One of my early efforts for a national newspaper, written aged 23, told the tale of a week in which, thanks to being on strong antibiotics for a tooth infection, I could not drink a drop of alcohol because “my liver would implode”.

I told how daunting a literary party was without being able to tuck into the flutes of champagne routinely on offer in those days and, chained to soft drinks, how “grumpy” and “stony-face” I became in the various bars in Soho I had on my social calendar for the week.

But the thing I remember most clearly about that week — or rather, the article — was my mother’s reaction. She called me up in a distressed panic, worried that I was an alcoholic.

I assured her that I had exaggerated the difficulty of staying sober, but the truth was, she had put her finger on a clash of cultures, of a forking path that I had started down the moment I decided to move to Blighty for school and stay here for university.

It’s a path I have remained on, and which has led me, like so many of my fellow citizens, to the present dry start to January — remarkable for its effortfulness.
Indeed, the concept of a dry month, or week, feels distinctly gentile.

My mother’s panic stemmed from lack of familiarity with the regular heavyish drinking so many of my non-Jewish friends grew up with and which, as acculturated adults themselves now, requires management.

By contrast, booze was never really part of our household. There was no cocktail hour or aperitif, or a bottle of wine with dinner. Indeed, the heavy drinking that is normal in British and many European societies was at best associated by my parents with alien cultures and behaviours, and at worst, quivering with menace, sordid and shameful.

When it comes to alcohol, I wish I had cleaved more to Jewish norms rather than assimilating so fully, mostly because drinking less, and being less dependent on alcohol for signalling fun, indulgence, luxury, sexiness, romance, whatever, would lower my risk of numerous diseases (I may drink too much, but at least I worry in a Jewish way about it).

But what actually are these Jewish norms — and is it true that Jews drink less? Perhaps it’s more accurate to say we drink differently, not necessarily less. But in the run of daily life, which tends to be family-oriented, alcohol does seem more absent, or irrelevant, with a focus on excessive food and conversation rather than booze.

There is a sense at Jewish dinners and festivals that the conviviality comes from simply being together; I’ve never been at a Jewish shindig that has improved as people have drunk more. Anecdote suggests that Jews don’t look to alcohol to loosen up. When we’re among our own at least, we arrive loose.

Then there is the fact that outside Israel, kosher wine choice, especially good wine choice, is limited.

Not everyone wants to drink spirits all night, though certainly a fair few religious Jews take their whisky very seriously; in Dubai, where I went to investigate the burgeoning Jewish community for this paper, one man boasted — while swigging from a flask — of his collection of 3,000 single malts.

Charedim certainly get drunk; after all, the Bible demands that Jews overdo it on certain occasions, such as Purim (see inset), and it is not unusual to see Charedim necking spirits without constraint, in the name of holy exuberance. Some religious Jews actually encourage drunkenness.

When I was an undergraduate, the Chabad house in Cambridge used unlimited booze to attract us, resulting in numerous friends of mine, Jewish and not Jewish, drinking so much of a Friday evening that they ended up paralytic.

So some Jews do drink, and to excess, but this tends to happen in homes, among fellow Jews: friends and family, cosseted by ritual and the hard limits of faith.

This religious, frenetic intoxication may feel as alien as the gentile sort to secular yekkes like my parents, but at least it lacks the associations with thuggery and violence, the public loss of control we have all seen in city streets after pubs close or on football match nights.

Wine — yayin — is mentioned 141 times in the Bible, both the bad effects of overdoing it and the positive ones of reasonable drinking.

Most interestingly, according to gematria — the system of meaning assigned to the numerical value of Hebrew letters — yayin equals sod (secret), with both words’ numerical value adding up to 70.

Rabbis deduced from this that too much wine causes people to reveal too many secrets (elsewhere the Talmud says that wine agrees with some but not with others).

Perhaps gematria offers the real secret of Jews’ different relationship to intoxication. Spilling secrets can jeopardise safety.

Quite simply, history has not permitted Jews the luxury of losing control, of dimming our senses, of behaving outlandishly or in ways that could attract the attention of police or neighbours.

We have had to be careful, ready to run, including from brutes whose violence is fuelled by too much vodka. And crucially, as a people forced to up sticks and flee at frequent intervals, we’ve only ever been able to count on bringing our heads with us.

In the cold and sober light of early January, it seems obvious that keeping those clear is the least we can do.