Staying out all night.
Does this take us back to our college days, where we’d have some [perhaps] adventurous nights and sleep them off later? To the less enjoyable times where we worked to the wee hours of morning to make a project deadline?
Maybe, it takes us to the elevating mystical experience of Tikkun Leil Shavuot.
Shavuot marks our receiving Torah at Mount Sinai, after the Exodus from Egypt seven weeks earlier. ‘Leil’ is evening, and ‘tikkun,’ a term we most often associate with ‘tikkun loam’—or the repairing of the world—here refers to a specific time of study that serves a pedagogic and mystical purpose. Thus, Tikkun Leil Shavuot is the mystical study session the evening of Shavuot. Many make this session an all-nighter, preparing for one fantastic Torah reception in the morning (we’ll be receiving the Ten Commandments!).
The custom of preparing our minds and souls for Torah comes from the mystics of 16th century Tzfat (Israel), who are also known for bringing us Kabbalat Shabbat and the Shulchan Arukh. Some say that we stay up late to show that we are eager and ready to once again welcome Torah into our lives. Others, that we need to prepare ourselves for the incredibly holy moment of revelation to take place in the morning. Some mystics believed that all the thoughts and prayers of those who stayed up through the night would ascend to the heavens, and some believed that were you to stay out and study all night, life would be guaranteed for the coming year.
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Last, we know that the Kabbalists created this devotional custom right around when coffee was introduced to the region. Coincidence?
Join us for our late-night studies. There’s nothing like learning in an exciting environment about the many gifts Torah grants us— Torah teaches us that the meaning of life comes not in our freedom, but in how we use it. Torah gives us examples for ideal living who are realistically far from perfect. Torah presents us with ways to keep from blowing menial things out of proportion. And, for anyone who has tried this, there’s nothing like coffee-and-exhaustion-fueled delirium to draw new meaning from a familiar text. Rabbi Ben Bag Bag, in Pirkei Avot (5:25), taught, ‘Turn it, turn it again, for everything is in it.’ No matter how many times we delve into Torah, there will always be something relevant to the moments in which we live.
Take a chance and join us this Erev Shavuot for some engaging study and conversation. We’ll have two different study sessions – V.A.T. (Value Added Torah), from 9:30 to 10:30, and Ruth Unveiled from 10:40 to 11:40. From there, the rest of the night is yours!
Published in Temple Emanu-El of Edison’s Kolaynu, June 2014.
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