Building a Fence Around Sobriety
What does it take to protect ourselves from relapsing?
This essay originally appeared in the Exploring Sobriety newsletter.
A Brief Lesson in Religion
In Judaism, we have a concept called “making a fence around the Torah.” Although I know most of you who are reading this are not Jewish, I wanted to share this idea with you in today’s newsletter, because I’ve always believed that it provides a great model for how to approach sobriety.
Let me start by explaining what this phrase means. Torah is the word that Jews use for the first five books of the Hebrew bible. To Christians, these books might be better known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses.
The Torah tells the story of how Judaism came about, and it also contains the core set of laws that Jews are commanded to follow. According to tradition, these laws were given directly from God to Moses.
To the ancient rabbis (and many modern Jews), these laws were so important that they didn’t want to leave any possible chance of breaking them. So, to safeguard the laws, the rabbis created additional restrictions — they “made fences.”
For example, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, there’s a law in the Torah against eating bread…
