Thank God for Sleeping on Shabbas

After having, this morning, re-read Rabbi Saul Berman’s classic article on the halakhic issue of playing sports on shabbas, I wanted to turn to some of his non-halakhic material in the piece (he did a great job with the halakhic material). He divides his article (and rightly so) into two separate sections: I) The Halakhic Issues and II) The Public Policy Question. In section I, which spans the bulk of the article (pp. 1 – 12), he discusses the halakhic aspects of playing sports on shabbas and yom tov. In the other section, however, he discusses, more broadly the issue of time usage on shabbas and yom tov.
Now, I’m not interested in touching upon the topic of sports, but Rabbi Berman locates this issue within the larger issue of activities on shabbas (and yom tov). He mainly takes aim at my primary activity on shabbas – the main day of rest: sleeping. I wake up early in the week and get an insufficient amount of sleep, which accumulates and adds up, with me usually getting no less than 10-12 hours of sleep on any given shabbas. My utilization of the day of rest for getting [my mind, body, and spirit] refreshed with sleep is pivotal, as it allows me to reset from the preceding week. Thus, I feel I must defend sleeping on shabbas when I read that he wrote that “ball playing on shabbat and yom tov is a vacuous, pointless activity, almost as useless as sleeping hours on end” (13)! Wow, strong words. To say that “sleeping hours on end” is even more useless than playing ball is a surprising statement, especially when considering the very point of resting and refreshing with sleep on shabbas.
Not only this, but he also attacks napping: “The unfortunately common practice of taking long naps on shabbat is just one further indication that many people are baffled by the question of how to use time in a spiritually uplifting fashion” (1)! Now, I would neither say that this “common practice” (well, at least during the summertime – now, in the wintertime, I, unfortunately, uncommonly nap, owing to the limited amount of afternoon shabbas time) is “unfortunate”, nor would I say that it is an “indication that many people are baffled by the question of how to use time in a spiritually uplifting fashion”. As to the former, this is because it is a blessing to sleep and to be able to refresh oneself.
Regarding the latter, Rabbi Berman makes the assumption that shabbas is to be used in “a spiritually uplifting fashion”. This point is actually the crux of his drive, as he states, that “it seems to me that we need to be looking to expand the base of activities through which meaningful spiritual experiences can be had. If we want the time of shabbat to so infuse the life of the Jew with meaning that the rest of the days of the week could be lived in its shadow, then we need to discover additional frameworks through which such meaningful transmissions can take place” (12). What Rabbi Berman is saying here is that he sees shabbas as offering the Jew an opportunity as a spiritual springboard.
Moreover, it could be that the more specific crux of this disagreement lays in the way in which we understand וינפש, as in "For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and rested"(Ex. 31.17). He sees that the way we need to be “utilizing the holy time of shabbat in a manner consistent with God’s purposes for that day” (1) is to be using it for spiritual purposes. See especially saying that “We seem to have evolved only three activities through which we positively and effectively enhance the holiness of the day. First, “davening” time; second, meal time; and third, learning time. Whatever time cannot be consumed in one of these three activities remains available for sleep” (12). Two main things here emerge: the goal of the day, in Rabbi Berman’s eyes, is to “positively and effectively enhance the holiness of the day” and that sleep is distinctly left out of this purpose. Thus, Rabbi Berman understands נפש here as being spiritual.
Whereas, I understand נפש as being the physical body – so וינפש is about refreshing the physical self/body.
Anyways, shabbas is going to be here soon…and I am looking very much forward to some much-needed sleep!

Sleeping Direction in Judaism, Part 1: The Shulhan Arukh

When I was working on my avelus test two and a half months ago, I noticed the following interesting line written by Rabbi Yosef Karo in his Shulhan Arukh (YD 362.2):

נותנין המת על גביו ופניו למעלה כאדם שהוא ישן

We place the corpse on its back and its face upwards, like a person when they are sleeping.

From Rabbi Karo's having written this line, it would seem that he would say that people sleep on their backs. However, he also wrote in his Shulhan Arukh (EH 23.3) that

אסור לאדם לישן על ערפו ופניו למעלה עד שיטה מעט כדי שלא לבא לידי קישוי

It is forbidden for a person to sleep on one's neck and one's face turned upwards until one tilts a little in order so that one does not come to have an erection.

