(Way#19) MINIMIZING SLEEP 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston he's been teaching us the beautiful course the 48 ways to wisdom and it's just dynamite every week has been something new to to to build upon something you can actually integrate into your life and it's a joy so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi's doing today i know he stays up late in israel for us and i'm thankful that he does so the like of torah still continues to shine rabbi poston you're live on the air sir it's your show or your your your class i'm going to sit right back and shalom alexander tov everyone so glad to be back hope everyone had a great week and dan i just really appreciate what you're doing and uh all the initiatives that you're doing and i hope it uh in terms of getting the light out to the nations i hope it pays off i'm sure it will and uh you're a um we call you're doing everything with shame shamayim in hebrew that's uh means in english it means you know you're doing everything for the sake of heaven and i think the world appreciates it and if they don't they should thank you so it's 11 30 at night here in jerusalem and tonight's subject is minimizing sleep oh rabbi so i happen i don't know if she's listening now but i have a student um who's on my case about uh she says rabbi rabbi come on get some sleep get some sleep she knows who she is her name begins with a k it doesn't look far from you and just out of the border and i appreciate it so we will talk about this i really uh have stayed away from the idea of sharing it um in particular but now is the night now is the topic now is the this hour that we're going to spend we're going to talk about this idea of minimizing sleep in hebrew it's called it's the 19th of the 48 ways to wisdom so you have to ask yourself every one of these topics how is this going to increase your wisdom right if you're a true student of truth a seeker of wisdom this is just one of right 48 ways in order to enhance wisdom so for those who are new haven't listened to the previous 18 or we'll continue to listen hopefully we'll continue with the rest of the the series it's based on a mission in perky a vote chapter six uh mission of six myrevie ravno weinberg passed away had written this set not he didn't write this book um his students wrote the book but he developed a seminar and it was very popular in the day 40 ways to wisdom it's based on the mission as i said when we left egypt we were 49 levels below and we'll call in in impurity and for some miraculous reason we were at 49 levels right positive in the heights 49 levels of purity by the time we reached uh the revelation at mount sinai so the it's another question how do we go from minus to positive i understand each day should be you know um you know a minus of a negative but how do you get from minus 49 to positive 49 in 49 days okay that we'll have to leave for another time but that is actually the time period we're in we're in the virata omar the counting of the omer offering and we're counting 49 days from the leaving of egypt the day after we left egypt until the revelation itself so it's about character development maybe you don't like those words i don't blame you it's a lot of work right it takes a lot of concentration it takes a lot of will but if you were a slave in egypt like my great great great great great you know ancestors were and the truth be told that as far as the jewish religion right one of them one of the main ideas at least on pesach night passover night is to really imagine yourself to to not just imagine i mean really place yourself picture yourself as if you were a slave and you were being um freed being released from bondage and again truth be told many of us at least those who are honest know what it's like on some level right we're in a spiritual being in the physical world to be in i'll use the word bondage but let's just say you know in a constricted place where we feel that we can't reach our potential right there are many obstacles many things that are holding us back mainly the physical world but we have to deal with it and that's what judaism is all about taking the physical and and raising it up and lifting it up as opposed to you know other religions where you would be um i guess consider like a monk and and i forget all the big big aesthetics you know these big multi syllable words certain words with many syllables um but basically aestheticism is is short enough um to be a monk and not to talk right to take a vowel silence take a vow of poverty to take different vows maybe of i guess celibacy whatever um no we're about god put us in this world and he wants us to be god-centered and god-conscious you know um god-centered and um so minimizing sleep i think it really comes down to the love and passion for life and what you're going to experience and therefore you know someone loves sleep they love to be under the covers they love um it's the opposite i mean it's a it's showing not a disdain it's just like not even an indifference perhaps i'm not going to say hatred but not interest no disinterest in what is going to happen to you that day you know the first thing a jew does and i recommend really anybody uh mode to praise hashem because how grateful we are that he restored our soul and he's giving us another chance i mean the words are literally that he has such such compassion and and love he's giving us another chance at life um but it's the attitude you have immediately upon awakening now it is actually spoke about spoken about in that you're not supposed to jump out of bed because god forbid you can have a heart attack or maybe there's some issues um but approximately an 8 to 10 second wait and that's how long it takes to say this i'll call it a prayer it's not god's name is not mentioned in fact perhaps because we're not fully dressed while we're under the blankets or our hands are still we'll call impure from touching uh parts of our body at night unknowingly right you scratch your armpit and whatnot um i'm just being kind and clean here um so we don't use hashem's name if our hands are not pure so god's name is not even mentioned but that's the first in in that prayer um we refer to um the king the king of the universe and we are uh awakening a way and we're going to talk about the word awoke a lot here because that's the opposite of sleeping uh life is about being woke and i don't mean woken the term that it's being used today or misused today uh in the media and the news and politics i mean spiritually awake okay so basically i'm using the book that i just showed you as the format and then i have another safer it's called the midrash which is specifically written on this mishnah the 48 waves to wisdom also going back is going