20 July 2006

More On My Work On Sleep

I've been informed that YCT's second volume of Milin Havivin (the first volume may be viewed here (English section) and here (Hebrew section)) ought to be coming out in the next couple of weeks, so if you're still anticipating it, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Also, I thought I should add that the bibliographical reference for my article in this edition is as follows
Drew Kaplan, "Rabbinic Sleep Ethics: Jewish Sleep Conduct in Late Antiquity," Milin Havivin 2 (2006), 83-93.
I realize that the two parts to the title may be somewhat contradictory, so I'll try to briefly deal with that here as the first part is what the paper is really about, while the latter part of it is more of a description versus the prescriptive and proscriptive nature of the first part. Anyways, I thought I would put that out for now and I hope that anybody who has any comments on it will feel free to e-mail with their thoughts and comments on it. (Previous postings in which I've mentioned working on this paper will be listed below.)

At the Summer Beit Midrash program, we have an afternoon סדר (time for learning (not lit.)) where we can be learning or working on various things. Although during this time, I should probably be working on Bava Mezia (of which I've gotten behind), and I have done some, I've been actually looking at quite a bit on sleep - last week, I went through the Mishnah for sleep statements, which was interesting (though I found a few statements that I could have used for my sleep ethics paper...), and this week, I went through the Zohar. The latter of which was interesting through which to go, having seen the relevant Talmudic statements off of which the author was building for constructing, what I would like to call, a theology of sleep. In my paper for the latter, on which I would like to start working soon, I hope to build off of the recently [being] published article.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why can't they fix the out of order pages of the journal that's already on line?

Drew Kaplan said...

I don't know. You can e-mail the yeshiva and try finding out.

thanbo said...

Seems to me I read an article years ago about sleep patterns in late antiquity, particularly during the winter months, and how that led to Chazal's statements in Chagigah and elsewhere about "one who studies at night, a thread of chesed is extended to him" - that in a 14-hour night, one has deeper sleep at the beginning and end of the night, but lighter sleep in the middle, or wakefulness, and in the primarily oral culture of Chazal, one could review mentally at that time. Or otherwise get up and study.

Anonymous said...

When will the journal be put online?

Drew Kaplan said...

Anonymous,
I don't know, but if you e-mail the office (office@yctorah.org) or Oksana Bellas (obellas@yctorah.org), they may be able to provide you with an answer to your question.