracles do not happen all the time.”)

So there we have the dichotomy: yes, good to drink wine.  Forget the difference between Haman and Mordechai.  But don’t get all-that-drunk.  Our greatest Rabbinic Sages over the centuries have wrestled with the dichotomy, looking to harmonize the themes.  One Rabbi, the Magen Avraham, noted that the gematria numerology – the sum of the letters of the words, with each Hebrew letter having a numerical value – of “Arur Haman” (Cursed is Haman) is 502.  And the letters comprising “Barukh Mordechai” (Blessed is Mordechai) also equal 502.  (See M.A. Comment 3 on Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chaim 695:2.)  So, he said, drink only until you can’t do the tally of those numbers in your head.  Another taught that you should drink only enough to make yourself a bit drowsy, which will lead you to fall asleep, and – unless you have a Purim dream – you then will be in state where you don’t know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. (See, e.g., Ram”a on Shulchan Arukh 695:2.)  A similar approach is taken by Rambam (Maimonides). (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Megillah 2:15).

In recent years, as American culture in general, and our teen culture in particular, has grown depressingly coarse – witness television shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Skins” and a society where more people know the daily thoughts, so to speak, of Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan than they do of their Congressional representative or the Poet Laureate of the United States – more rabbis than ever have called for bans on teen drinking during Purim and also have condemned the practice of certain outlier sects who would encourage drinking to the point of up-chucking on Main Street.  Judaism despises drunkenness, and Rambam explicitly warned against it.  (See, e.g., Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot  De’ot 5:3; Hilkhot Sh’vitat Yom Tov 6:20)

It therefore devolves on the individual to know his or her limits, his or her values.  If you are drinking some wine at a Mitzvah Purim Feast, a Seudat Purim marked by reciting brakhot (blessings) when washing your hands and eating bread, and then reciting more brakhot at the bentching prayers after the meal, that’s cool.  On the other hand, if it is not a Seudah feast of Mitzvah, but just one more excuse to go drinking and getting a “buzz,” then such wine drinking would be forbidden as a coarse denigration of the extraordinary sanctity of the human soul that was created in the image of G-d.  It would be a mockery and desecration of the miracle of Purim.  And it would be a shame.

Judaism regards all of G-d’s creation as holy and precious.  Therefore, natural resources are to be guarded and used as they are meant to be employed, not thoughtlessly half-consumed and disrespectfully discarded.  In some cases, when it comes to mitzvah food commanded in Biblical times, we even see that the entire Passover roasted lamb was to be eaten.  Sh’mot (Exodus) 12:10.  That commandment undergirds the tradition, still common in our own times 3,300 years after our ancestors’ Exodus from Egypt, of inviting many people to a Seder -- to assure that enough people are present so that none of the roasted lamb need be wasted.

Judaism also frowns deeply on excess in celebrations. Material ostentation at bar mitzvahs is particularly disgraceful, as it sends the wrong message to the young boy or girl being welcomed into a more mature understanding of what Judaism stands for.  It is not productive to have a child, who has not been educated much in Judaism before age 12 (a girl) or 13 (a boy), being shown that Judaism apparently is about excesses of food, ice sculptures of children, movie paeans to youngsters who typically have not lived extraordinarily so far, and matching color patterns.  There is so much depth to be taught.  See, e.g., the chapter on "Bar Mitzvahs: Wrong Rites" in Rabbi Dov Aharoni Fisch, Jews for Nothing (NY: Feldheim, 1983).

On the other hand, most cities and states have health code restrictions that prohibit food providers from re-using certain foods that have been set out for a meal.  Although we inspect carefully after meals at home and therefore can discern whether anyone has eaten or touched the four pieces of gefilte fish still left over on the serving platter, a public event does not similarly lend itself to such careful consideration.  For example, we know from George Costanza’s uncouth ways in “Seinfeld” that some people wrongly “second-dip” their crackers or chips into spreads.   Most celebrants at a publicly catered meal would be very uncomfortable knowing that the deli slices on the lunch platters previously had been laid out at a meal two days before.

The ideal approach that many Jewish caterers and other food providers employ is to donate their salvageable left-overs to food pantries and the like.  One such agency is “Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger.”  http://mazon.org/about/   You may wish to discuss such an option with the people who lay out the foods at your temple or synagogue, perhaps even volunteer to head a Chesed (Kindness) committee gathering donations of foodstuffs for such an organization.

In Judaism, we are forbidden to read another person’s private mail without her permission.  The ban was formalized for Ashkenazic Jews approximately one thousand years ago in a decree issued by Rabbeinu Gershom, “the Light of the Exile,” who also is famous for having issued the decree that outlawed polygamy among Ashkenazim.  This ban is listed among others of his decrees in note 123 of the Be’er HaGolah footnotes to Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 334:28.  That notation adds that the private correspondence may be read if the recipient or writer threw it away, thus abandoning willful ownership or possession.  Among the reasons posited for the ban, some believe that reading another’s private correspondence constitutes stealing something of value from them.  Others perceive that it implicates the laws of r’khilut and lashon horo (tale-bearing and gossip).  Having been issued a thousand years ago, when daily commercial relations with non-Jews were more suspect, it could be surmised at first glance that Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban might not have been intended to govern protecting the confidentiality of private correspondence of non-Jews, but normative Torah interpretation of the ban recognizes that a Jew likewise is forbidden to breach the privacy of non-Jews’ correspondence.