back hundreds of years um of course the mission itself is going back over two thousand years you know in terms of as a mishna as a teaching all the way back to harsina itself so i do want to speak about the idea that sleeping is like death right in judaism we say it's 1 60th of death this is one of the sins we have to wash our hands in the morning i mentioned about perhaps touching yourself in a place that is not necessary clean but on a more i call spooky level more metaphysical level that um if if you want you people can refer back to and if you go to the youtube channel rabbi brightowitz spoke about the idea of two mentahara and it's beautiful is like or it's symbolic on a certain level of being expelled from the garden of eden um that's when death came into the world so there's a certain relationship yeah it was a fantastic class i loved it i mean this week's parsha was tazria matsura dealing with the birth of of a child whether it was a female or a male and how long there's an impurity but also the impurity of the leper which is not a good translation but for all practical purposes for those who know what i'm referring to um there's a certain impurity in fact he has to say the person who is impure has to say i am impure i am impure uh let people know um so on a metaphysical level there's a relationship to death when we talk about impurity and one of the ideas when we are sleeping the highest level of our soul it depends how i want to try to explain it either it becomes disconnected or we're just not in we're more in touch with the highest level when we're sleeping and we're less in touch with the lower level of our souls but there's an aspect of of death on a certain level let me just keep it simple um they say that they the the rabbis explain that sleeping is like 1 60th of death obviously it's not death itself but there's a certain and we're going to talk about that pretty sure of parking the batteries you know when you have a cell phone or a tablet or a computer right that's run on um that has a great battery uh you know everything everyone knows that if you turn it off it'll charge faster right if the if the machine is still on it's it's it's using both i know what's called ac dc whatever it is you're you're using your battery life as well as trying to charge at the same time if it's on and it's going to take a lot longer but when it's off i mean let's just compare it's like being dead right like so the the you follow what i'm saying no longer alive right your pet your tablet or your your cell phone is you know you're not going to get calls it's just not going to happen right you want to it's like like you have one bar left so if you you know you only have five minutes to charge it so i don't know in five minutes if your phone was on maybe it only jumped one or two bars but if you turned it off you know for five minutes maybe you get ten percent you get the idea so yeah so certainly and the torah itself is called a tr sorry the tree of life right those who grasp it are grasping onto the tree of life if you want we could start with this uh verse in proverbs 3 18. i think that's right yeah proverbs 3 18 reads it is a tree of life for those who grasp it and those who draw near it are fortunate so just in hebrew so we can become a little bit more familiar it is a tree of life also to support it and um those who grasp it and of course the those who draw near to it are fortunate so if if the torah i mean let's call torah wisdom that's what it is right as roshiv always said the torah is the instructions for living it is the wisdom right it's just unbelievable i'm just just to go back to another idea um you know what if adam had eaten from the tree of life before he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil think about what would the world would be different so god let's say man had taken from the tree of knowledge of good and evil he had eaten from it and he was thrown out of the garden and what did god say he he put these uh ruby and he put some kind of angelic guards keeping man from going in and god says lest he enter and eat from the tree of life and live forever very strange so if north weinberg well he said that had we eaten from the tree of life first that would have nullified the decree of death obviously life eternal life you would never have had death so i'm just going to try to bring it down into terms we can understand that the torah is the instructions for living and that's how we should begin our fundamental uh journey on life right we should hopefully have good teachers parents that instruct us well good community but unfortunately okay we don't so the tree of knowledge of good and evil is called experience right so before you go out and experience the world right who's smart who's wise perchavo tells us he who learns from every man right so at least you know you can learn from other people's mistake whatever it is the tourists are so full of wisdom that as a as a foundation for life that's where one begins with the tree of life and then go and experience but unfortunately adam adam the first man he made he made a simple mistake right he first ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil we'll call it and then he obviously called messed up and uh god says well now you know it has to proceed the way i wanted to perceive but had he eaten from the tree of life first things would have been very different so knowing this is what we call the torah torah's instructions that's what the look it has in hebrew every word has broken and sometimes they all are true at the same time simultaneously so even though torah is light or right but it also means instructions okay so you want life you want to get the most out of life minimize sleep now we'll talk about that because the the rambam says that eight hours is sufficient now he says that in one place and he was a doctor so eight hours could be and probably is sufficient for a lot of people but he will discuss it being the younger you are the more sleep you need and the older you are the less sleep you need so we'll get into the the sources um the first thing that the roshiro mentions in the book is just about like an example you know and i i brought up this example many times as well you know maybe it was easier for me because my father got up very early in the morning and i saw him off to work many times and but you know you go on a fishing trip or you go on a camping trip or you're going i mean i didn't fly when i was young but i can imagine if we were told we have to leave for the airport at three in the morning i don't know if we'd sleep the night before you know i'm sure you'd get up you know you two you gotta be two hours early there's the slightest noise of your parents trying to wake you up you