Rabbi's Blog

Chances are you already know whether you’re a morning person or a night person (and if you don’t, just ask your significant other). What you might not know is that social scientists use pretty specific—albeit by academic standards, pretty casual—names for these two Chrono types (i.e. circadian rhythm characteristics). “Larks” are up and at it early in the morning, and tend to hit the sack at a respectable evening hour; “owls” are most alert at night and typically turn in long after dark.

For me, the most delightful time of day is from dawn until sunrise. There is a still in the air and quiet permeates the outdoors. I find it to be the calmest time of day when I can think for a few minutes without the interruptions of a busy life. Looking back at life, it wasn’t always this way. When I was younger, I could - and did - stay up late at night and get up late morning. As I grow older, I need to go to bed earlier than I used to, but I also rise earlier in the morning than I used to. I used to work late into the night but now find myself unable to concentrate. I find that my mind is sharper in the wee hours of the morning. As a side note I sleep fewer hours through the night than I once did. I am now savoring the last few days of daylight savings time as sunrise is after seven in the morning, providing me with maximum quiet time.

This lovely early morning quietude will be be shortened this Sunday morning when we will all be greeting the return of Pacific Standard Time. All of us will now have to set our clocks back one hour, thereby making use of one more hour of natural daylight. “spring forward, fall back” is one of the little sayings used to remember which way to set our watches. We all set our clocks forward 1 hour in the spring when DST starts and lose one hour, and set our clocks back one hour when DST ends in the fall, regaining that one hour. By the way not every country in the world follows this practice; in the United States most of Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have chosen to stay on one time zone throughout the year.

Have you ever wondered when all this began? It has been over one hundred years since the switch first took place. In 1908, the town of Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada was the first location in the world to implement Day Light Savings time. On April 30, 1916, Germany became the first country in the world to make the switch to DST. While these two places were the first to adopt the concept of turning the clocks forward and backward semi-annually, the idea was actually first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784! As with most novel ideas, it took an additional 111 years before modern Daylight Savings Time was seriously suggested. In 1895, an entomologist from New Zealand, George Vernon Hudson, proposed a two-hour daylight saving shift, but his proposal was voted down. I’m going to miss that early morning transition from darkness to light, literally from night to day. Although I enjoy that time and am productive, I must admit there are times when I am not as productive as I’d like to be. I attribute this anomaly to the fact that when a person has very little available time to accomplish his goals, he tends to accomplish more than someone who has plenty of time but tends to be less productive. A primary source of this discussion is attributed to and established by Avraham Avinu.

From the end of last week’s parsha Lech Lecha to the end of this week’s parsha Vaera, we read about Avraham getting up early to do Mitzvos. In Bereishis 22:3 the Torah states: “VaYashkeim Avraham BaBoker, VaYachavosh Es Chamoro, VaYikach Es Shnei N’Arav Ito V’Es Yitzchok B’No…”. “And Avraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took his two men (Yishmael and Eliezer) with him, along with his son Isaac”. The Yadvana Rav in his commentary Shaar Bas Rabim asks the following: If the taking of Yitzchok was the primary purpose of this trip, why does it first list the two young lads and then separately state ‘and Yitzchok his son’? Shouldn’t it state, “…and Avraham took Yitzchok and two young boys with him”? The answer is that Avraham calculated his every move and planned it out to so as to achieve the best results. Avraham acted with wisdom by shielding Sarah and Yitzchok, keeping them from becoming alarmed about this trip. If Avraham had asked his wife Sarah to prepare all the necessary provisions of the trip for her son Yitzchok, wouldn’t she have asked where they were going? Wouldn’t she have understood immediately that something was up? For that matter, Yitzchok also would have become suspicious if he were the obvious center of this expedition. Therefore, Avraham told Sarah that he alone needs to travel to a far away distance to serve God. Sarah prepared clothing, food, and other essentials for her husband Avraham and for the two young servants whom he took with him. Yitzchok is not mentioned at all during the preparation. Avraham then asked Yitzchok just before leaving, ‘Perhaps you might want to come along to serve Hashem, also.” Yitzchok responded in the positive and he went along with his father. On the surface it appears that Avraham never intended to take Yitzchok, that it was more of an afterthought. This was done so that Sarah and Yitzchok would not suspect that the plan was to take him from the beginning.

Rav Meklenburg, in his work HaKesav V’Hakabbalah, derives an insight from the Gemara in Pesachim 4a, learning out from the words ‘Vayashkeim Avraham BaBoker’ and Avraham got up early in the morning. The simple understanding of the test was whether he would take his son to slaughter or not. But these words show Avraham’s zeal to perform the Mitzvos. This describes a different angle of the test; it was to see how he approached the Mitzva, how excited he was, and that he was not lazy about it. Avraham went about the process of preparing to perform the Mitzva with joy, as evident from his quickness and readiness to go do it. The ultimate interpretation of ‘getting up early’ was the planning and devising of a strategy as to how to take Yitzchok to the Akeida without him or his mother Sarah knowing about it.

Avraham wasn’t the only person in the world to be tested. One of the reasons he passed his tests was because he found the time of day to contemplate how he was going to deal with the challenges which lay ahead of him. We should savor those quiet moments in the early morning to plan our day and to think about how and what we will do to overcome the tests and challenges of our every day life.

Ah Gut Shabbos

Rabbi Avraham Bogopulsky