TBC - Day 21 - 'Who needs sleep?' - Rabbi Alon Anava | Atzmut.org

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so there's a verse in the torah that can be found in the book of bereshit chapter 49 verse 14 and it says is a bundy donkey lying between the boundaries and it's kind of talking about that this sacha was a donkey which doesn't sound so good but after all is sacha was the one who was carrying the flag of the torah was the tribe that all the scholars came out from i know all but the majority comes a big question how could it be that is became the symbol of carrying the torah so we all have a certain thing that we like some people don't like don't have them they're lucky but most people they like to sleep you know because sleep causes you pleasure you you know disconnect yourself from reality you can be lazy whatever it is listen not everybody has this problem but the majority have a problem with they like sleeping and the reason why because there's this pleasure in sleeping our sages explain why is it pleasurable because sleeping is 60th of a death and you experience a certain level of death which death sounds bad but really death is your portal to the next world and the next world is a much more pleasurable world if you're going in the right path so 60th of a death which you sleep you're experiencing some type of la maba so it's perishable and the scientists and doctors will tell you a certain endorphin is released in the brain when you sleep and it causes your pleasure but nevertheless a lot of people they have a yetzer and they're like sleeping in and they like sleeping now this is something that needs to be broken by the way many sages they teach you break your sleep don't don't sleep in wake up early on purpose sleep whatever you need to sleep and kind of put your body under this stress that you break your sleep the bala was known to do that deliberately he was a very sick man at the end of his days and he would specifically wake up early in the night two or three in the morning stay up for half an hour and then go back to sleep why to to break the sleep to break this physical pleasure a huge part of my true eyes to get rid of physical pleasures you like cookies don't eat five of them every hour eat one of them once a week i also like cookies by the way and at four o'clock in the morning when you wake up and you go to the mig with the we know i have a bakery here oh you smell these rogolocs oh you don't know if to go to the mikveh or to go to the bakery but listen i also like physical pleasures i'm not some alien but you have to put yourself on a diet i you know i like physical pleasures though but you have to diminish the physical pleasures because that's how you elevate yourself to a much higher spiritual level and it doesn't mean you shouldn't have these spiritual pleasures but do it on shabbat you want cookies you want yummy stuff enjoy don't show about because then it's a mitzvah you like to sleep in sleep on shabbat a little bit you like marital relations everybody likes marijuana but have it on shabbat elevate it make it holy don't all day long when you run after physical pleasures it pulls you down so another big part of physical pleasure is sleeping it says that why was issachar got the the siman of the torah because it says as follows he saw a resting place that it was good and land then the land was pleasant and he bent his shoulder to bear burdens he saw wait a minute this is a place where i can relax and have fun no i'm going to put burden on me this is the quality of isla and therefore he became the pillar of carrying the torah now comes the big question in the commentary why is he calling him a donkey should i tell him a horse horses are much stronger than donkeys he can carry much more weight than a donkey so our sages explain something brilliant you're right horses are stronger an ox is stronger but you know it's the the virtual and the advantage of a donkey a horse when it needs to rest it can't rest with the weight on it it has to take the weight off and then the horse rests a donkey can rest while the burden is on him you don't have to unload the weight from the donkey and that's the same thing with the torah you can rest but as long as the torah is on you as long as you take the as long as you don't take the torah off you can carry the burden the problem with many people is that they take the torah off no i don't want to do the torah i go on a vacation during vacation i don't need to pray or worry about learning tahani or what kind of vacation is that you're totally taking a vacation from the torah there's nothing wrong with resting but as long as the torah is on you so sleeping is where you find some type of what it says about the a comfortable land hey it's comfortable here i can sleep now for 12 hours what's wrong with that i'm not bothering anybody i mean i'm eating evenly eating less i'm not going to talk lashana i mean there's all sorts of uh twists so a person can say hey if i'm sleeping i'm not bothering anybody i'm not i'm not harming anybody you know what i became observant was impossible for me to observe shabbat you know what i used to do i used to sleep the entire shabbat i found a loophole i'll sleep the most shabbat then i don't drive i don't turn on the tv i don't i'm not desecrating jabat and i would sleep 16 hours 18 hours throughout the entire my first yom kippur that's what i did i slept throughout the entire quiver i was like okay i'm not going to drive not going to eat i'm going to do anything i woke up an hour before the end of when people went to hear childhood and i was that's it i marked my first yom kippur in history and also of course that's not the way but many people say let me go into some type of a hibernation so the point with the sahaba that he says i see where it becomes too comfortable so i would load more load on me so you need to see where it becomes comfortable pleasuring on food pleasuring on whining and dining pleasuring and going to sleep that's a big thing so you want to take from that that break your sleep don't indulge too much on the sleep so if you need to sleep six hours seven hours eight hours set it up how you need to don't over sleep and the best way you wanna take it to the next level break the sleep in the middle wake up in the middle why because it don't delete too much pleasure to the body when the body starts indulging too much on sleeping listen sleeping is indulging you're cuddled in your blanket and you don't have to think of anything no worries no distractions therefore i said you say a big part of the chuva don't get too comfortable constantly put the burden of the torah on your shoulders even when you rest don't ever take the torah off why as i told you the donkey can carry the weight on him and a person that carries the torah on him doesn't rest you know you can rest but don't take off the torah here we want to concentrate on the sleep don't feed too much pleasures to the body especially with the sleep you'll see that you're going to become like an isaha carrying the burden of the torah with no problem and therefore that allows you to really focus on a much higher level in shiva that you're focusing on the needs of your soul and not the needs of your body [Music] you