wouldn't be tossing and turning and saying oh i need another hour or whatever it is you'd be you know you'd be jumping out of bed let's let's go okay what about when you're in a car i mean you're going to visit cousins on the other end of the state or we we grew up in philadelphia so we used to go to atlantic city to the beach so it's like a day trip it's a one-hour drive but i can remember clearly and maybe we may we probably made it a a bit of a game to annoy our parents but we saw certain signs because we went often so there were certain signs on the road and those signs were like signposts for us to ask are we there yet i mean can you i mean like listen i had kids too so i know what it's like when the kids are gonna do that but before that point when i was a kid i we were very excited you know i mean they tell you it's gonna be you know an hour drive but time you've been offering a child is not the same as time for an adult and we're gonna talk about that too because it's interesting why the rambam would say eight hours is good for a younger person but a older person doesn't need that much just to stick to a point to skip to a certain point um i don't know who brings this down but i i thought about it i think that it's true uh when we talk about time i have i had made a whole hedge fund i made a whole accounting and i can't find it but it's pretty simple to figure out um but here it is we think about time so a one-year-old child who experiences you know the the one of 365's one slash 365th of his life you know let's say on his first birthday right so that is i mean just in terms of uh mathematics it's one of 365. that 24-hour time period is one 365th of his life but let's take a ten-year-old right it's one over 3650 parts of his life which means a very small amount of time relatively speaking to when he was a one-year-old and a 75 year old one day is one over twenty five thousand five hundred and fiftieth parts of his life so we're talking like relatively speaking the the the 24-hour period that a one-year-old spends it's a long time relative to a 70 year old that 24 year that 24 hour period goes much quicker and if you really love life right you see that it's going so fast right as people i know because we live for shabbos right already on sunday we're going shopping we're thinking about who our guests are and as we get older yeah the week is like wow i can't believe it's already friday or thursday it's like where'd it go so if you're like living for life you're trying to get as much out of life just imagine if you sleep eight hours that's one third of your life again i'm not trying to tell anybody i'm not telling anybody how much they should sleep what i'm just saying is so far we have seen we haven't seen it but we're gonna see it the rambam says eight hours for a younger person a much older person doesn't need as much yeah you had a question or a comment well just a point rabbi you know i heard that uh um einstein einstein himself uh got to the point where late in his life he was only sleeping a couple hours a night okay so we're going to talk we'll get to that i'm not his example but other examples yeah okay so this is this is his phrase let me maybe i should get a gulp these are the roshiva's words living life to its fullest requires us to struggle against the seductive clutches of sleep shayna which means minimizing sleep is the path to waking up to life while satisfying our need to for sleep there's a need it's like recharging your batteries as i gave you an example but without forget the turning the machine off in order to get charged faster right but just the idea that we are the truth is it's very interesting we are a lot of electrical impulses the body needs to sleep i mean there are animals that hibernate you know i mean you live in canada so i have no idea like further down i'm sure there are still animals that hibernate maybe they hibernate in the summer i don't know but there is a there is a point where uh animals will hibernate whether it's because of the weather or that's just the way god made them i mean this is a that's part of nature well he made it he made it so we can sleep and there are many reasons for that metaphysically of course that the soul needs to reconnect as we spoke about at that point of near death it's not a real it's not a real near-death experience but it's a 160th of death on a daily basis when we um reconnect that itself says a lot about the the spirit needing so um there's there's a few um let's just say positive aspects physically allows us to heal physically it allows us to heal emotionally there's a lot of things that go on during the day and a lot of times dreams themselves help resolve certain issues that we we need to resolve so i'm going to just use the word emotionally it's not only dreams but it's it's um to reflect on our bed and spiritually of course which i kind of mentioned through the reconnecting but that's really mixed in because you cannot exist as a spiritual being if you don't take care of your body and be healthy and recharge your batteries however on the other hand right excessive sleep can be a form of death right and we obviously need to recharge our batteries i just saw a uh a short clip on i'm not even sure what the name of the machine is called but there is a rover of sort on mars and the i guess it's called a solar um battery or solar um charging system that it's wherever it is sitting in some kind of crater or some kind of planar valley there's a lot of dust or particles that are on the i guess called solar panels that absorb photocells oh yeah so anyway so it's having a hard time but they they they wanted they want to turn the whole machine down to a certain extent because if they don't turn it down now right it'll still stay alive that they can read and libra you know yeah right so there's a you just get imagine you can use a mad use your imagination to know that there are for survival purposes right you need to recharge the battery you need to turn down you need to turn off you need to chill you know um we're gonna we'll talk about this i don't really have a i'm not so organized but let's just talk about like power naps so for example we will talk about davon de melech who only slept four hours a night and his four hours that he slept were never more than um 60 minutes i believe it was i think half hour half hour at a time so during that hours he slept like eight i guess eight shots of the half hour okay because less than a half an hour is not really cold sleep so maybe you can actually say he didn't sleep but let's just say right he slept for four hours from eight in the evening until midnight we'll talk about how versus how we got up at midnight um there's other examples but so um let's say you know