Watchman, What of the Night?

All of you, dear students and friends, are certainly aware of the difficult situation that Israel and the Jewish people worldwide find ourselves in. There are a variety of opinions, political, social, and strategic that abound, and it seems clear that anyone who only sees things in one simple way is an extremist; it is a confusing time.

That is what we often feel now in Jerusalem. We are acutely aware of the darkness of the night, of a situation (Matzav) that does not suddenly end and turn instantly into the brightness of day. Confronted by night, its darkness, depression, and confusion, how do we respond?

There is the 5th-century piyut (liturgical poem) by Yannai – sung by tired Seder-goers at the end of the evening, or skipped altogether – entitled VaYehi BaChatzi HaLaila (“And It Happened in the Middle of the Night”), which is also the refrain after every stanza. Additionally, each line ends with the word laila, “night.” The overwhelming feeling projected thus is the utter darkness and hopelessness of the night.

This song presents a response. At its onset it proclaims that Rov Nisim (which can be translated either as “most miracles” or, as I prefer, “the greatest of miracles,”) were performed “in the night.” It proceeds to enumerate crucial episodes in the Jewish saga, including the smiting of the first-born in the Exodus from Egypt, all which took place in the middle of the night.

Consider this citation from the poem: “Israel strove with God and yet prevailed – at night.”

Regarding our Patriarch Jacob/Israel, Yannai could have employed the gorgeously vivid dream of the angelic ladder. Instead he focuses upon the scene in which Jacob prepares for the potentially violent encounter with Essau. Jacob protects his family and has thus carried them and their possessions across the River Yabok. He then found himself across the river from them, in the middle of the night:

“And Jacob was left alone, and then wrestled a man with him until the breaking of day. And when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was sorely hurt in his striving with him. And he said: Let me go, for the day breaks. And he said: What is thy name? And he said: Jacob. And he said: Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel – for you have contested with God and with men and hast prevailed” (Gen. 32: 25-9).

Jacob was left utterly alone, a matzav we are acutely aware of today, as we are shunned by erstwhile friends and associates, states, societies, and individuals. And that is an experience that we all have had in some form in our lives. Invariably, it is in that state of night, of being alone and abandoned that we wrestle. Perhaps we wrestle with our opponent, with some Essau, or as the Rabbis taught, his guardian angel that is both the confrontation with an other, or the philosophy of an other, that seeks to overwhelm and intimidate. But we all know that, in the end, the real striving, the real true wrestling, is with oneself. And this is the crucial first step as we decide our future actions and identity.

On an early date with my wife Sheryl, she quoted American Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March, about those who need to confront the “great fear of existence”:

“Tell me how many Jacobs are there who sleep on the stone and force it to be their pillow, or go to the mat with angels or wrestle the great fear to win a right to exist? These brave are so few that they are made the fathers of a whole people.”

Jacob was a person who was named for his greatest gift of being able “to hold on to the heel.” And in all of his encounters, especially with Esau and with Laban, Jacob held tight and held on. But now he goes a step further. In the loneliness of the night, foreshadowing our situation, having received a sucker-punch that hobbles him, Jacob seeks, demands and receives a blessing that transforms and renames him. As Reb Nachman of Bratslav said, “if one absolutely cannot in any way overcome, what must he do? He must overcome!” So, too, with our Father Jacob, who reaches into the darkness and seizes a blessing. And so must we, hobbled as we find ourselves, undergo self-transformation and receive the blessing.

Each episode put to verse by Yannai in this piyyut has its own significance. But let us skip now to the last one, set not in history but in the future. This is based on a prophecy from Isaiah, which is introduced as a Maasah Dumah, “an Arabian prophecy.” Suddenly: “One calls to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night” (Isaiah 21:12). The prophet is the Watchman, the Shomer. He is asked our eternal question: how shall we bear this night of forbidding darkness? The Watchman responds: “The morning comes and also the night; if you only inquire, inquire. [But rather:] Return, come [to me].”

The reply is at once comforting and challenging. The morning will come, the Watchman promises, the darkness of night is not everlasting, unless you insist on wallowing in its misery. Darkness is not given a prevailing victory by God. But so too, the morning light is not forever. One will have to undergo other nights. The greatness of Judaism and of the Jewish people, and hopefully now, of Israel, lies in the capacity to face every darkness directly with full confidence that even that last night is not permanent, that the morning will emerge. And then, if need dictates enduring further darkness, we will always inquire, and we will continuously return and come back to our source of light and hope.

The Talmud Yerushalmi (ta’anit 1:1) has a fascinating take on these verses:

“‘One calls out to me of Seir: Watchman, what of the night?’ Israel said to Isaiah: our master Isaiah, ‘what will come to us out of this night?’ He replied: ‘Wait until I inquire.’

When Isaiah came back to them and they asked again: ‘Watchman, what did He say?’ meaning, ‘What did the Watchman of both worlds say?’ Isaiah replied: ‘The Watchman said, the morning comes and also the night.’ They asked, ‘Is the night to come once again?’ Isaiah answered: ‘It is not as you think. There will be a morning for the righteous, and a night for the evildoers.’

They asked: ‘When?’ Isaiah answered: ‘when you truly desire it, He will desire it also.’ They asked: ‘What stands in our way?’ Isaiah replied: ‘[that you do not practice] Repentance. [Therefore] Return, come [to Me].’

Following the Aggadic interpretation of the Talmud, Isaiah repeats the message from the true Watchman, God, promising morning but then again night’s return. The people of Israel are taken aback by this prophecy of the return of night. The prophet then, however, explains that in the future the morning light will ultimately have victory over darkness. This will come from God, when the people themselves will truly desire it, when they embody Godly ideals.

Yannai goes a step further in the poem’s conclusion:

“Bring near the day, which is not day and not night!
All High, make known that there is day and there is night!
Set Watchmen about Thy city, all the day and all the night!
Make Thou light as the day, the darkness of night!”

As Jews we live by the firm belief that to be truly human is to encounter the darkness of night and not to flee it, sleep through it by denial, or surrender to it through despair. We believe in holding on, encountering the darkness, and even seeking in the struggle both blessing and transformation. We do this because we know that others stood before us “all that same night,” kol oto ha’laila. We believe that a morning will come, and that eventually even the darkness of night will be overcome by light. In all of this, we have the responsibility to bring light, and, in imitatio dei, despite wild differences, be the Shomer, Watchmen, for our fellow Jews and our fellow citizens.

As Jews, we have endured many a bitter night, but we have never given up on the eventual dawning of that brighter day.

At Yashrut, we are determined to intensify the light, through deepening our Torah learning with an orientation of fierce, decisive commitment to loving-kindness, justice, and care for those within and beyond our circles. In this way we shall also be guardians and watchmen of our city and of our people.