Under a second critical concept – dina d’malkhuta dina (“the law of the land is the law”) – Jews are obligated to honor the secular laws of the government in the countries where we respectively live, and to conform our behavior to those laws where the given laws are not uniquely conceived as anti-Jewish in purpose.  Many American states have laws protecting privacy.  In California, for example, the state supreme court held in its landmark decision, Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n, 7 Cal. 4th 1, 26 Cal. Rptr. 2d 834 (1994), that a person’s privacy is protected from invasion when she has a reasonable expectation of privacy, where a legally protected privacy interest is implicated, and where there has been a serious invasion, although the defendant can overcome the allegation if he can show that his invasion was impelled by a legitimate countervailing interest.  Even more compelling, American federal law unequivocally forbids stealing, transmitting, or otherwise disclosing secret or classified information without permission.  Under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), “Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit, or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it . . .  [s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

In volume two of his published series on Contemporary Halakhic Problems, Rav J. David Bleich cites a published opinion by Rav David Halevi, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv,  that the decree of Rabbeinu Gershom does not apply in the event that it would prevent someone from performing a mitzvah.  Thus, perhaps a spiritual mentor or parent could monitor a student’s or child’s communications, in certain outlier situations, to assure the young person’s proper moral or spiritual development.  However, even if one were to attempt justifying the Wikileaks disclosures on the ground that it is a righteous deed to disclose questionable diplomatic practices, we nevertheless revert squarely again within dina d’malkhuta dina, that the law of the land – e.g., 18 U.S.C. §  793(e) – is the law.

Within the American Jewish community, this question has carried particular significance during the twenty-five years since Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to prison for espionage, after disclosing secret American intelligence communications to Israel, an American ally.  Despite the increasing call within the organized Jewish community for Pollard’s release from prison for reasons ranging from the disproportionate length of his incarceration to injustices perpetrated against him at the time of his sentencing, those calls typically ask for his life sentence to be commuted, not that his conviction be pardoned, because Jewish law prohibits disclosing private communications to an unintended recipient without the author’s permission, perhaps unless the author has abandoned the material.  Espionage is a crime that violates that law, and it is not a defense that the secret communications were transmitted to a source with whom America is allied.

In the case of Wikileaks, unauthorized individuals apparently have purloined and transmitted secret government documents for mass display and publication without authorization.  These publications may endanger the lives of American secret intelligence agents operating overseas in dangerous places, compromise American intelligence resources, strategies and operations, and even deter allies from working secretly in the future with American intelligence in the fear that America cannot protect her national defense secrets.  Jewish law cannot accept such behavior and, consistent with principles stemming from Rabbeinu Gershom’s decree as well as the overriding legal principle that the law of the land is the law, would deem the Wikileaks transmissions to be criminal behavior properly punishable as the government  sees fit.

It is an halakhic imperative that a Jew be loyal to the country and government where he lives.  This loyalty extends to defending our country and fighting for its freedom.  The classic Spanish medieval Torah sage, David ben Yosef (Abudraham), whose commentary on the Jewish prayers is deemed among the most authoritative through the centuries, wrote:  “It is the custom to bless the king and to pray to G-d that He may give him victory.”  We fight, if need be, alongside that king.  Thus, we have found Jews as loyal participants in the armed forces of nations wherever we have lived. Even during internecine warfare, Jews are required to fight for and defend the government and values of the country where we live.  Thus, we saw northern Jewish armed participation on behalf of the Union armies during the American Civil War, even as Jews in the South fought for the Confederacy.  Similarly, leading religious figures have been chaplains in American armed services. 

The concept of loyalty and patriotism to the government where one lives traces back to the Prophets. In explicit terms, we are bidden: “Seek the well being of the country where I have sent you into Exile.  Pray to the L-rd for it, for your well-being depends on its well-being.” (Jeremiah 29:7).  Even more powerfully, Jeremiah 27 commands:

“This is what the LORD Almig-ty, the G-d of Israel, says: ‘Tell this to your masters: “With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please. Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon . . . . So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your interpreters of dreams, your mediums or your sorcerers who tell you, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’ They prophesy lies to you that will only serve to remove you far from your lands; I will banish you and you will perish. But if any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain in its own land to till it and to live there, declares the LORD.”’”

In other words, even someone evil – who truly ruled over an Evil Empire – succeeded by the grace of G-d, and Jews were required to be loyal to Babylon.

Beyond standing by the country in loyalty, defending our country and fighting for its freedom, Jewish law requires respect for and adherence to the laws of the country: Dina d’malkhuta dina – “The law of the kingdom is the law [for Jews living there, too].”  This requirement means that we must conduct our business practices honestly, abide by all laws of the land, and certainly pay our taxes according to the law.

Consistent with the Jewish record of loyalty to our country, fighting for her and defending her freedoms, it is noteworthy that the many Jewish organizations who have begun mobilizing for an end to Jonathan Pollard’s incarceration after his twenty-five years’ imprisonment for conducting espionage, seek a “commutation” of his life sentence but not a “pardon.”  Disloyalty to one’s country, even when secretly seeking to help another country that is allied with one’s country, still constitutes unpardonable disloyalty under Jewish law.  If we live in Babylon, we must be loyal to Nebuchadnezzar.  If we are Americans, we must be loyal to America, stand by her and defend her.