The Partnership in the Vineyard
When Noach planted a vineyard, a strange partner offered to help, and the righteous man learned how wine can lower even a great person.
When Noach came out of the teivah, he had with him vine shoots and fig and olive branches that he had carried in for planting. The Midrash says that he should have begun with something else, a fig tree or an olive tree. Instead, the first thing he planted was a vineyard.
Chazal relate that as he was planting it, the Satan came and asked him what he was planting. "A vineyard," said Noach. "Its fruit is sweet, fresh or dried, and from it comes wine that gladdens the heart." "Let us be partners in it," said the Satan, and Noach agreed.
The Satan brought a lamb and slaughtered it beneath the vines. Then he brought a lion, then a pig, then an ape, and slaughtered each of them there, and their blood soaked into the ground. This was his message: before a person drinks, he is gentle as a lamb. With a little wine he feels as strong as a lion and thinks no one is his equal. With too much he wallows like a pig, and when he is completely drunk he dances and chatters like an ape, with no idea of what he is doing.
Rebbi Chiya bar Abba said that on the very day Noach planted, he drank, and on that day he was disgraced. The Midrash draws the lesson: if this could happen to the righteous Noach, whom Hashem Himself had praised, how careful every person must be.
Source: Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 13 and 15; Midrash Bereishis Rabbah 36:3–4; Rashi on Bereishis 9:20. English: Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, trans. Samuel A. Berman; The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022).
Noach had a whole new world to plant, and he began with the vine. When you start something new, a new week, a new job, a new year, decide what you will put first. This Shabbos, make your Kiddush wine a mitzvah and not a habit: say the words slowly, drink what the bracha needs, and let the rest of the meal be about the people at the table. If wine or anything else tends to lower you, it is no shame to set a quiet limit in advance.