Ever wonder why we talk about the Sages in Bnei Brak staying up all night? Better question: Have you ever gotten a bad sleep after the seder? If the answer to both question is "yes," check this out.
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| Artwork: DALL-E's response to the prompt "impressionist painting of men in turbans sitting at a passover seder with the light of dawn visible in the sky" |
Maaseh b’Rebbi Eliezer: Abravanel’s Framing of Insomnia on Pesach Night
How many of us have ever gotten a bad sleep on the first (and second) nights of Pesach? Indeed, the better the seder is and the longer it lasts, the worse sleep one will tend to get. This is especially true for those who fulfill the Yom Tov halacha of chatzi la’Shem chatzi lachem (i.e. waking up to daven at sunrise, learning for the rest of the morning, and only breaking for lunch after halachic midday). By now I’ve resigned myself to getting a bad sleep on both nights of Pesach and chalking it up to, “Well, this is the cost of having good sedarim!” … until this year.
Abravanel kicks off his Zevach Pesach Haggadah commentary with a list of 100 questions (or “gates,” as he calls them). In classic Abravanel fashion, some of these questions are powerful, and others are … interesting? Personally, I was surprised by the fact that the only question he raised on the section entitled Maaseh b’Rebbi Eliezer, about the Sages who stayed up all night discussing the Exodus, was the following:
Why did the Sages of Israel engage in telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt all night? Why did they see fit to do this, and what befell them (cf. Esther 9:26) such that they deprived their eyes of sleep and their eyelids of slumber? Didn't the Torah command, “You shall rejoice on your festival” (Devarim 16:14)? But [sleep deprivation] is torture to the soul! Without a doubt, they must have done this for some reason! (Shaar 13)
Until this year, I had assumed – based on a shiur I heard from my Rosh ha’Yeshiva (HL-16, I believe) – that these Sages stayed up all night in accordance with the halacha codified by the Shulchan Aruch: “A person is obligated to be involved in the laws of Pesach, in [talking about] the Exodus from Egypt, and in telling of the miracles and wonders that Ha'Kadosh Baruch Hu did for our fathers, until he is overcome by sleep” (Orach Chayim 481:2). In other words, my assumption was that these Sages began discussing these topics after they finished their seder and got so involved that they went all night until dawn. In other words, they stayed up all night inadvertently.
Abravanel disagrees. Instead, he provides a more creative answer in his Haggadah commentary:
For what reason did these perfected individuals see fit to engage in telling the story [of the Exodus] all night and to deprive themselves of sleep? [The answer is] because this is "a night that is guarded by Hashem" (Shemos 12:42), and Israel didn't sleep at all on the night they left Egypt. For the first part of the night, they were involved in doing the mitzvos of Pesach, with matzah and mrorim, as Hashem commanded, and during the last half of the night they were involved in the Exodus [itself]; therefore, they didn't allow themselves to sleep all night. And because "a person is obligated to act as though the left Egypt," therefore, these holy people did what they did: immediately at the beginning of the night they involved themselves in the mitzvos of matzah, maror, and the remembrance of the Pesach, just as their forefathers did in Egypt, and afterwards, for the rest of the night, they discussed the Exodus. Through this, they acted as though they, themselves, left [Egypt].
According to Abravanel, these Sages intentionally deprived themselves of sleep, staying up all night in order to emulate our forefathers, who didn’t sleep on the night of the actual Exodus, in order to fulfill the halacha of: “in each and every generation, a person is obligated to act (le’haros) as though they, themselves, left Egypt.”
I don’t know whether my take-away from this Abravanel is “legit” or not, but I’ll state it anyway. Next time I wake up on the morning of Pesach (or on the morning of the second day of Pesach) – filled with food, groggy from lack of sleep, and feeling the effects of the four cups – instead of bemoaning my state, I’ll think to myself: “Our forefathers who left Egypt didn’t sleep at all on the night of the 15th of Nisan. And by staying up last night, I reenacted their ordeal.” This way of framing my poor sleep will strengthen my identification with my forefathers. Moreover, I will feel grateful that I, unlike my forefathers, was not under any threat of oppression, and that I was able to partake in a leisurely discussion of Torah in the manner of one who is truly free.
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