This Sunday morning, two worlds are destined to briefly enter each other’s orbit. As the sun rises, bedraggled revellers from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee are going to emerge blinking into the light, at the same time as groups of bleary-eyed Orthodox Jews who’ve been up in preparation for Shavuot.

Both entities will check each other out and nod at the other with respect, the former thinking, ‘wow, these Jews sure know how to party,’ the latter, ‘wow, these goyim sure know how to study.’

Across the Torah and Midrash are a whole bunch of contractions, and part of their appeal is the mental gymnastics it takes to get the puzzle pieces to fit, usually by creating an extra puzzle piece. Just look at any rabbi’s endless bookshelves. Alas, the reason behind the tradition of staying awake all night studying Torah has always remained beyond my limited analytical capabilities. Until that is, I put my parent hat on top of my kippah.

The Midrash Rabbah tells how at Mount Sinai, the night before God gave us the Torah, the excited Israelites went to bed early in order to be well-rested. That’s a good thing right? They’re all super-psyched and thinking ‘We’ve got a massive day tomorrow, we’ve got these five books to memorise and I wouldn’t want to get anything wrong. Could you imagine if by mistake we told future generations they weren’t allowed to eat yummy bacon? Ha!’

The problem is, they then overslept, and a peeved Moses had to wake everyone up whilst God was waiting. But we hadn’t really done anything wrong, if anything we did everything right. It’s not their fault alarm clocks hadn’t been invented yet.

I guess what happened is, there’s a counterintuitive phenomenon where when you’ve been burning the candle at both ends, like raising five kids, or being chased across the Red Sea, and you deliberately go to bed early to catch up, your body thinks you’re safe to recover and goes into hibernation mode. Is the lesson then that we should never go to bed early, even if there’s nothing good on TV, which you’ve confirmed after checking out the JC’s review section? Nope, it’s a much harsher lesson than that, one which parents today have forgotten to teach their children.

There are another group of people likely to be studying this weekend, GSCE and A-Level students. My eldest, in Year Eight, just finished his first ever set of proper exams. A month ago we sat down and drew out a detailed revision chart, which he then amazed me by assiduously sticking to. My own revision used to entail spending days constructing the perfect colour-coded revision chart, whereupon I’d be so buoyed by my accomplishment I didn’t think I had to do any actual revision.

In contrast, my son does everything right, he incorporates every bit of suggested advice or life hack into his routine. He has a routine. He does his homework Friday straight after school so he can enjoy the rest of the weekend. He packs his bag and gets his uniform ready the night before school. He even uses deodorant. Is this all normal for a 12-year-old?

Perhaps not; when we checked out the venue for his barmitzvah the only questions he asked the owner were “Is there was air conditioning?” and “What’s the parking situation?” Sometimes he scares me more than that kid in The Omen.

What that Midrash tells us though, is even when you do get everything right, even when you have the best of intentions, even when you’ve tried your best, sometimes, the result isn’t what you want or expect it to be. In other words, “life’s not fair”.

That phrase used to be chucked out at kids as a shorthand by frazzled parents seeking to quickly end a conversation, and you don’t tend to hear it much anymore. In an era of parenting books about focusing on the effort put in,

I’ve traditionally praised my kids for how hard they tried, rather than pointing out how their spelling/maths/handwriting/drawing totally and utterly sucks.
Perhaps I’ve missed a trick though. As my children get older and I’m less able to shield them from the inequities of existence, it’s time to pull the curtain back.

I was worried that if they knew life wasn’t always fair, then they’d stop trying. What they really need to learn though, is how to rise again when things don’t work out, roll with the good and the bad, and try to make the best out of the journey. Sometimes that means you’ve got to stay up all night studying, and sometimes you’ve got to party.