you need six to eight hours let's say and if you're only sleeping four hours a night so there's no room there's no problem having a power nap during the day oh by the way so what if you sleep between eight and midnight any hour that is before midnight is like two hours so in other words so if he slept four hours from eight to midnight it actually was like he slept eight full hours now that could be that he didn't take a power nap right but anyway the roshiv here mentions power naps are not bad if you need to make up the time and another idea just to bring it up now like i said i'm not very organized but there's a concept about the the written torah and the oral torah right for those who are watching they know the jews are very um what's the word secure in the fact that we know what the written torah says and what it means because we have an oral torah we have a tradition of what every letter every word everything means so one of the traditions we have is at night we don't learn the written torah straight up meaning you don't just sit and read word for word you should be learning the oral torah at night that's when the that's when the bulk of wisdom is revealed and so during the day great you want to read the torah the hummish the the five books of moses straight up without any commentary fine it's great but when it comes to the oral torah any commentary the best time is at night because the ideas of wisdom flows into the world especially at night so if you know that so you should want to take advantage of that and spend your time in really um deep thought look i am aware of the fact that i know a lot of people that say look my best time of thinking is really early in the morning questions how early but uh you know let's say you know after breakfast after prayers after breakfast so they go to the the office and that's where they get the most amount of work done i get that i get that yeah but the secret is if you get up at two three o'clock in the morning it's also good you also get a lot of work done and i think that they've interviewed some of these people i don't want to mention their names i don't know who they are you know um you know people who are very successful i mean not not everyone is so appreciative of them and i don't want to mention their names but um they they've been interviewed and they say you know they they're known to get up at four o'clock in the morning and read books and and i'm talking about secular politicians or you know world leaders movers and shakers on a political level it's uh there's there's some truth to that you know okay so the next paragraph is it's great to be alive remember the whole idea is to judge you know and evaluate your own time right if you look great it's great to be alive so people who love sleep right people who love sleep um i'm sorry start again people who love life sleep only as little as needed and that that's the truth right um when you're full of excitement and energy you can't even fall asleep i don't know if it's the adrenaline that's going but you know i mentioned before and i'll mention it again that the roshiva had told us that before you go to sleep try to think of a good question now that that alone on a metaphysical level is because your highest level of your soul reconnects with hashem let's say into the world of truth and you may not be aware the following day subconsciously you may have an answer to your question the problem with that is that it's hard to get to sleep if you have a really good question and i joke with my students all the time i pose a question i say if you don't pay attention for the next half hour to the answer you won't be able to sleep tonight so that helps hopefully um definitely get answers that way your your rabbi was 100 i just beautiful um here another idea he brings down to capture the zest for living you need to keep your focus on life's deeper purpose in other words anyway as a you know a student of life a student of truth to constantly focus on what's really important you know prioritize there's a lot of things we want to accomplish in life but many you have compelling goals that connect you to meaning and fulfillment so when you're engaged in fascinating pleasurable activities you don't um you don't yearn to hide beneath the sheets and grab a few extra hours of sleep life is too precious to waste right this is like in other words you're constantly at war in a certain sense between life and death right god says right i place before you right life and choose life like how much how many choices does god even give us right i want you i'm this is what i'm doing i'm putting before you life and death choose life the whole idea of of living is really about free will it's not do i want chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream right right when i'm choosing with but for noah hide it's seven and again we know the seven principles there's many many misses that enoch a non-jew can fulfill and that's obligatory let alone optional there's many more they can even do optionally so the idea of choosing to do a mitzvah or staying away from a an avera a sin is choosing life you're actually choosing life because the mitzvot i mean hashem is life itself and we've talked about the word mitzvah the love and the hey the last two letters are the last two letters of god's holy name yoda nahin of love and hate above hay is love hey but there's the athbash atbash is where the it's like a to z right b to y and then you explain that yeah hebrews of the word mitzvah is actually in the outbox that you're really actually in the word the actual word mitzvah the root is to connect and you're connecting to life itself just by choosing to do a mitzvah and to stay away from a sin your true that's what god means choose life he wants you to connect to him through the mitzvot here whether you're a jew or an angel okay this is fundamental okay here's the rambam in the laws of character traits helpless deos 4-4 he writes that unless you're sick if you're not healthy that eight hours of sleep is sufficient now we i think we should actually read what he says uh yeah he says like this together day and night make up a period of 24 hours it is sufficient for a man or woman to sleep a third of this period meaning eight hours these should be towards the end of the night so that there be eight hours from the beginning of his sleep until sunrise then he should rise from his bed before sunrise now it's interesting because the very first halacha what we call the that's the um it's laid out like a set table all the laws there is the very first halacha the very first law that one should strengthen themselves like a lion to get up in the morning to serve his creator now the next and okay you get this point in other words why