Although one could say that, with the latter text, Rabbi Karo means to say that it's kind of like one is lying on one's back, but with the modification of tilting, nevertheless, the first text is still rather interesting. I hope to continue further posts on the topic of Jewish sleep positioning, but, for now, I will end off with the following from Professor Jeffrey Woolf's recent article (HT), that

When it comes to sexuality, the Shulhan Arukh presents a markedly conflicted stance. On the one hand, the author dutifully codifies the relevant rulings that express a positive attitude toward sexuality. On the other hand, in a section of the work (Hilkhot Zeni'ut) that was more likely to achieve wider provenance (Orah Hayyim), he presents the student with a much more severe, ascetic view of sexuality.

- Jeffrey R. Woolf, "'La'avodat Bor'o': The Body in the Shulhan Arukh of R. Joseph Caro," in The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period, eds. Giuseppe Veltri & Maria Diemling (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2008), 177.

Rav Moshe Feinstein on Birkat HaMapil

I recently found what Rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote regarding ברכת המפיל (the blessing said before going to sleep (about which I have previously written)) (שו"ת אגרות משה יורה דעה חלק ד סימן לו) over a quarter of a century ago*:

הא איכא זמן דא"א לאדם לחיות כלל בלא שינה, וכשבא לזמן כזה הא ברור לו שיישן. וגם ברובא דרובא פעמים שכל אדם ישן כהרגלו, ואין זה אף בחשיבות מיעוט שנחוש לזה. וגם חזינן שלא חשו לזה דהא התקינו לברך ברכת המפיל בכל לילה קודם השינה, ולא חשו כלל לשמא לא יישן אף ללילה אחת, וצ"ע.

Behold, there is a time for which it is not possible for a person to live at all without sleep and when a time like this arrives, it is certain to this person that this person will fall asleep. Also, a majority of most of the time, everybody will sleep as they usually do, and we do consider the rarity [of not falling asleep] about which we may concern for it. Also, we see that [the Talmudic Rabbis] did not worry about this, since they established for people to bless the blessing of hamapil every night before sleep and they did not worry at all lest one would not sleep even one night. And further looking into the matter is necessary.

Although Rav Moshe says that the Rabbis were not concerned lest one be unable to fall asleep one night, it's interesting that this seems to be proved from the lack of mention of a concern, rather than an explicit mention of lack of concern.
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* Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Igerot Moshe, vol. 8, ed. Rabbi Shabsai Avraham HaKohen Rapaport (Jerusalem: Rabbi D. Feinstein, 1996), 222. Rav Moshe wrote this on 25 February 1982.

Not Sleeping on Shavuos

This past Shavuos, a friend of mine had spoken about various reasons why there is a custom to remain awake through the [first] night of Shavuos. Afterwards, when I mentioned to him the availability of coffee and that there was an article written on the topic, he was a bit surprised. The article is Elliot Horowitz, "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 17-46, which I'd previously mentioned (and which had been mentioned two years ago on the Seforim blog).

For our purposes, I wanted to focus on, specifically, the staying awake for Shavuos. Horowitz writes "The vigils of Shavuot and Hoshana Rabbah, previously limited in their appeal and relatively brief duration, came to be widely observed as all-night affairs. This was due more to the availability of coffee than to the habit of frequenting coffeehouses..." (44). In regards to the development of the custom in the 16th century, it had "spread, by the century's end, among the adherents of kabbalistic piety in Safed and elsewhere in the land of Israel" (36).

As to its origin, apparently, Rabbi Yosef Karo "together with his brother-in-law, R. Solomon Alkabetz, introduced the custom of observing an all-night study vigil on the festival of Shavuot" (24).

I suppose a good follow-up post to this one would be texts which demonstrate this (although in note 21 Horowitz makes a reference,^* this reference is to the account and not necessarily to texts about the custom's development or place in halakhah).

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As an introductory remark to his article, Horowitz makes an observation in regards to sleep and the nighttime that

Where coffee spread it extended the range of possibilities for making use of the night hours, whether for purposes pious or profane (and, as we shall see, these were not mutually exclusive). Where it did not, the night remained considerably less malleable and less susceptible to human initiative. (18)

*Horowitz' note 21: "For an annotated English translation of Alkabetz's account, see Louis Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 99-104. For the sources in which it originally appeared, see ibid., pp. 99, 118, and R.J.Z. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Oxford, 1962), pp. 2, 19-22."

