Last year our congregational Torah Study studied the text of Genesis 21 which we read last night. It is a particularly troubling text that I feel uneasy about reading publicly on Rosh haShanah, even though it is the traditional choice. I feel uneasy about it because most years I do not talk about this text. We read it and go on. There is a short commentary on it in your Machzor, which was my small attempt to have something said about it each year without talking about it. And, today, once again, I will not talk about this text.

This is because we have sent you all a detailed commentary on the text by email, and some by donkey mail. There are also commentary copies in the back of the room if by some chance we missed you and you wish to read it. This commentary is detailed, yet it still does not address every question we might ask of the text and the problems it raises for us. Hopefully we will add your insights in a future version of this commentary, as well as tackle the even more troubling Torah portion we will read tomorrow morning. You will have the opportunity to taste the Torah Study process in a discussion group on this commentary on Yom Kippur afternoon.

We will also try some of it now. But we will start with the Talmud. There are important lessons about how to read a Jewish text that I want to show you. Some of you already have learned these lessons, and to them I say that I hope I can show you new things from digging into this story, which is, even now, being passed out to all of you. Please, at the end of the service, either take this home for further reading, or put it on a table in the back of the room. If you see one that accidentally was left on the floor at the end of the service, please do a mitzvah and pick it up.

One other thing: what do we do with a holy text once it is no longer needed? Well, if we want to store it, we file it. But if you do not keep files of Jewish texts, then recycle it, and let its holiness infuse the next shopping bag, so that the person toting it out of the store might feel a karmic need to do a mitzvah and give of their food to the hungry.

So, let us look at the text. It is from the Babylonian Talmud. Tractate Ta'anit. Page 23a. Let me first explain these terms.

Talmud is a Hebrew word that means "Learning." The learning it is learning from is the Torah, which is a Hebrew word that means… Teaching. Yes, teaching, not Law. Torah means Teaching. As in the Teaching of Moses.

Every tractate, or treatise, of the Talmud begins on page 2, for it is assumed that page one is the Torah, the teaching from which the Talmud is learning. The tractate from which this story comes is Ta'anit, or, in the Ashkenazic transliteration of the text we are handing out, Taanis. Ta'anit is a word that means fast, as in a Yom Kippur like fasting. This is a tractate on laws concerning public fasts which are declared to arouse people to change their ways in the face of impending disaster.

The story we will read concerns a man named Honi who once stopped such a drought by drawing a circle around himself and refusing to step out of it until G0d relented and brought the rains again. For this he was called Honi haMa'agel, Honi the Circle-Maker. Because his was a story of our people facing disaster and fasting to end it, this story was placed in this tractate of the Talmud. While the rabbis were on the subject of Honi, though, they added a whole bunch of other Honi stories that have nothing to do with public fasting. This is how the Talmud is organized: here is something on topic. Now, while we're on the subject, how about a few digressions?

But I digress. What is a Babylonian Talmud? Isn't the Talmud Jewish? Yes. But the Talmud was composed in two places: in the Land of Israel, and in Babylon. The one done in the land of Israel is called the Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud. It was composed in the northern part of Israel called the Galilee. So why is it called the Jerusalem Talmud? The rabbis whose work this was named it after their longed-for capital, Jerusalem, which was forbidden to Jews after the two revolts against Rome, in 70 and 135 CE respectively.

After the second of those two revolts against Rome 75% of the Jewish population of the land of Israel were either killed or deported into slavery. This meant that most of the authoritative rabbis had fled to Babylon, where a large Jewish community remained from the time that the Babylonians had exiled us there in 586 BCE. The Babylonian Jewish community swelled, becoming the more prominent of the two. This is also how the American Jewish community eclipsed the European Jewish community after the catastrophe that befell European Jewry during World War II. For this reason, the Babylonian Talmud is the more authoritative of the two Talmuds, and is the one most often cited as the source of Jewish practice.