are we here we're here to serve hashem so that it is he who awakens the dawn now this is mind-boggling what it means is don't let the sun come through your window and wake you up you wake up the dawn okay it means uh listen every you know everybody has different metabolisms and different maybe work schedules obviously people who work the night shift are not getting up at sunrise um they just got home you know who knows what but what with the average person now king david says in um it's psalm 16 8 right we we've said we've spoken about this uh verse many times shaviti hashem the negdytami this is the claude anybody wants to be righteous jew or gentile i i have set the lord before me always in other words to be god conscious right to be god-centered right not self-centered and all that stuff okay so that that happens to be the first first halacha now king let's go back to king david himself there's quite a few verses i want to share again i'm not really going in any special order but um psalms 119 verse 62. if you can read that yeah 119 62. oh what happened there oh refresh i had it scripture psalms 119. forgive me that's okay give me a second i had it and i must have clicked something 62 reads at midnight i rise to give thanks to you for your just judgments okay so i want to talk about this a little bit at midnight david woke up at midnight get it and i just want to read from a commentary on the psalms and gomorrah 3b states regarding this verse at midnight i rise to thank you that never did i allow a midnight to pass while i was asleep what does that mean until midnight david dosed lightly but at midnight he aroused himself like a powerful lion ravages says until midnight david studied torah but at midnight he began to sing praises to god until dawn now there was a kinorkino is like a harp it's not exactly a heart but it's a streamed instrument and it was suspended it hung over david's bed precisely at midnight there was a north wind a ruach bonit it would blow through i guess the windows were open it would blow through the kinora and cause the strings to vibrate and play and that was his alarm clock so this was more than just what we would consider with natural this was supernatural my students asked me how do i get up on shabbat right they're not familiar with the different types of alarm clocks yet but there are alarm clocks to turn themselves off there's wind-up clocks and uh you know you could put a pillow on top of it and you know not wake up your your roommate or whatever but there's there's different ways you can get up on shabbat i don't use it i don't know why i have like a natural clock check so far it's been working so it would blow through the quinoa and cause its strings to vibrate and play thereby thereby rousing david thus he sang in isaiah and um in psalms 57 9 awake my soul awake o sultan harp i shall awaken the dawn okay when the people of israel heard david's voice studying torah they said wow it's david the king of israel studying torah certainly we too must do so immediately they also arose and engaged in tourist study okay so that's about king david and there's if there's a lot of interesting verses i don't know how much time we can do uh let's go to proverbs chapter 20 verse 13. proverbs chapter 20 verse 13 says do not love sleep lest you become poor open your eyes and be sated with bread okay so i think the first part is quite obvious right do not love sleep i mean we're talking about minimizing sleep but even if you need let's say seven hours eight hours and everyone's different there's some people that are not well and they need even more but at the at the time to get up get up right so don't love the idea of sleep lest you become poor open your eyes and be sated with bread so what is bread lechem so i want to go to take you to proverbs chapter 9 verse 5 chapter 9 verse 5 reads come partake of my bread and drink of the wine i have mingled so we understand this verse king solomon wrote this verse bread when it's talking about my bread and drink of the wine bread here we're talking about wisdom we're talking about the torah itself because that's what proverbs is all about wisdom so not only did we see in chapter 20 verse 13 don't love sleep open your eyes be sated with bread be sated with wisdom be sated with the torah so too god through solomon is inviting us to partake of wisdom let's go to psalms 119 verse 72. come on down there one more 1 19. sorry gotta take a second for the internet to click over 72 reads the instruction of your mouth is better for me than thousands of gold and silver now we know we would do anything to make a deal right let's make a deal if you could you know in a few minutes of work you know you get up in the middle of the night wouldn't you if someone said all you have to do is push this button and you're going to get a million dollars i mean there's nothing going to prevent you from from getting up and doing this so imagine the instruction of god's mouth we'll call that the torah right we'll call that wisdom is better for me better for me is the torah from your mouth then thousands of pieces of gold so gold and silver so if we're you know if we're equating life with wisdom and torah we're not going to want to waste the time by sleeping obviously we're going to want to charge our batteries we may take some we call that we're not sure but take advantage now there is a another idea that i want to bring down and that is in numbers chapter 19 14. i'm sure we've spoken about this verse already many times and for those who are not familiar the verse in context is talking about laws of impurity spiritual impurity through a corpse so if you want to read it which chapter again it's not it's numbers 19 verse 14. verse 14 reads this is the law if a man dies in a tent anyone entering the tent and anything in the tent shall be unclean for seven days now in context there's no question this is talking about a you know with the red heifer right if you have a impurity through a corpse the only way you could participate in the temple and eating the sacrifices and whatnot um where it's a cohen or lady eating certain things but this is um out of con let's say out of context meaning on another level the idea is that if you're really one torah zoic tyrus adam in hebrew this is the law of a man or zoe's torah this is the torah itself when a man dies when a man dies when a man kills himself not not god forbid in terms of suicide but in terms of the struggle to obtain wisdom this is the law you want to attain wisdom you have to die for it you have to kill yourself for it you have to struggle for it and one of the biggest struggles we have if eight hours a day one third of our life is spent under the covers you know in the dark room trying you know with