There is no better holiday than
Purim for a person with a fitful baby and sorely lacking sleep. No, it is not
that you can drink away the stresses.
Rather, a person can fulfill the main mitzvah on Purim with sleep. The Rama (main Ashkenazi authority) says that
a person should drink a little and then sleep, and because he sleeps ‘he won’t
know the difference between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai,’ which is
the main goal of the day. Why? Because the
purpose of Purim is to realize that when things look like they are for the bad
right now (Haman trying to kill Jews), they are ultimately for the good
(brought Jews together and they reached a higher spiritual level). Still, it is
hard to believe that one can fulfill a mitzvah through sleep. Typically mitzvahs
require intent and are rooted in thought.
Sleep also makes an appearance in the Megillah. It says in Megillah 19a
that according to one opinion, the highlight of the story and the apogee of the
miracle is when the King has a fitful night sleep, and upon awakening, he asks
for the book of memories. He suddenly remembers that he has not repaid Mordecai
for the good that he did when he saved the King from assassins. This event is not obviously an important aspect of the chain events that led to the ultimate salvation.
Again,there is a theme of sleep ingrained in Purim that requires a deeper look.
Sleep has two completely different descriptions in the Talmud. On the one
hand it is described as 1/60th of death, yet it also says that a
dream, which presumably happens when one is asleep, is 1/60th of
prophecy. When the mind and soul are
turned off in sleep, it allows for the depth of the subconscious to bubble up
to the surface. When that happens, deep things can happen and new realizations
made- we can really remember what is important in life. It is about getting to
the subconscious and touching the deepest part of our self, our deepest desire.
Ultimately, that is what we celebrate on Purim. The Jews were asleep in
exile, slowly losing touch and inching their way toward the Persian
lifestyle. They took great pleasure from
the hedonistic feast in the King’s court.
That is sleep that is 1/60th of death. But, on one fitful night of the King’s
sleep-each time it says, ‘The King’ in the Megillah it is also referring to
G-d- it reflected that the nation’s sleep had grown fitful as well. The sleep
of death had shifted to a fitful sleep that reflected an awakening of the subconscious. At the end of this, the Jews had rededicated
their lives and decided that the Torah was really what they wanted. No longer
was it a system imposed upon them externally, but it was now a system that was
rooted in their deepest desires.