The Talmud itself is a commentary on a text called the Mishnah. The Mishnah was the collection of the remembered sayings and decisions of the first generations of rabbis in the first and second centuries CE. The Mishnah is written mostly in Hebrew. But the Talmud is written mostly in a very similar language called Aramaic. It is as close to Hebrew as Italian is to Spanish. It was the vernacular of all the Jews after the Exile in Babylon, where Aramaic was the official language. As a matter of fact, the so-called "Hebrew" letters you see on the pages of our prayerbook are actually the Aramaic alphabet. We stopped using the original Hebrew letters at the same time as we stopped using the Hebrew language. This text we will read is in Aramaic.

Now let's talk about the page number. 23a. What kind of reference is that? We are most used to Biblical references to a chapter and a verse, which are written with a chapter number, followed by a colon, then the numbers of the verses separated by a dash. But references to the Talmud are to the way the text was laid out on folio pages when it was first printed in Venice, in the 16th century. 23a is the recto side of the page, the first side we encounter when reading the text. 23b is the verso, the other, reverse, side of the folio page. Look at the Hebrew/Aramaic side of the handout. On the top left you see two letters, a kaf and a gimmel, which are the Hebrew letters that stand for the numbers twenty and three. This means this is 23a. The other side of the page will have no number on it, and we will know, from the context, that it is 23b.

You will see a large block of text in the middle of this page, surrounded by thinner blocks of text. The middle block is the Talmud text. The texts on the sides are commentaries of various age and authority. That is another lecture. The small amount of Talmud we will read lies between the length of the dark line I drew on the side of the page.

I mentioned above that every tractate of the Talmud begins on page two, and there I made the analogy between the words Talmud, which means learning, to Torah, which means teaching, as if the Torah were the first page of every tractate of the Talmud. Let me give you another analogy, that may be even more relevant to us: that there is no real beginning to Jewish learning. Wherever you start your learning, you will feel as if you have joined a conversation which began long before you came along. Similarly we will join this discussion which is already in progress.

Many facts and phrases will be taken for granted and it may take a little time before it all begins to make sense, especially in our American context which is nearly two thousand years and five times as many miles away from the life of our ancestors in the Land of Israel and Babylon. So have a little patience, and find a good commentary to help guide you through the issues.

This version of the Talmud, the Schottenstein edition published by Artscroll Press, is my favorite, for the clarity of its translation, as well as for the helpfulness of its commentary.

One last introductory note before we jump into the story. The boldface type is a translation of the text of the Talmud. The normal typeface is the additional information we all need to make the incredibly in-groupy terse Talmudic text make sense. Imagine reading this truncated text in Aramaic and you will get an idea of what my rabbinic school education was like.

So now, let us turn to the story of Honi haMa'agel, Honi the Circle Maker, to see what we can learn from it. The story of Rip van Winkle is the New York Dutch version of the story about Honi we will read here. You will see Honi sleep for seventy years, long enough for a carob tree to give fruit. The first part of this story is a favorite for Tu biShvat, the Jewish "Arbor Day," and for good reason. But there is more than tree hugging here. Let us look into the story. Read with me:

Rabbi (the R. in a Jewish traditional text almost always stands for Rabbi) Yohanan said: All that tzaddik, that righteous man's days he (Honi) was troubled by this verse, "A Song of Exaltation/Ascents, When haShem will return the captivity to Zion, we will be like dreamers.( Ps. 126:1) Is it possible for anyone to sleep for seventy years with one continuous dream?

One day he was going on the road and he saw a certain man planting a carob tree. (Honi) said to him, "How many years does it take for this carob tree to bear fruit?

He said to (Honi): Seventy years."

(Honi) said to him: "Is it clear to you that you will live another seventy years?"

He replied to (Honi): "This man (that is, me) found a world containing full grown carob trees. Just as my ancestors planted those trees for me, knowing that they themselves would never live to see them fully grown, so I too plant them for my children."

