All-Nighter
When you say you're going to stay up all night, people might think
you're doing the disco round, and partying the night away.
Staying up all night doesn't sound very religious. But there
are several times during the Jewish Year that there is a custom
to burn the midnight oil until the sun peeps through the blinds.
Many people stay up after the Seder on Pesach until the time
of the morning prayer to recount and analyze the great miracles
of the Exodus. As the Haggada itself says: Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi
Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and Rabbi Akiva stayed up all
night talking about the Exodus until their talmidim (students)
came to tell them that it was time to recite the morning Shema
Yisrael.
On Yom Kippur, those with sufficient strength stay up all night
in prayer and supplication atoning for their sins. On Hoshana
Rabba, the time when the decrees of Yom Kippur are given over
to those Heavenly agents who will carry them out, there is a tradition
to learn all night.
On the night of Shavuot too, there is a widely observed custom
to stay up all night. The sages of the Kabbala formulated
an order of study call a tikun (lit. 'fixing') for the
night of Shavuot. This includes passages from the written Torah,
the oral Torah, the mystical Zohar, as well as a list of all 613
mitzvos.
The Zohar commends those who stay awake in anticipation of receiving
the Torah. The giving of the Torah was, as it were, the wedding
of the Jewish People and the Torah, and so it is fitting that
we should be engaged in preparing the ornaments of the bride the
previous night.
Another reason: On that first Shavuot morning, there were some
who overslept and had to be awakened to receive the Torah. In
order to rectify this, we stay up.
But there is a deeper reason that we don't sleep on the night
of Shavuot.
Sleep is the taste of death.
If fact, the Talmud tells us that sleep is 1/60th part of death.
One part in 60 is the threshold of perception. Similarly, Shabbat
is a 'taste' of the World-to-Come. It's precisely 1/60th of the
World-to-Come.
Sleep is the taste of death in this world. King David died on
Shavuot. But before he died, he never even tasted the taste of
death, because he never fell into a deep sleep. Thus on the occasion
of his yahrtzeit (the anniversary of his death) we avoid
the 'taste of death' by staying up all night.
The angel of death came to King David to try and take his life.
But it had no power over him for he was immersed in learning
Torah and Torah is the essence of the life-force in this world.
The only way that the angel of death could take King David's
life from him was through cunning: He managed to distract King
David from his learning, and in that split second, he was able
to take his life from him. So on this night of Shavuot, which
is both the anniversary of the giving of the Torah and the end
of King David's life, we stay awake all night and immerse ourselves
in Torah study.
Torah breathes life into Man. But it was not always this way.
When Hashem first created Man, he was animated by God's utterance:
'Let Us make Man.' The power of these words, spoken by the Creator,
gave Man the ability to live, breath, think and act.
However, this was only until the Jewish People stood at the foot
of Sinai. When Hashem said "I am Hashem, your God...."
- the first commandment - the life-force that animated Man parted
from the body and the entire Jewish People died. Miraculously,
their souls were put back into their bodies; but what animated
them now was a different utterance. No longer did their life-force
derive from "Let Us make Man." Now they were like new
creations. Their inner essence was powered by "I am Hashem,
your God...." From this moment, the Torah became the animating
dynamic of the Jewish Soul.
And when the Mashiach, the scion of King David, arrives
to herald the era of the resurrection of the dead, it will be
the Torah, the dew of life, which will be the mechanism to awaken
the body from its long sleep.
Then we will finally understand the words we have sung for so
long:
The Doors Of Perception
"David, king of Israel, lives and exists!"
Sources: Tehillim 73:5, Yalkut Shimoni; Talmud Berachot 3b; Tehillim 19:9; Book of Our Heritage, Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov, translated by Rabbi Nachman Bulman; Time Pieces, Rabbi Aaron Lopianski
This article originally appeared in SEASONS OF THE MOON for Sivan 5757.
Written by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair.
General Editor: Rabbi Moshe Newman.
Production Design: Lev Seltzer.
Copyright © 1997 Ohr Somayach International.
Send comments to: ohr@ohr.edu
