At midnight the coach will turn back into a pumpkin, the horses back into mice, the gorgeous gown back into rags, and the marvelous glass slippers will disappear.
There is this tendency in western literature to see midnight as the witching hour, the time that is most dangerous, when evil stalks abroad.
It is no coincidence that Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven begins “Once upon a midnight dreary” or that the Headless Horseman from Washington Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ is described as “like a Midnight blast”. The dead of night is all that is unnerving, disquieting, unsettling, as the dawn seems endlessly far away.
But the Pesach story is, in some ways, the opposite of Cinderella. Cinderella on the night of the ball was free and happy but at the stroke of twelve all the magic came undone - but in the Torah's description of the Exodus, in Exodus 12:29, we see that our freedom began at precisely midnight:
29 And it came to pass at midnight, that the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle.
At that moment the Israelites were no longer slaves - the midnight hour indeed brought danger and death (even the Israelites had to protect themselves with blood on the doorposts) but it also brought redemption.
What is the significance of midnight?
First night of Seder we sing a special poem by the medieval poet Yannai known as ‘VaY’hi b’chatzi halailah’, 'And it happened at midnight', that describes all the moments of redemption throughout Israelite legend and history that were supposed to have taken place at midnight, starting from Abraham’s victory in the war of the four kings and the five kings, through Jacob wrestling an angel, the destruction of Sennacherib, and King Ahasuerus from the Book of Esther waking up in the middle of the night to hear the book of chronicles.
Night time is scary - our imagination fills the darkness with terrors - but Jewish tradition asserts that in the middle of the darkness, the darkest point of the night, is not a time of dread but actually the beginning of dawn.
The kabbalists understood this significance of the middle of the night, and so instituted the practice of the midnight vigil, waking up to study Torah at midnight. Some think that this was possible due to the discovery of coffee, or that before electric lighting humans tended to sleep in two batches, with a period of waking in between, but whatever the historical reason, the kabbalists thought of midnight as a time of special power, when God turns to the world in love, when, if you are studying Torah, you can get swept up in God’s mercy and compassion.
The Zohar, the great 13th Century work of Jewish mysticism, captures this idea in its own very poetic way:
Afterwards, when the sun should set,
the night shines and comes and takes the sun.
Then, all the gates close, donkeys bray, and dogs bark.
When half the night is through, the King begins to rise and the queen begins to sing.
The King comes and knocks on the palace’s gate and says,
“Open for me, my sister, my wife.”
And then He plays with the souls of the righteous.
Happy is he who has awakened at that time with words of Torah. For this reason, all the children of the queen’s palace must rise at that time and praise the King. All praise before Him, and the praise rises from this world, which is far from Him, and this is more pleasing to the Creator than anything.
-Zohar on Parashat Beshalach
Through the twin practices of study and prayer, you can be counted among the children of the queen’s palace, the embodiment of the people of Israel in a romantic relationship with the King of Kings.
For redemption isn’t just freely given - it has to be earned.
The kabbalists tried to earn that salvation nightly with prayer and study, the Israelites had to earn it with signs of devotion, with the paschal lamb and marking the doorposts with blood.
What does this mean for us today?
I'm not necessarily advocating midnight study - though far be it from me to stop you - and certainly this tradition has impacted the halacha of the Seder, as there is a rule that we have to finish eating by midnight.
More importantly, we are presented with two options when faced with midnight, with the darkest and lowest points in our lives, a Cinderella model vs. an Exodus model.
Both midnights have their evil, dangerous aspects, but Cinderella emphasises that the dream is over, that it is the darkest moment, while Exodus and the Zohar wants us to see this moment as the beginning of the dawn, the first step towards the light.
The world can seem bleak, it can really wear at our souls, make us seem powerless, helpless, like we don’t understand and can’t do anything. All too often we may feel like the world has reached its nadir, its midnight point.
But Jewish tradition wants us to see this as an opportunity, a chance to do something, to be counted among the holy, among the children of the Queen’s palace. When the world seems darkest is when we are called to act - set slaves free, bring truth and liberty, freedom and peace, work to bring justice to the oppressed, connect to God and your family, bring about redemption in whatever small ways you can. In so doing we can fight off the midnight and bring about the dawn.
As Yannai’s poem ends, we pray for a redeemed world:
“Bring close the day that is neither day nor night
Exalted One, make known that Yours is the day and Yours is also the night
Appoint guards for Your city, all day and all night.
Brighten like the light of the day the darkness of night.
And it came to pass at midnight.”
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