a really comfortable pillow you know so it's it's talking about giving up a little bit of that comfort how okay so the roshiva also spoke about his own father and the next point is how much sleep do i need that's what we started to discuss um he says the vilna gum brings out the villain slept only for four 30 min minute intervals in a day which means two hours of sleep every 24-hour period and we swap we talk about david getting twice that amount okay so though those who didn't never heard of the villenegon look it up right be one of the greatest the sages 250 years ago um the rev knock spoke about his own father and he said before that he says there was there are certain jews there are certain jews who would only sleep in a bed on shabbat he says his own father blessed memory was one of them he was a businessman and during the week he would usually end up falling asleep at the table next to a gomorrah good morning for those who don't know is the um is the oral torah written down it's called the gemara the talmud and that he was learning into the wee hours of the night many people end up now if you ever been to a bait midrash study hall you will find people 11 12 o'clock at night falling asleep over some books he mentions he had friends in the yeshiva who would sleep on the floor so they get up more easily in the morning of course nobody wants to stay on the floor more than necessary so that's certainly a great way to get up uh when i was doing my smikha program the uh coordination to become a rabbi so i happen to have had three children born during that period of time so i missed a few tests i had to make up i think six tests at the end or i wouldn't have passed so i had made a decision to move into the yeshiva i mean i was married and everything and i lived a half hour jerusalem i moved into the yeshiva i only went home for shabbat and um i tried i tried my best to stand up get it done yeah just to stand you know i don't think people understand what a stender standard is like a miniature table on stilts that you know you can lean on or you could use to prop up the books that you're learning um i just remember for those two months doing my best just to stand just to stand he imagined standing for two months of course of course i slept but i didn't sleep much he brings down a few other um techniques for sleeping less and besides the idea of sleeping on the floor that would you know uh want you to you know cause you to sleep less uh putting your feet into ice cold water um oh the the the high priest on yom kippur was not a lot of sleep they had people having him do uh exercises the physical exercises keep his mind and ener his body and mind energized because if he would fall asleep god forbid he might have a we call a nocturnally mission and that would hustle him that would negate him from being able to serve the following day in the temple so um they tried to keep him awake the whole night so you get an idea uh of things you could do to keep yourself from falling asleep he says don't worry you're not gonna die if you have a little bit less sleep you're not gonna die so don't worry about that uh thursday nights in yeshivat in the st in the academies the the torah academies there's a lot of social pressure to stay up all night on thursday nights it's a very good exercise because you know you can do it with your friends you can certainly do it later on when you're married um and living at home so basically they expected the guys to come maybe 10 o'clock at night if they were they were learning the whole afternoon and maybe they had a little break for dinner but to thursday night to come back eight nine ten o'clock and stay to who knows two three o'clock in the morning and they would serve some delicious food whoever could stay up you know and it was a big deal a lot of social pressure there's other nights the year that we do that you know from shavuot night people stay up all night there's classes there's i don't know what you call round robin you know one teacher after another you know maybe 45 minutes to an hour um classes you have on hoshanah rabbah which is the night before let's just say the last day of sukkot it's not really something it's called shimini at serious but so on hoshanah rabba which is the day before schminitzer is a lot of people stay up all night and learn as well um he talks about which we spoke about already um the roshiva actually called the jewish people i mean he got it from the prophets but the jewish people call he calls him the sleeping giant right if anybody who you know by now you already know the world if if jews would stop learning torah if they didn't keep the turn they stopped learning the torah the world would cease to exist but it's not just maintaining the world it's the tikkun of the world it's the fixing the world the whole world is in existence because the jewish people are in existence and or think about the potential to bring about the mashiach to bring about the we talk about all the prophets the final you know redemption to the world so we unfortunately are like sleeping with the jewish people like sleeping so the idea of minimizing sleep if you can get into your head someone wrote i sleep too much if you get into your head then just take a little bit more time less sleeping and more action during the day you could be a huge um right um you know added addition to the particular world yeah um well can i ask a question i mean because i see the wisdom in what you're saying and we all know that there's just wonderful purpose in torah study and we know that their rabbis are leading them on a learning curve and there's direction and a purpose uh that's life fulfillment um here in north america i mean we've seen a lot of study about sleep deprivation due to um highway crashes especially with uh like heavy truck drivers and stuff like that um and we know that that usually happens when it's it's mindless work it's it's it's it's dark nights late driving 22 hours straight and then two hours sleep and then redoing it again and there's not uh anyways it they they they have shown studies how it's almost like uh intoxication like like driving under the influence and so they've done a lot of medical research can you um can you just you know clarify that this is a hundred percent for that purpose of study to draw closer to hashem in a learning curve am i am i understanding this correct yeah i think you're 100 right and thank you for bringing that up then the next this last paragraph i think will sum we're talking about again being woke uh and eureka moments right something to do with wisdom and you got to follow through don't don't go back to sleep right you you had this maybe it's called harvest dust some kind of um some kind of clarity some kind of