Why it pays to start your day by going to sleep
Imagine for a moment that waking up wasn’t the first thing you did to start your day. Imagine that, as the sun begins to set and the stars come out, you start your day by reflecting on what you’ve accomplished over the past 12 to 16 hours and by forgiving everyone who has slighted you. You meditate on the oneness of the universe and purposefully count your blessings (all the people and things you are thankful for). Then, you lie down for a six- to eight-hour nap.
Yes, you read that correctly. Imagine your day starts with the sunset, with winding down from a long day’s work or play, and with going to sleep.
You might be asking: Why would you do this? What possible benefit could it have? Where did this idea even come from? Are you meshuggah? (Yiddish for crazy.)
Well, I might be meshuggah, but I didn’t create the idea of starting the day at sunset. It is right there in Bereishit (Genesis 1:5) for us all to read: “And G-d called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day.”
Evening comes before morning, not the other way around. The Jewish calendar follows this way of marking the days.
Up until a few weeks ago, I had thought about days starting at night for the Sabbath and festivals, but not for weekdays. You see, on Friday night, we welcome the Sabbath Day with candlelighting at 18 minutes before sunset. Why 18 minutes before you might ask? Because in observant Jewish homes, we don’t turn on lights (either by fire or electricity) once the Sabbath begins, and the Sabbath begins in the evening at sunset.
On Sabbath, from sunset to sunset, we are unplugged from the 24/7 wired-world of work and plugged into the spiritual world of family connection, prayer and purpose. After sunset on Saturday, we say goodbye to the Sabbath and plug back into the world of work. In other words, we even start our workday at night.
If we take the idea of starting every day of the week in the evening, then the cycle looks a bit like this: do a little bit of work, reflect, forgive, be thankful; go to sleep for six to eight hours; wake up, thank G-d for returning you to this world so you may fulfil your part of making the world a better place.
But what about the idea that sleep just interrupts work, or that a good night’s sleep is the reward for a long hard day? That was my perspective until last month, when I was visiting my family for Passover. I heard a sermon that got me thinking about our view of sleep. Rabbi Miller asked: “What if we switched our thinking around? What if a good day’s work was the reward for a good night’s sleep?”
To find out more about this perspective, I did some research. In the Talmud, Jewish law states that we are meant to sleep for six to eight hours each night. We may vary those times according to our needs.
However, we should refrain from sleeping during daylight hours, unless sleeping will help us serve G-d more effectively.
Modern science supports the Talmudic view. We know from experiments and our own experiences that six to eight hours is essential for physical and mental well-being. This shift in thinking has helped me to welcome every evening. Sleep now has a purpose — rather than interrupting the work I’m doing, it is now the beginning of a productive and meaningful day. Fiona Prince provides fundamental communication and writing skills to help people succeed in their professional and academic lives. She worships at the Chabad Family Shul, where she volunteers teaching children and adults how to read Hebrew.