Source for vacht nach

mommy3b2c

Mon, Oct 31 2016, 7:52 pm

Originally, a vach nacht was the father staying up to learn all night as a shmira for the baby. Hence the name "vach nacht." Literal translation- "watch night." I'm not sure exactly how it evolved into pekelach.

Mon, Oct 31 2016, 10:40 pm

amother wrote:

Why did the baby need shmira?

There's a famous story of a family that had difficulty with the Puritz of where they lived. The rasha couldn't tolerate that the Jew had ... (don't remember what) Every time a baby would be born, he would kill it in middle of the night before the Bris. Broken and devastated, the father of the baby, third child, went to his Rebbe, who told him to hire 10 people to be up all night and be on the lookout for a peddler who will come the day before the Bris and ask to eat there and sleep. Father forgot, peddler arrived and wasn't let inside. Peddler sneaked inside and hid behind the fireplace. 10 men stayed up all night learning, and wanted to tell the peddler to leave, but peddler managed to stay and pretended to sleep. At midnight, a large cat jumped in from the window. Peddler jumped up from his "sleep" and hit the cat ferociously until he was so hurt that he faced death so he left through the door.
The next morning the Puritz was not found in bed, so people went searching for him, and was found on the street all hurt, for which he needed a doctor with months of recovery. As he was healing, he told the doctor that he was the "cat" that went into the Jew's home to kill the baby, but a peddler almost killed him instead.