Kriat Shema Al Hamitah (Part 26)
“The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.”
Wilson Mizener – American Playwright
Kriat Shema al Hamitah continues: Tremble and sin not. Reflect in your hearts while on your beds, and be utterly silent. Selah. (Tehillim 4:5)
Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish (Brachot 5a) teaches that King David composed our verse to serve as a reminder that we must do everything that we can to avoid sinning. We should “tremble and sin not” because when we tremble we remember that the Evil Inclination never rests. As the Vilna Gaon writes, when an enemy is defeated the battle comes to an end. The fight is over. Not so with the Evil Inclination. The Evil Inclination is not intimidated by defeat. Quite the opposite. When the Evil Inclination suffers a setback it simply regroups and attacks again, always targeting each person’s weakest spot. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish expounds that “reflect in your hearts” teaches us that if the Evil Inclination overpowers someone, they should learn Torah. Torah is a perfect antidote because it fills a person’s mind with goodness and purity and leaves no room for unwanted thoughts. And if learning Torah is not a strong enough deterrent to stop a person from sinning, they should recite Kriat Shema, as the verse states, “while on your beds”. And finally, the verse teaches us that if all else fails a person should think about the day of their passing from this world – the day that they will be “utterly silent”. Nothing puts things into perspective and gives us the motivation needed to overcome the Evil Inclination like thinking of the moment when each of us will be judged for all of our actions in this world.
This verse is a part of Kriat Shema al Hamitah because, as has been mentioned previously, going to sleep at night is an opportune time to take stock and to realize that every physical action that we do in this world has an unavoidable spiritual repercussion to it.
Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (1848-1932) was the spiritual leader of the religious community in Yerushalayim – known as the Old Yishuv – during the British Mandate. He was a tremendous Torah scholar and his definitive rulings in all Halachic matters were considered paramount. Towards the end of his life Rabbi Sonnenfeld took a small break from the cramped living conditions in the Old City of Yerushalayim and went to stay in the Diskin Orphanage in the Givat Shaul neighborhood. Unlike today when the Old City and Givat Shaul are nothing more than a short bus ride from each other, one hundred years ago it took the best part of a day to travel between them. One day Rabbi Sonnenfeld surprisingly asked to be taken back to the Old City. His talmidim did as he asked and they arranged for transportation to bring their frail Rebbe back to his home in the Old City. When they asked him why he had insisted on returning home earlier than planned he told them that he felt as if his time in this world was drawing to a close and that he was going to die. He then explained that he didn’t want to trouble everyone with having to bring his dead body back to the Old City to be buried. That it was a lot easier to bring him back alive than after his passing. One of his talmidim, on hearing his Rebbe’s explanation, commented to Rabbi Sonnenfeld that perhaps it was a little morbid for the Rabbi to be having such thoughts. Rabbi Sonnenfeld looked at his talmid and told him that, since turning forty years old he had thought about the day of his death every single day. And then he added, “There is nothing morbid about preparing to move from this world to the next. Quite the opposite! It has done nothing but fortify me and give me the strength to battle against the Evil Inclination.”
To be continued…
