In Defense of Snooze Bars Everywhere!

I want to do a study. Let’s do a survey and find out how many alarm clocks’ snooze bars die of old age. What percentage of snooze bars are killed in mad, sleepy rages, victims of senseless violence and flailing fists? Raise your hand if you’ve ever been a party to the demise of a snooze bar.

See that? So many of you!

So the question then begs itself: if people hate alarm clocks so much, why do they bring them into their homes, even unto their very night tables? Furthermore, why are manufacturers allowed to produce them? Aren’t they a public nuisance, mass disturbers of the public peace?

Shouldn’t alarm clocks be illegal?

Obviously, the man who smashes his alarm clock has only himself to blame. He asked the alarm clock to interrupt his sweet dreams precisely because he knew that left to his own devices (pun!) he would sleep himself out of a job. Thus he sets the alarm to wake him when he is comfortably, soundly asleep because as much as he wants to sleep (and the battered snooze bar can attest to that), on a deeper level he wants to wake up.

And this gives us better definition of alarm clocks: devices designed to remind you what you really want.

Much like rabbis. Leaving out the gruesome comparisons between rabbis and snooze bars, the verisimilitude is alarming (pun!).

The late, great Sid Caesar agreed when I suggested to him that comedians don’t cheer people up, they merely remind people how cheerful they really are, deep down under the layers of stress. And rabbis don’t make people more spiritual, they merely remind them how spiritual they are deep inside.

This generation’s rabbi of all rabbis, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, once told a group of college students who asked him to define the role of a Rebbe:

Every home has countless switches connected via wires to central power plants. Each switch, with the power invested in it by that connection, has the ability to illuminate the darkness. The trick is finding the switch in the darkness. A Rebbe’s role is showing people the way to their “switch” so they can make use of the infinite spiritual power source they each possess.

The Rebbe never changed people; the Rebbe only reminded people how deeply and how genuinely they were different and much better than they were giving themselves credit for. And they changed themselves.

To a degree, this is the role of every rabbi. And to a degree, this is the role of every person in our mutual responsibility to each other.

In the story of Purim, it was the great Mordechai who cried, clanged and clamored until his beloved people reluctantly and gratefully awoke from their spiritual slumber.

In the story of our generation, it was the Rebbe.

And in your life, in your circle of friends and in your sphere of influence, it is YOU.

If people are sleeping all around you, be the alarm. You might take a little abuse like any good alarm clock, but it won’t take very long - they’ll be thanking you and thanking you.

Happy Purim everyone!