Let's now comment on the text:

Why is Honi worried about a misreading of the text of Psalm 126? Actually, the verse is better translated as, "When G0d ended, past tense, our captivity (in the Babylonian exile) we were as if we were dreaming." Dreaming is the way most of us felt when we saw Arafat sign a peace treaty with Rabin. We felt like it was a dream. Maybe it was a dream, given the way things have turned out. Certainly seeing the World Trade Center Towers collapse seems to us as if it were a dream—actually, a nightmare.

But why is Honi reading the text as if it were literally true? Because, we think, he is comparing all of the Babylonian exile to being in stasis, as if asleep, unrooted from our land, like an unsprouted seed. And he begins to wonder, how does a seed stay asleep for seventy years, the length of the exile (which you can see from the note at the bottom of the page, explaining a fact taken for granted.). this seventy years of stasis will be the basis for the rest of the story. For now Honi is about to find out first-hand how one could dream for 70 years.

Where does the image of planting a 70-year seed come from? Possibly from Jeremiah, who planted the deed to a parcel of land in the ground in a clay container (chapter 32). Jeremiah has already prophesied that the exile will last 70 years (25:11-12), and he knows he cannot personally redeem this deed, because the Babylonians are besieging Jerusalem and all are about to be exiled. His act is seen as a courageous act of faith, quoting G0d promising that "Houses and fields and vineyards shall be bought again in this land. (32:15)"

So Honi meets a man who similarly has faith in a future he will not live to see. And it is because of people like Jeremiah and the carob tree planter that there is a Jewish present. They planted well for the future. The sermon here is obvious, and I will not belabor it. I will say it only once:

The problem with most of American life, which is also the problem with most of American Jewish life, is our need for personal instant gratification, fast food and minimal commitments. We make decisions that affect our children's and grandchildren's futures without regard to the long-term consequences of our actions. Are our deeds planting for a Jewish future for all of our descendants, or are we eating the seed corn of our own Judaism to fulfill our own fads? Will we, like Honi, sleepwalk under a pile of stones through our seventy or so years on this planet? Or will we make a contribution and live each day?

Is the Jewish life we are living a fertile example to our peers and to our family members, in this generation and the next? Or is our Jewish life sterile like the mules that will appear in the next paragraph we will read together?

So endeth this lesson. On with the text of the dream. The above paragraph is all that is quoted on Tu biShvat. But the real story is about to come. Let's read again:

(Honi) sat down and ate bread. Drowsiness overcame him, and he fell asleep. An outcropping of rock rose around him as he slept and he became hidden from sight and slept for seventy years. When he arose from his sleep he saw what looked to be that same man picking some of (the fruit) from the carob tree he had planted!

(Honi) said to him: "Are you indeed the man who planted the tree?

He replied to (Honi): "No, I am his grandson."

(Honi) said to him: "It is evident from this that I have slept for seventy years, just as described in the Psalm! He saw that his donkey (I know the translation here is "mare", but it really should be "donkey"!) had given birth to generations of mules (and here the word "offspring" should be translated as "mules").

Honi has fallen asleep, buried under rocks as if he were dead. During this time the tree has become fruitful, while his donkey's descendants have become sterile mules. We will see that Honi, himself had children in the next paragraph we read, and we will see that his words live on. So what is the lesson here? Let us engage in a little Hebrew word-play.

A carob in Hebrew is Harubh, which is the same word as for a sword. This is, quite possibly, because a carob pod is shaped like a sword.

The same Hebrew root, Harubh, becomes the root of the word for destruction, Hurban, the word that describes what the Babylonians did to Jerusalem and the rest of the country. So in this story the word which is the basis for the Babylonian destruction becomes the symbol of transgenerational fertility and responsibility—a carob tree. The hidden meaning is that we must respond to even the most dispiriting situations with hope, even the situation we find ourselves in today with the new assault on us. "Making carob out of destruction" in Hebrew sounds the same as "making lemonade out of lemons" does in English.

