The Weekly Sedra – Chag HaShavous

The Rebbe says:

1. The Midrash (a great collection of Homilies) tells us: “The night before Hashem came down to give the Torah the Jewish people went to sleep because the sleep of Yom Tov is sweet and the night is short, and (to top it all off) they didn’t even get bitten by any mosquitoes. But when Hashem came down (the next morning) to give the Torah all the Jewish people were sleeping and Hashem had to wake them up. As the Torah says “(Hashem says) Why do I come and no one calls out for me? No one even answers My calls!” (see Isaiah, Chapter 50, Verse 2).

And this is why we stay up all night on the night before the giving of the Torah (the first night of the festival of Shavous).

2. The Rebbe now says that there must be a deeper lesson for us to learn from this story:

We know that every single story in the Torah is written for us to learn from, Torah is not (only) a history book. And this is actually why the name of Torah is “Torah” which comes from the Hebrew word “Hora’ah – a lesson”. So there must be a lesson we can learn from this story.

This rule is especially applicable here to our story because we know that the Torah tries not to speak ill of anything, even animals, and here the Torah is recounting a bad incident regarding the Chosen people, the Jewish nation (see Tractate Bava Basra, Page123, Side 1). So if the Torah (more specifically the Midrash) never-the-less went ahead and told us a story of the Holy Jewish nation which shows how they made a mistake, the Torah must be teaching us something very pertinent to our lives.

We cannot just say that the Torah wants to teach us to stay awake on the night before the receiving of the Torah, because if that is all the Torah wanted to teach us it could have just told us that the Jewish people went to sleep. The Torah wouldn’t tell us all the extra details that “the sleep of Yom Tov is sweet and the night is short and not even a mosquito bit them”.

What is the lesson for us from the story of Shavous?

3. The Rebbe now takes a closer look at the story:

We know that when the Jewish people heard that they were going to receive the Torah in 50 days time from their going out of Egypt they were very excited. They weren’t just regularly excited, they longed to receive the Torah so much that they all started counting down the (50) days until they would receive the Torah (Sefiras Ha’omer). Obviously one can only imagine their amazing excitement the night before they were about to receive the Torah! If so, how could the Jewish people just go to sleep the night before? It doesn’t make any sense!? [Everyone knows that when something exciting is happening for them the next day, it is very hard to fall asleep, we lie in bed all night with our adrenaline pumping].

Clearly then the Jewish people were not just going to sleep just like any other night, there must have been a purpose. The Jewish people must have thought that this was part of their preparation to receive the Torah. So let’s figure out what exactly the Jewish people were thinking.

A proof that their going to sleep must have been part of their preparation for receiving the Torah: As the Midrash told us, there was a miracle that none of the mosquitoes bit any of the Jews. But why would Hashem make a miracle for people that were totally not caring about receiving His Torah and going to sleep? Obviously the Jewish people’s going to sleep was a part of their preparation for the giving of the Torah.

4. The Rebbe now explains how sleeping would be considered by the Jewish people to be an appropriate preparation to receive the Torah:

The Alter Rebbe (the first Chabad Rebbe) explains in Tanya (Chapter 37) that however high a soul can reach in its attachment and understanding of Hashem while it is clothed in a body is incomparable to the understanding and attachment it can reach before it comes down into the world and is clothed in a body.

Now we know that when a person is sleeping his soul basically leaves his body and ascends on high and only a minute amount remains in the body (see Zohar Part 1, Page 83, Side 1). And when the soul ascends to spiritual heights it can then attach itself to Hashem in a way that it couldn’t while the body was awake and pulling the soul down to give it energy. The same goes for the amount of understanding the soul has of Hashem while it is soaring through the spiritual heights, it can then understand G-dliness to a much greater extent then when the body was awake.

A proof that the soul attaches itself to Hashem and understands G-dliness to a much greater extent then when it was clothed in the body while it was awake: Our Sages tell us that when a person engages in Torah study by day with effort and hard toil, revelations of Torah are revealed to him (his soul) at night. So-much-so that sometimes when the person had a question before he went to sleep he would wake up with the answer. (See Radbaz, Sefer Migdal Dovid on Shir Hashirim on the verse “and the mouths of the sleeping did not cease to move”).

Therefore the Jewish people went to sleep the night before receiving the Torah:

After the Jewish people worked on themselves for 49 days and ascended from level to level in the gates of purity, they wanted the night before the giving of the Torah to top it all off. They thought that through them going to sleep and their souls ascending to spiritual heights that it couldn’t get to while clothed in the body would be a perfect preparation for the next day’s receiving of the Torah. Before they receive the Torah their souls will be filled with amazing revelations it received the night before in the spiritual heights!

5. The Rebbe now explains each word of the Midrash:

Now we can understand what the Midrash was telling us when it said “the sleep of Yom Tov is sweet and the night is short and not even a mosquito bit them”:

The levels that the soul can reach while it is out of the body (while a person is sleeping) are dependant on the persons work with the body while he is awake. The more a Jew works on himself while he is awake and his soul is clothed in the body, the more revelations the soul gets when the person is sleeping.

So after the Jewish people worked on themselves and cleansed every aspect of their physical body throughout the 49 days of the Omer, they were at a level of “Yom Tov”. And therefore “the night is short”= the darkness and concealments of the world are only minute now at this level. And now the “sleep is sweet”= the soul can now reach the highest of the highest levels.

Now since the Jewish people were on a level of Yom Tov and the darkness of the world was small and their souls were ascending in the highest levels of Holiness, the physical world was even affected and not one mosquito bit them.

6. The Rebbe now explains why Hashem was displeased with this decision of the Jewish people to go to sleep:

We have spoken many times about the difference between the Mitzvos (fulfilled commandments) performed before the giving of the Torah and after the giving of the Torah: The Mitzvos which were performed before the giving of the Torah did not make the actual physical object a holy object. But after the giving of the Torah, when Hashem gave us the strength to affect physicality to actually become holy, we actually turn the physical object into a holy object.

So since the giving of the Torah was a time when Hashem “revolutionized” the world so that the actual physicality can become holy, the Jewish people had to prepare themselves accordingly. However going to sleep in order to leave this world so that the soul can reach great heights is not a proper preparation. The Jewish people should have worked with the body and cleansed it more in order to “top off” their previous work of 49 days.

7. The Rebbe now explains the lesson for each and every one of us in our daily lives:

There are some people who argue “What do I need with the darkness of the world? I will shelter myself away from the world to learn and Daven (pray) all day and serve Hashem on my own. I am already at the level of “Yom Tov” and my darkness is very little (“the night was short”) so I can reach very high levels (“the sleep of Yom Tov is sweet”) and no one will be able to bother me (“a mosquito did not even bite them”)”.
The clear answer to this from the story of Shavous is that even on the night before the giving of the Torah this was not the correct way to go about serving Hashem. Today we must fix up our fathers mistake and affect the world in a good way. You should learn with another Jew who you think you cannot gain from and teach him Torah and in the end you will see that “from my students I learnt the most” (see Tractate Taanis, Page 7, Side 1).

And this is why we stay up on the night before the giving of the Torah: Our preparation to receive the Torah is to affect our own coarse body and our part of this world that we are put down here to affect, and only this will enable us to internally and happily accept the Torah from Hashem.

Translated and adapted by Rabbi Shalom Goldberg. Taken from Likuti Sichos Chelek Daled.