King David’s Alarm Clock

The Talmud relates that a lyre/small U-shaped harp hung over King David’s bed, and once midnight arrived, the northern wind would come and cause the lyre to play on its own. David would immediately rise from his bed and study Torah until the first rays of dawn.

One of the most refined things in this otherwise physical and mundane world is music. Music evokes deep emotions and longing, transcends thought and language and has the power to reach to the very depths of the soul.

The Zohar explains that the Hebrew word כנור (“harp”) is a compound word made up of the words נר , “lamp,” a reference to the soul (referred to in Proverbs as the “lamp of G‑d”) and כו, the number 26, the numerical value of the name of G‑d.

By Rov Yehuda Shurpin