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The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
All right, my dear friends, we are back. Way number 19 is b'miyu t'sheina. B'miyu t'sheina means with limited sleep. Limited sleep. Guess what? It's a simple thing. If you sleep too much, you're going to miss life. You're just gonna miss out on life. You know, it's really an incredible observation. Children don't like to sleep. You know why they don't like to sleep? Because they're afraid. I have so much to accomplish. I've got so much to do. Who has time to sleep?
Let's go. The kids, the younger they are, the more they don't want to sleep. And the reason they don't want to sleep is because they have dreams. They have hopes. They want to accomplish. But then they get to their teenage years where enough people have told them, give up on your dreams, you're never gonna make it. You're never gonna be the next Elon Musk. You're never gonna be the next Bill Gates. Just stop with your dreams already.
So that's why they like you try to wake them at 10 o'clock in the morning. They're like, you can't move them because then you miss life. Someone who sleeps too much. But sleep is critically important. The Rambam says that a healthy adult needs eight hours of sleep. So, we have to get those eight hours. But too much sleep dulls the mind. We have to have a balance. And all of these, there are six of them
that we talk about here in the 48 Ways that talk about balance. It is so important. So another thing is not to be daydreaming and not to be sleeping through life. I mean, you're awake, but you're sleeping. That's also a thing. My grandfather would say that when you walk in the streets, don't just walk to a destination with an empty mind. That's sleeping. Think of something. Take a verse from the Torah, from this week's Parsha,
from a Mishnah, a line of Talmud, and think about it. Get it into your mind. Start thinking about it. So you don't just sit and like, what am I gonna do now? I think one of the greatest, now don't get me wrong, I love baseball. But I think one of the greatest wastes of time is baseball. It's four hours. There's so much time between each pitch. Now, it's amazing that people love going to baseball games still.
For me, it's enough one inning and I'm good to go. I'm good. There's work to do. There's things to accomplish. We're only here for that much time. Unless we take practical steps to stay awake, sleep is going to overcome us. We have to be proactive to be awake. Now, what do I mean? Being awake spiritually, being awake with our mind, taking in lessons, not to be sleeping. There are messages that God is sending us constantly. We have to be awake.
I'll give you just a little insight and we'll end with this. It's possible for a person to live their entire life without thinking a single meaningful thought. Have you ever been on TikTok? There's an entire generation that all they're doing is from one entertainment to another entertainment. Nothing of meaning. But here's another thing. Have you ever thought about a verse in the Torah that you've known your whole life? Like in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
And then we spent several weeks discussing just the first word, then the first verse and the first chapter. It's like endless. We spent months and months on that. You know that when you learn something, there are times I learn mishnah, I learn something and I think I know it inside out. And then I hear a lecture from another rabbi and he brings an insight and I'm like, I was sleeping till now. How can I not have seen that idea?
How can I not have thought in that way? Where was I till now? I was sleeping. That's another type of sleep that we should avoid. I've asked my rabbi, used to teach class to like 50, 60 future rabbis. So we would see him, we would be teaching this lecture and he would doze off in middle of his words. But what was amazing about it is that he would wake up about 40 seconds later and it was like deafening silence
because nobody wants to wake him and nobody knows what to do. It's like awkward. And he would wake up and resume exactly where he left off. So I once asked him, I was very close with him. I asked him, I said, Rabbi, I found out that he sleeps only two and a half hours a night. So I said, how did you do that? So he said, I used to sleep eight hours and then I started slowly in a very slow progressive pace
taking off five minutes, another five minutes, another five minutes. And he says, today, all he needs is two and a half hours. He says, sometimes he dozes off. Okay, big deal. I said, Rabbi, when are you gonna sleep? Gotta sleep. He says, I'll sleep when I die. And it's an important thing that never let your mind wander off. How many times, and I've done this myself, realizing there are certain apps that are created to waste your time.
YouTube, Facebook, just scrolling and scrolling. So what do you know what I started doing? I'd go through my phone every couple of weeks and delete five apps. Those that I need the least and take the most time out of my day. Just delete them, done. And if I'm even stronger, sometimes I'll even get rid of my smartphone for a few weeks. You've all experienced that, right? And just completely get rid of it. For three weeks a month to just cleanse myself.
I don't need it. Be alert, be awake every moment of the day.