Yom Iyun and the Meaning of Sleep

Before I get to the main activities of today, I want to share a clever, spur-of-the-moment joke I made in Ariel's shiur. What I was doing in a shiur when I have more than enough of them in yeshiva, I don't know. Anyway, as I was a guest who had not been in the previous sessions, I was kind of daydreaming when the rabbi surprised me with "What is the Talmud student's greatest enemies, Mr. Bain?" This caught me completely by surprise. I was especially confused about the plural of "enemy." Thinking quickly on my feet, I answered the only plural Tamludic thing that came to mind: "The Tosfot" (medieval commentators on the gmara). This drew a big laugh. The correct answer, by the way, was vagueness, which apparently count for more than one enemy.

Thursday afternoon was a Yom Iyun, which basically meant that the yeshiva had a day of lectures in Jerusalem instead of at Mount Gilboa. The event, held in Jerusalem neighborhood Ramat Eshkol, occured in a synagogue that was extremely hard to find, but I managed to walk there and find it all on my own. For some reason, I arrived at exactly 1:15, which meant I was on time, which meant that, on Israeli terms, I was way too early.

There were three speakers: Rav Shmuel's brother Rami, who spoke about, in Ilan's words, "I don't know;" a certain Professor Broyer, who talked about the evolution of the Hebrew language with respect to Israeli Nobel Prize winner Shai Agnon; and Aviah Cohen, Chezi's teacher who gave a shiur in a Chezi-ish way (or rather, in a way that his pupil immitates). I wasn't that intrigued by any of the speeches, so I amused myself in other ways. I compared the appearances of the Reiners: Rami, his sons Yoav (in my shiluv) and Yonatan (a boger), and his brother Shmuel (Rav Shmuel). I looked for unusual patterns in David MD's afro. I wondered why Rav Bigman was always smiling. When all else failed, I compared how fast the different clocks were going.

After the lectures, which seemed to take forever, we walked about a mile to the house of a rebbe. Here are the highlights of what he said:

[Editor's note: I fell asleep in the middle. Or rather, somewhere towards the beginning. Since I can't write about what he said, I will describe my feelings on sleep. I've meant to write them for a while, so here they are:

Over the past six-plus months in Israel, I have struggled with sleep. I jokingly attribute all problems to jetlag, because sometimes the symptoms seem flight-related. I am tired at random times. Wait, that's about it, but it happens a lot. But there does seem to be a pattern to when I inexplicably fall asleep. Take, for instance, Rav Bigman's speech between Kabbalat Shabbat and Ma'ariv Friday night (though part of it may be due to the fact that I am usually up late Thursday night). Other times include Monday at 3:19 p.m., during Rav Shmuel's Dvar Torah Tuesdays at 8:20 p.m., and whenever Rav Elisha has been talking for more than an hour. In contrast, whenever I try to fall asleep at night, I can't. And when I finally do, I always wake up tired. The quality of sleep, a term I just made up, seems to be less for me here. In America, I could go to sleep at 11:30 and get up at 6:40, and feel energetic for the whole day. Here, I try to go to sleep at 10:30, get up at 9:15, and be tired for most of the day. I'm still trying to figure this out.]

Exhilirating.

After the lectures mercifully came to an end, Ezra, Benjamin and I went to the Malcha Mall to get dinner and hang out. We were joined by Weiler, who bought some weird books. We were going to see a movie, but since nothing remotely interesting was showing, we decided, well, not to see a movie. We got a quick dinner, walked around a bit, and called it a night.