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holy sleep. When a person enjoys such sleep even for a short period
of time, it gives the entire day force and vitality. And the tzaddikim
who attained such sleep would sleep very little.
Mighty as a Lion
We must conscript all of our fear of heaven at the time that we
go to sleep, and go to sleep like a lion! The first paragraph in the
Shulchan Aruch states, “A person should gather his might like a
lion to rise in the morning to engage in the service of his Creator.”
What is meant by “a person should gather his might”? He must
gather his might to overcome the urge to sleep. When does a person
need to gather strength? When he is going to engage in battle. The
great war of life is the war of the will. Which do you prefer: to sleep
or to serve Hashem and cling to Him? The war begins at night.
I have yet to see a donkey that went to sleep and got up in the
morning turned into a lion. Whoever you are when you go to sleep,
that is who you will be when you wake up. A person who wants to
gather strength to wake up like a lion must gather strength to
go to sleep like a lion. He must gather his strength against the evil
inclination, which is the craving for sleep. If he does not gather his
strength against it, it will gather its strength against him. He must
acquire strength in this war, in which he dedicates his holy will to
cling to Hashem.
In accordance with that, we may understand the Rema’s comment
on this statement of the Shulchan Aruch: “When a person lies
down in bed, he must know before Whom he is lying down.”
One may ask what the relevance of this is here. The Shulchan
Aruch is speaking about getting up early in the morning, not about
going to sleep. Apparently, the Rema should have inserted his
comment in the section dealing with the halachot apropos to going
to sleep—i.e., the halachot of the Bedtime Sh’ma.
But a person who studies the complete comment of the Rema will
appreciate the depth of his intention. The Rema writes:
The verse, “I have placed Hashem before me always”
is a great principle in the Torah and a central component 15
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and of how they may make use of these precious hours to renew
their service of Hashem.
The holy Zohar states unequivocally that the soul can gaze upon
the pleasantness of the King and visit His palace only when it clings
to the intent to do so with supernal longing. The Matok Midevash
brings support for that from the verse, “My nefesh has yearned
and also expired for the courtyards of Hashem” (Psalms 84:3). The
nefesh, which is on the level of yearning, merits to come to the
courtyards of Hashem. In accordance with that, I have explained
in this chapter that we need to muster great strength at the time of
sleep so that we will fall asleep in the midst of strong yearning and
longing for Hashem. We must battle to attain that, so that no desire
to sleep will enter into us. This passage explains that only when a
person has a single intent—the intent to come close to the
Holy One, blessed be He, and to cling to Him—only then
does his soul rise to its root. And that sleep is not sleep at all
but solely clinging to Hashem.
The holy Ari teaches that during sleep at night, the ruach clings
absolutely to its source. The ruach rectifies the nefesh, and as a
result a person attains the level of the ruach, which is higher than
the level of the nefesh: “As a result of the sleep of the night, the
nefesh yearns for Him, may He be blessed, and rises to Him in the
secret…. And since it rises with that craving and yearning, it remains
above and does not return. And with the coming of the morning
when I awaken, then ‘with my ruach within me I beseech You’
(Isaiah 26:9).” And the Ari describes the tremendous rectifications
brought about by means of proper sleep.
Rabbi Moshe Dovid Valli states in his commentary on Proverbs:
When a person attains holy mindfulness because of his
clinging [to Hashem], although it leaves him when he
lies down [to sleep], it still surrounds him and guards
him. And thus he laughs at fear and is not afraid. As
the verse states: “When you lie down, you will not
fear” (Proverbs 3:24). On the contrary, the power of the
mindfulness itself that is surrounding him will sweeten