Don’t Sleep Away Your Life
“You shall live by them” (Leviticus 18:5). These words constitute not just a blessing or a dispensation but an obligation – in effect, the most fundamental mitzvah possible. After all, being alive is a prerequisite for doing the mitzvot. G-d, therefore, decreed that man must live. Whoever wastes time on activities intended to help him escape his responsibilities – e.g., drinking wine or sleeping – destroys himself and betrays his duty.
The Rabbis said, “Wine and sleep of the wicked bring benefit to them and bring benefit to the world, but wine and sleep of the righteous bring harm to them and bring harm to the world” (Sanhedrin 71b). When a person is sleeping, he cannot perform mitzvot and, in general, is not fulfilling his duty to “live,” to ascend spiritually.
The similarity between the Hebrew words for year (“shanah”) and sleep (“sheinah”) teaches us that we must scrupulously avoid wasting time. The lazy person accumulates a large amount of sleep over the years – years lacking in “life,” when he is idle from his earthly duty. King Solomon exhorts such a person when he writes, “Do not allow sleep to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids…. Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider its ways and be wise: Having no chief, overseer, or ruler, it prepares its provisions in the summer and gathers its food in the harvest. How long will you sleep, O sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?” (Proverbs 6:4–9).
The Rabbis said (Ruth Rabba 3:3): “[The evildoer in the World to Come] says, ‘Let me go and repent!’ but he is told, ‘Fool! Do you not know that heaven is like the Sabbath and the world you came from is like the day before? If a person does not make preparations the day before, what will he eat on the Sabbath?’”
Life is a limited period of time in which man must act, and when it ends, man’s opportunities end as well. A person should therefore sleep as little as possible, short of harming his health. Every hour he sleeps robs him of life, of the fulfillment of his duty.
The Jewish Idea