Time for a Shnatz
Siesta Israeli Style
This morning I opened up the online Jewish journal, Mosaic, to a headline that immediately caught my eye. “Just as the Siesta Disappears, Hebrew Finally Has Its Own Word For It,” it read.
The article is about the sad decline of the afternoon siesta, not only in Israel but in many cultures around the world. For nap enthusiasts such as ourselves, this is quite the travesty and a trend I hope will reverse in years to come.
Like many languages, experts in the field are continually crafting new words and phrases to speak to new realities in the world around them. The article notes that in Hebrew, there is a new word for the siesta, the “shnatz.”
As the article notes, “Shnatz, with its echoes of “snooze” and “snore,” is an acronym for shnat tzohorayim, “afternoon sleep,” known to much of the world as a siesta. Long part of Israeli culture, the siesta has gradually been disappearing from the local scene just as it has done elsewhere—and if you wonder how a custom that was long part of a culture could have had no name, the answer is that it had one, it just wasn’t a Hebrew one. For decades, the siesta was known to Israelis as the Schlafstunde, or shlafshtunde to de-Germanize its spelling, and many still call it that.”
It may not be too late to save the shnatz. Find yourself a nice spot tomorrow and savor the quiet enjoyment of an afternoon sleep, Israeli style.