Those Shameful Thoughts and What They Really Say about You
If getting into bed is the highlight of your day, this one is for you.
If sleep is the best part of your day, something's off. That's not me being dramatic. Judaism actually compares sleep to a sixtieth of death. You're not there. You're not conscious. So if the highlight of your day is a state where you basically don't exist, it's worth asking why.
You don't actually love sleeping. You can't -- you're unconscious for it. What you love is the moment of getting into bed and drifting off. Maybe you love waking up refreshed too. But the sleep itself? You're not experiencing a second of it.
If that moment of checking out is what you're living for, that's not really about sleep. It's about needing an escape. And that usually means something in your waking life needs fixing.
Modern doctors say we need 7 to 8 hours a night. Fine. But look at who got by on almost nothing. The Vilna Gaon, one of the greatest Torah scholars in history, reportedly slept in short stretches of under half an hour at a time, a few times a day. Moses went 40 days on Mount Sinai without sleeping or eating at all.
How? Because only the body needs sleep. The soul doesn't. The more you feed your soul -- through Torah study, good deeds, kindness, meditation -- and the more you live from that place, the less your body gets to call the shots. You're still human, so you'll always need some sleep. But how much depends heavily on where you're drawing your energy from.
I can't stand sleeping. It gets in my way. Lying down feels nice for about ten seconds, and then I think: I have too much to do. I want to write, teach, run programs, help people who are grieving, spend time with my family, go for a run. Every one of those things gives me energy instead of draining it. So by the time I hit the pillow, I'm out cold in seconds.
If you're lying awake for two or three hours trying to fall asleep, stop torturing yourself. Get up. Read. Exercise. Do something. Eventually you'll get tired enough to actually sleep, instead of just staring at the ceiling resenting it. The real fix isn't a better bedtime routine. It's building a life you're excited to wake up for.
Here's a test. If I offered you $50,000 to meet me at 5 a.m. for a workout, would you show up? Of course. You'd set eight alarms and get a friend to dump cold water on you if that's what it took.
So the problem was never that mornings are hard. The problem is you don't value what you're waking up for. Nobody's offering you $50,000 to get up. But you are getting something arguably worth more: self-respect, growth, health, a version of yourself your spouse and kids actually admire. Once that registers, getting up stops being a fight.
One catch, though. If you want to rise like a lion, you can't go to bed like a mule. That means no screens for an hour before bed, no eating within two and a half hours of it, and no lying there dreading the alarm. Go to sleep excited for tomorrow, and tomorrow shows up differently.
Here's a question worth sitting with: if God could have made us not need sleep, why do we need it?
The answer connects to emunah -- trust, or faith. While you're awake, you operate with da'at, full awareness and control. Falling asleep means surrendering that control. It means saying, I'm putting myself in God's hands now.
That's why sleep is so hard in an unsafe place. It happened to me once in India, stuck somewhere sketchy with no safe corner to lie down -- I didn't sleep a wink all night, because some part of me refused to let go of control. Real sleep requires real trust.
And here's the flip side: if you go to sleep with the intention of resting your body so you can keep serving a purpose in the morning, those hours of unconsciousness become meaningful. That's part of why we say the Shema before bed -- it's full of verses about trusting God completely. Sleep, done right, isn't wasted time. It's an act of faith.
If you sleep 8 hours a night and live to 90, you will have slept for 30 years. Shave off just one hour of sleep a night, and you free up 365 hours a year -- about 15 full days.
Think about how much Instagram scrolling or Candy Crush you can fit into 15 days. Now imagine using them for something that actually matters instead.
Stop treating sleep like the goal. Get up. Go build a life worth being awake for.
Some of us need more than 7 hours of sleep at least 2-3 times a week. Maybe not every night, but a full nights sleep is different for everyone. Our bodies and brains are different.
Sleep is not wasteful, it regenerative.