Imagine for a moment that waking up wasn’t the first thing you did to start your day. Imagine that as the sun begins to set and the stars begin to come out, you start your day by reflecting on what you’ve accomplished over the past 12-16 hours and by forgiving everyone who’s slighted you. You meditate on the oneness of the universe and purposefully count your blessings (all the people and things you are thankful for). Then, you lie down for a 6-8 hour nap.
Yes, you read that correctly. Imagine your day starts with the sunset, with winding down from a long day’s work or play, and with going to sleep.
You might be asking: Why would you do this? What possible benefit could it have? Where did this idea even come from? Are you meshuggah! (Yiddish for crazy)
Well, I might be meshuggah but I didn’t create the idea of starting the day at sunset. It’s right there in Bereishit (Genesis 1:5) for us all to read: “And G-d called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day.”
Evening comes before morning, not the other way around. The Jewish calendar follows this way of marking the days.
Up until a few weeks ago, I had thought about days starting at night for the Sabbath and Festivals, but not for weekdays. You see, on Friday night, we welcome the Sabbath Day with candle-lighting at18 minutes before sunset. Why 18 minutes before you might ask? Because in observant Jewish homes, we don’t turn on lights (either by fire or electricity) once the Sabbath begins, and the Sabbath begins in the evening at sunset.
On Sabbath, from sunset to sunset, we are unplugged from the 24x7 wired-world of work and plugged into the spiritual world of family connection, prayer and purpose. After sunset on Saturday, we say goodbye to the Sabbath and plug back into the world of work. In other words, we even start our workday at night.
If we take the idea of starting every day of the week in the evening, then the cycle looks a bit like this: do a little bit of work, reflect, forgive, be thankful; go to sleep for 6-8 hours; wake up, thank G-d for returning you to this world so you may fulfill your part of making the world a better place.
But what about the idea that sleep just interrupts work, or that a good night’s sleep is the reward for a long hard day? That was my perspective until last month when I was visiting my family for Passover. I heard a sermon that got me thinking about our view of sleep. Rabbi Miller asked, “What if we switched our thinking around? What if a good day’s work was the reward for a good night’s sleep?"
To find out more about this perspective, I did some research. In the Talmud, Jewish law states that we are meant to sleep for 6-8 hours each night; we may vary those times according to our needs. However, we should refrain from sleeping during daylight hours, unless sleeping will help us serve G-d more effectively. Modern science supports the Talmudic view. We know from experiments and our own experiences that 6-8 hours is essential for physical and mental well-being. This shift in thinking has helped me to welcome every evening. Sleep now has a purpose: rather than interrupting the work I’m doing it is now the beginning of a productive and meaningful day.
Fiona Prince, MA is a coach, facilitator and teacher who provides fundamental communication and writing skills to help people succeed in their professional and academic lives. She worships at the Chabad Family Shul where she volunteers teaching children and adults how to read Hebrew. Sign-up for weekly communication tips at www.princeheron.com. To learn to read Hebrew, contact her at [email protected]. (Morah means teacher and Faiga is her Hebrew name).
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE
* This article was published in the Times Colonist on Saturday, May 6 2017