Some More Articles on Sleep in Jewish Thought

Since my posting two years ago on the topic of articles on sleep in Jewish thought, I have a few more to add to the list, each of these will be listed topically:
First, mine that appeared in the last two issues of Milin Havivin:

• Kaplan, Drew. "Birkat Ha-Mapil: The Rabbinic Pre-Sleep Blessing." Milin Havivin 3 (2007): 155-168.
• Kaplan, Drew. "Rabbinic Sleep Ethics: Jewish Sleep Conduct in Late Antiquity." Milin Havivin 2 (2006): 83-93.

In addition to these, the reader may be interested also in my critique on the latter of these two papers. Also, perhaps of interest, are the two proposed appendices to my former paper: "The Institution of Shema' Recital Upon One's Bed" & "The Phrase 'My Bed' in Rabbinic Literature: A Connotational Shift for the Amoraim" (this latter one is the origin from which pp. 165-166, n. 69 was summarized).
Another article is

• Krygier, Rivon. "Veille et Sommeil D'Israël: Le Rite Oublié de La Veillée Pascale Dans La Tradition Juive." Revue Des Études Juives 166: 1-2 (January-June 2007): 59-89.

in addition to another article that discusses staying awake on Jewish holidays is

• Horowitz, Elliot. "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry." AJS Review 14: 1 (Spring 1989): 17-46.

Related to beds is

• Schwartz, Joshua. "'Reduce, Reuse and Recycle' Prolegomena on Breakage and Repair in Ancient Jewish Society: Broken Beds and Chairs in Mishnah Kelim." Jewish Studies Internet Journal 5 (2006): 147-180.

Speaking of Professor Schwartz, there is the following from Shai Secunda, "Dashtana - 'Ki Derekh Nashim Li''': A Study of the Babylonian Rabbinic Laws of Menstruation in Relation to Corresponding Zoroastrian Texts," (Ph.D. diss., Yeshiva University, 2007), 224, n. 532:

In Late Antiquity, beds seem to have been normally big enough for just one person. Even wealthier people probably did not purchase larger, “queen-sized” beds but instead would have created more beautiful, ornate beds without necessarily modifying their size. (Joshua Schwartz, private communication November, 2006). See Joshua Schwartz, “‘Reduce, Reuse and Recycle’: Prolegomena on Breakage and Repair in Ancient Jewish Society: Broken Beds and Chairs in Mishnah Kelim” JSIJ 5 (2006): 147-80. At the same time, a baraita found at tBer 2:14, and yQid 4:12, and a sugya at bBer 24a, discuss the laws of reciting the shema when sharing a bed [this is according to the printed editions, MS Munich 95 and apparently, the “Ashkenazi tradition” (See Or Zarua vol. 1 §133). The Eastern tradition reads, “a garment (tallit).” See MSS Florence II-I-7, Oxford Opp. Add. 23, and Paris 671] with another male, with one’s wife, or even with one’s entire family. Furthermore, a folk saying found at bSan. 7a may indicate that
couples shared one bed (“when our love was strong we used to sleep on a bed the width of a sword. Now that our love is not strong, a bed of sixty cubits is not enough for us”). Consequently, despite the fact that beds normally did not accommodate two people, in practice, the sharing of beds or bedding may not have been an entirely uncommon, if uncomfortable, occurrence.

Within another footnote (n. 534), Secunda writes

In addition, it seems that people living in Late Antiquity generally did wear some form of nightclothes to sleep [Joshua Schwartz, private communication, November 2006].

If anyone out there knows of any other articles or are publishing any on Jewish sleep-related topics, I am interested in them.

Birkat HaMapil Article Published

My article on ברכת המפיל (birkat hamapil) (the Jewish blessing before going to sleep) was, indeed, published and is now available in Milin Havivin 3 (in other words, Drew Kaplan, "Birkat Ha-Mapil: The Rabbinic Pre-Sleep Blessing", Milin Havivin 3 [2007]: 155-168.). It mainly tries to deal with the blessing in the Talmud, including going through over a dozen manuscripts and other medieval versions of the blessing, as there are quite a few different versions of the blessing.
Initially, I had included, also, two appendices: one on saying the Shema' upon one's bed and the other on the term "my bed" in rabbinic literature. However, the former one got excised and is available as "The Institution of Shema' Recital Upon One's Bed". As to the latter, it also got excised, but was condensed into a footnote (pp. 165-166, n. 69), although it may be read in full as "The Phrase 'My Bed' in Rabbinic Literature: A Connotational Shift for the Amoraim" (if, when reading the footnote, you get somehow confused or don't find that the information is altogether well laid out, consult this latter work).
I am not planning, at this time, to do a critique of this piece, like I did for my previous article in Milin Havivin, but I am open to comments, questions, and queries.