moment of capturing that moment my gosh that's there's there's no price you could put on this no no life-changing life-changing information obviously i told my driving or handling uh you know dangerous equipment or anything like that there's one little moment here he talks about imagine you were driving a car and felt drowsy you fell asleep for a moment and veered off the road you caught yourself but for that moment you were wide awake you remember that adrenaline shock you're not going to let it happen again now that might have happened once while you're driving we're not talking about driving we're talking about sitting with a book open and learning again we're also students of life so it doesn't always have to be a book experience but um listen if i have sleep apnea and i use a mask and it's um it's a great thing it's great it's a great uh quality of sleep is better yes sure for sure for sure and my wife tells me i need i need to get one well one of the things they wanted to know before you even like applied for the lab tests you go in and sleep in the lab and they put all these um wires all over your body and they're gonna see how many times you wake up they want to know are you falling asleep during the day are you tired during the day i mean if you're not tired during the day i happen to have not been i mean i don't know how but they allowed me to have the test i mean i'm i said doctor doctor my wife can't sleep at night they're like so what are you doing here she says cause i'm snoring that's why she can't sleep at night it wasn't i was sleeping fine so i thought with my cheeks cheekbones sleep it was cute anyway so just imagine we're talking about life-changing information so these are like you know you're getting answers to the most important questions about life death the world to come reward and punishment i mean anybody who's a serious thinker must have like what what is the purpose of life and if you hear it which believe me when you're reading torah you're hearing it all the time you're going to want to follow through what about the proof so is the torah from heaven was it man made right um um is it from god you know and then bottom line is what difference does it make does it make a difference if it's man-made or if it's from god so these are questions that i hope that everyone's asking themselves and that if they are pursuing it and hashem you you'll get answers but if you're if you fall asleep right and you you begin to hear an answer but ah and you just go back to sleep it's all worthless um so what i want to finish with a little bit of what the rambam says and the laws of talmud torah it's chapter three actually you want to make sure it's chapter three uh laws 12 and 13. so these are some of the verses we already discussed but the words of torah will not be permanently acquired by a person who applies themselves feebly to obtain in other words you want wisdom it means you have to go all out if you're just chilling man put your feet up i don't know just relaxing like in a serious class right the most important things they're not you're not going to retain you're not going to retain it one must give up his life for them constant oh and something sorry and not by those who study amid pleasure and an abundance of food and drink so in other words you need to we already talked about this a little bit maybe we'll talk about it more we talked about it because last week minimizing pleasures okay rather one must give up his life for them constantly straining his body to the point of discomfort without granting sleep to his eyes or slumber to his eyelids now we did discuss in in terms of uh dedicating them their lives to the study of hashem it's in the laws of of sabbatical years and jubilee years and the rambam discussing that anybody who came into the world even a non-jew can dedicate themselves like the lady who is not working but dedicated dedicates themselves to the study of torah and um do you know they're not going to work either they're basically you know landless right they're not landowners maybe the tribe of labor doesn't own land therefore they're not farmers they're not involved in physical labor but they are relying on hashem to provide for them all their needs and that was i mean there's a seeming contradiction in the rambam but the rambam says it and maybe many people comment on it but this is one of the i'll call it the prize possessions uh that a binochai the righteous gentile can keep in his pocket you know if you really want to dedicate themselves not convert but stay in no height and still pursue wisdom and basically the whole torah is open to them okay that's the that was the first part of the rambam i want to continue the sages alluded to this concept and that was the verse we read in numbers 19 14 this is the torah a man should he die in the tent means the torah cannot be permanently acquired except by a person who gives up his life in the tents of wisdom similarly solomon in proverbs 24 10 if you faint in the day of adversity your strength is small he also ecclesiastes 2 9 so i became great and i increased more than all who were before me in jerusalem also my wisdom remained within me now the this is understood interpreted to mean the wisdom that which i learned in anger not a bad anger that is what remained with me anger in this sense is because it says off in hebrew it's really you're talking about like a passion right that which you determination wow yeah our sage is declared a covenant has been established has been established that anyone who wears himself in torah study in the house of stars in a in a house of torah study will not forget it quickly in other words if you learn on your own and you're just reading quietly you're not even moving your lips you're not going to retain we talked about this in tamitara in one of the very first of the 48 ways how learning requires effort um anyone who proves himself in torah study in private and one second let me start over the sages declared a covenant has been established that anyone who wears himself in torah study in the house of study will not forget it quickly anyone who wears himself really works hard even if he's at home by himself will become wise and that's in proverbs 11 2 to the modest will come wisdom now the main point here is whoever raises his voice during his studies will permanently acquire the subject matter in contrast one who reads silently will forget quickly this is one of the points we mentioned in the beginning of this series class even though it's a mitzvah to study during day and night it is only at night that a person acquires most of his wisdom therefore a person who desires to merit the crown of torah which i recommend the the idea of crown is ketter it's 620 cuff top ratio