על השיכרות נ״אOn Drunkenness 51
א׳
1[210] The weak-willed incontinent soul has three servants who provide its feasts, the chief baker, the chief butler and the chief cook, whom our most admirable Moses mentions in these words, “And Pharaoh was wroth with his two eunuchs, with the chief butler and the chief baker, and he put them in prison under the chief gaoler” (Gen. 40:2, 3). But the chief cook is also a eunuch, for we have in another place, “and Joseph was brought down into Egypt and became the property of the eunuch of Pharaoh, the chief cook” (Gen. 39:1), and again “they sold Joseph to the eunuch of Pharaoh, the chief cook” (Gen. 37:36).
ב׳
2[211] Why is it that not a single one of these offices is entrusted to a real man or woman? Is it not because nature has trained men to sow the germs of life and women to receive them, and the mating of these two is the cause of generation and of the permanence of the All, while on the other hand it is the nature of the soul which is impotent and barren, or rather has been made so by emasculation, to delight in costly bakemeats and drinks and dishes elaborately prepared? For such a soul is neither able to drop the truly masculine seeds of virtue nor yet to receive and foster what is so dropped, but like a sorry stony field is only capable of blighting the successive growths, which were meant to live.
ג׳
3[212] In fact we have a doctrine laid down most profitable to us all, that every craftsman whose work is to produce pleasure can produce no fruit of wisdom. He is neither male nor female, for he is incapable of either giving or receiving the seeds whence spring the growth that perishes not, and the base craft he practises is aimed against human life. He destroys the indestructible and quenches the unquenchable ever-abiding lamps of nature.
ד׳
4[213] None such does Moses permit to enter the congregation of God, for he says, “He who has lost the organs of generation shall not come into the congregation of the Lord” (Deut. 23:1).
