Midnight, the first night of Shavuot, I remembered the same night in 1964: I opened my eyes from a delicious sleep to find my mother softly stroking my head and whispering my name. My sister was leaning at the window looking up. "It's midnight," my mother said, "on Shavuot the sky opens up at this time and you can ask for anything." Although my heart wanted to pray for my sister to disappear, I was too caught up in the Jewish moment to request something so practical. I stood next to my sister, desperate to find the opening in the sky through which my prayers would pass directly to God.
The following year, I put a plan into action: After being denied the privilege to stay up all night with my father, I asked if I could at least stay up till midnight. My parents readily agreed, as, for some reason, midnight that night would be at 10PM. My prayer for the open heavens moment was ready: I prayed that my father would allow me to stay with him in Yeshiva. It worked! He agreed, but only on condition that I take a short nap before he left the house. I'll let you figure out
guess what happened.
Shavuot 1966 was my first officially sanctioned attempt to stay awake all night learning. As I walked with my father to the yeshiva I asked whether everyone goes out at midnight when the sky opens up. He stood still, silenced the students accompanying us who, for some reason, were giggling, and said, "What does it mean that the sky opens?"
"It's exciting! It means that I can ask God for anything and everything," I answered. "Then you don't need a special moment on the holiday," he said, "that is the way you can feel every time you study Torah. It is exciting!"
"Pa," I asked, "how could they oversleep if they were excited?" "The real question," he said, "is how could they go to sleep at all?"
I've been wondering about that question ever since. Why do people go to sleep when they should be excited? Why does Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, hesitate just at the border of Israel, and decide to return to Midian? Why do the Israelites begin complaining about inanities when they are just three days away from entering the Promised Land? Why did they go to sleep in such an exciting moment?
I suspect that they didn't want the excitement. There are people who choose to pray as they always have because they prefer the familiar to the exciting; they don't look for that opening in heaven. I listen as teachers focus, year after year, on the same themes of the festivals rather than discover an entirely new insight. It's as if they don't believe in those magical moments of open heavens. I observe people I've known for years remain the same without changing; do the heavens not open for them?
I am grateful to my mother for many things, but most of all, for introducing me to the idea of those magical moments when I can thrill at all the possibilities of life. I find them when I pray. I discover them when I study. I search for them in every aspect of life. "May you live in interesting times," is not a curse, but a challenge to discover the blessings of the openings in Heaven.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg
President
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