On the other hand, the word for donkey, Hamor, sounds similar to the word for mule, Ramakh, and uses the same letters as in the word mercy (Raham-eem). These letters will form words that symbolize stupidity and death, for in Hebrew as in English, a donkey is an ass, and an ass is a fool. The fools who see the ramifications of their actions in only one generation generate only the sterility of mules. In the end, Honi the fool will ask for Divine mercy to take their life. This we will see in the last paragraph, so let us read now to the end of the story:

Honi then went to his house. He said to (the members of his household), "Is the son of Honi the Circle-Maker still alive?

They answered him, "His son is not alive, but his grandson is alive."

He said to them: "I am Honi the Circle-Maker!" They did not believe him since seventy years had passed since Honi had last been seen.

He left and went to the House of Study. He heard the rabbis saying, "Our teachings are as clear to us as they used to be in the days of Honi the Circle- Maker. For whenever he came to the House of Study, whatever difficulties the rabbis had with the teachings they were studying he would resolve for them.

He said to them: "I am he!" They did not believe him, and they therefore did not accord him the honor due him. He became distressed, and prayed for Divine mercy (that is, death) and died. Rava said: This is an example of the popular adage, "O chevruta, o mituta—Either companionship or death."

Honi the righteous has become Honi the fool. He wanted to know if someone could dream for seventy years, and he found out the hard way that not only can we, but that there are those of us who do it all the time. Honi joins the living Jewish sleepwalkers, and finds that he has outlived his own life. No one will believe that he is who he says he is, who he wants to be, especially in that age before recorded images made recognizing someone out of the past possible. Even today we would seriously question a woman who came to us claiming to be Amelia Earhart. But we have DNA testing today, so maybe we could verify her claims. No such luck for Honi.

"O Hevruta, o mituta—Either companionship or death." We cannot live as people, much less as Jews, in a vacuum. The movie Cast Away this past year focused on how desperate a person can become without companionship. Tom Hanks, alone on a deserted island for four years, turned a soccer ball into a companion, talking to it as we would a best friend. But the ball offered no real companionship, so Hanks risked his life on a rickety raft for a small chance to get off the island. He considered himself lucky to be rescued, until he found that life had passed him by as well, and that everyone else had gone on without him. He was dead to his old life.

Hevruta/companionship is how describe learning with a partner. This is the way we refine our ideas. Rabbinical schools are based on this Jewish principle of Hevruta, of learning with a partner. Hevruta is how we breathe life into texts: by saying them to each other out loud, and by learning from each other's insights, brought out of the universe of their life's experiences. That is what makes Torah Study so interesting—seeing through each others' eyes. Hevruta is the thing without which life is not worth living. O Hevruta o Mituta— Either partnership or death. We cannot live alone. We cannot be Jewish alone. And we ought not try to live our lives as if our lonely lives and their consequences ended in this lone generation.

Have some of you heard the Hebrew in this word relating to the other symbol of life in the story? Hevruta sounds like, and is made up of the same letters as carob, Harubh. Again, the Tree becomes the symbol of Life. Just as in our congregation's name, Etz Chayim, Tree of Life, the tree is the symbol of a life lived through many generations. El Palo Alto was a tall tree back in 1776 when it was first scouted by Gaspar de Portolá's expedition. It is the living symbol of Palo Alto still today. And as such it is the polar opposite of personal instant gratification, fast food and minimal commitments.

Hevruta/companionship/partnership is the way our lives, like the seventy year old carob tree, bear fruit beyond our own lifespans. Hevruta is the way our lives are remembered, our sayings cited, and our concrete actions become the basis of those of others. It is how we live on, by planting, together with others, tomorrow's seeds with our deeds today.

We just grew this whole talk from the seed of one little story. Now you know how it is done. The rest is commentary. Come and write it.

Amen.