and that is 613 plus seven 20 is so there's no reason that a uh a non-jew is not interested in there's no reason they're not they shouldn't be interested in acquiring the ketter torah as well therefore the person who desires to merit the crown of torah should be careful with all his nights not giving up even one to sleep eat or drink or talk or the like rather they should be devoted to the study of torah and the words of wisdom okay i'm going to just skip down to the bottom line is that the the rambam uh seems to contradict each himself by speaking about eight hours in one place over here he's talking about minimizing minimizing minimizing he does go into this idea when i spoke about it i'm talking about a young healthy person they should get eight hours of sleep but you're older it's you can do with less so that hopefully clarified and i hopefully you know as someone gets older they have acquired wisdom right so the wisdom also to know the difference of when when it's going to take a toll you shouldn't drive if you're sleep deprived uh that's sure you shouldn't handle any equipment that is dangerous um and you can get power naps there's no reason not to you you if you're staying up at night a little bit longer than you should you know let's say health-wise there's no reason you can't make that up during the day you want to acquire wisdom take a little bit of the time at night study and take a little bit of time during the day to get a power nap or whatever you want to call it a shoe refresher recharge quick recharge like you said i love the analogy you used with the the laptops or the the charger you got to shut it down and that's exactly what the nap is you know and i think this the big the big thing i'm taking away from this lesson is that it puts down the yatsahara completely when you're in that state that the rabbi is speaking about right here you're getting to that stage where you're you're you're you're yet sir hara doesn't exist it's it's it's uh it's off and you know you're working so hard to study study study that's where you're leaving behind the evil inclination and your mind is like looking for an answer and you're on that you know i think when you're tired and you're on that edge i find i think i read this probably about 20 years ago rabbi 18 years ago uh this lesson the first time i did it and i found it to be a profound uh truth that you know if i just kept myself awake just that little bit longer meditating you know thinking on the the torah lessons the little bit that i had picked up during the day it stuck with me the next day and i love how you brought this around in the end about that but the crown the ketter and the connection of it all of it all and you you know it's not something that is easily grasped at all and you can't get it by you know sitting there with your feet up and calling it a day of study lavishing on grapes and whatever i mean this lesson is profound we need to take it to heart uh folks out there listening but integrated it's it the example you put about about yeshiva's i have i have saw imagery where they're they're they're they're talking out loud and i've always been one that has you know kept my lessons myself but you're 100 right they don't stick the same way if you don't and you've i've seen imagery of yeshivas where they're actually they're talking everybody's talking and they're just crosstalk and their volume is so loud it must keep them all awake they're all digging in together it's like working together like fine machinery and stuff sounds just amazing listen the decibel level i i don't know what it is but it's shocking you know you walk into a library i guess in academy united states anywhere in the world and it's you know you move here everybody turns around because it really is quiet in the bait midrash i mean if you you know it could take time to get used to but uh the decimal you you're forced to concentrate your point you won't even hear what the person who's sitting right across you saying you could have to read their lips because it's it's just so loud which is uh you know it i guess it has positives and negatives i don't know what the negatives are i guess if you're hard from hearing that's the only negative um it really it's really enlivening there's so much uh life force that is being shared and it helps you concentrate and then obviously if you want your caruso your partner to hear what you're saying you're gonna have to raise your voice but it's pretty you're arguing anyway i don't mean arguing in the negative sense but you're you're trying to get to the truth there's a battle and you want to make sure that he hears you and if there's high i don't know you know what the decimal level is when it's a really high level background noise you're going to have to force yourself wow i know used to not learning i mean i i deal with a lot of non-jews and they're just in utter shock they just cannot believe i mean it's it's and it's energizing don't get me wrong but it's still for a and non-jews never seen it before even a jew who's never seen it before it's quite revelatory wow to hear to hear you tell us when you when you went for your shamika how you had to literally go except on shabbat you came home on shabbat to go and spend the week in the yeshiva to finish the classes that needed to get done you were you had a few children i mean it just shows that extra needed degree of commitment to get that shamika and hashem's you know bringing you right along along that path that you've realized and seized that opportunity but you must have some real tired nights but then that's how the revelation sticks thank you so much for opening up your life like that and sharing stories like that it's beautiful rabbi it means a lot so are we are we done for the week right are we our class today rabbi and hashem willing are we okay for next week i almost feel bad because we're keeping you up so late but tonight's lesson was on that and i pray that hashem just keeps waking up the revelations that he's seated in you you know they're in you and i just would love to see more and more classes and the audience share this out there share this with the social media folks and and like the video uh i really appreciate everything that rabbi poston is doing with gibinet you can find him on his website uh the message he spoke about from rabbi breida which i'd encourage everybody to listen to because it's just overloading information but then when it sinks in it makes so much sense beautiful stuff so we okay till next week are we tentatively okay till next week sure yeah absolutely looking forward all right so we're gonna sign off for now folks thanks everybody for for joining us tonight have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] it's me is