Daf Ditty Taanis 23: Rain Makers and Miracle Workers

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§ The mishna taught: An incident occurred in which the people sent a message to Ḥoni
HaMe’aggel. This event is related in greater detail in the following baraita. The Sages taught:
Once, most of the month of Adar had passed but rain had still not fallen. They sent this
message to Ḥoni HaMe’aggel: Pray, and rain will fall. He prayed, but no rain fell. He drew a
circle in the dust and stood inside it, in the manner that the prophet Habakkuk did, as it is
stated:

,‫ָמצוֹר; ַוֲאַצֶפּה‬-‫ ְוֶאְתַיְצָּבה ַﬠל‬,‫ִמְשַׁמ ְרִתּי ֶאֱﬠֹמָדה‬-‫א ַﬠל‬ 1 I will stand upon my watch, and set me
.‫תּוַֹכְחִתּי‬-‫ ַﬠל‬,‫ וָּמה ָאִשׁיב‬,‫ִבּי‬-‫ ְיַדֶבּר‬-‫ִל ְראוֹת ַמה‬ upon the tower, and will look out to see
what He will speak by me, and what I shall
answer when I am reproved.
Hab 2:1

“And I will stand upon my watch and set myself upon the tower, and I will look out to see what
He will say to me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved”

This verse is taken to mean that Habakkuk fashioned a kind of prison for himself where he sat.

Ḥoni said before God: Master of the Universe, Your children have turned their faces toward
me, as I am like a member of Your household. Therefore, I take an oath by Your great name
that I will not move from here until you have mercy upon Your children and answer their
prayers for rain. Rain began to trickle down, but only in small droplets. His students said to
him: Rabbi, we have seen that you can perform great wonders, but this quantity of rain is not
enough to ensure that we will not die. It appears to us that a small amount of rain is falling only
to enable you to dissolve your oath, but it is not nearly enough to save us.

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Ḥoni said to God: I did not ask for this, but for rain to fill the cisterns, ditches, and caves.
Rain began to fall furiously, until each and every drop was as big as the mouth of a barrel,
and the Sages estimated that no drop was less than a log in size. His students said to him:
Rabbi, we have seen that you can call on God to perform miracles and we will not die, but now
it appears to us that rain is falling only to destroy the world.

Ḥoni again said before God: I did not ask for this harmful rain either, but for rain of
benevolence, blessing, and generosity. Subsequently, the rains fell in their standard manner,
until all of the people sought higher ground and ascended to the Temple Mount due to the rain.
They said to him: Rabbi, just as you prayed that the rains should fall, so too, pray that they
should stop. He said to them: This is the tradition that I received, that one does not pray over
an excess of good.

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Ḥoni continued: Nevertheless, bring me a bull. I will sacrifice it as a thanks-offering and pray
at the same time. They brought him a bull for a thanks-offering. He placed his two hands on
its head and said before God: Master of the Universe, Your nation Israel, whom You brought
out of Egypt, cannot bear either an excess of good or an excess of punishment. You grew
angry with them and withheld rain, and they are unable to bear it. You bestowed upon them
too much good, and they were also unable to bear it. May it be Your will that the rain stops
and that there be relief for the world. Immediately, the wind blew, the clouds dispersed, the
sun shone, and everyone went out to the fields and gathered for themselves truffles and
mushrooms that had sprouted in the strong rain.

Shimon ben Shetaḥ relayed to Ḥoni HaMe’aggel: If you were not Ḥoni, I would have decreed
ostracism upon you. For were these years like the years of Elijah, when the keys of rain were
entrusted in Elijah’s hands, and he swore it would not rain, wouldn’t the name of Heaven have
been desecrated by your oath not to leave the circle until it rained? Once you have pronounced
this oath, either yours or Elijah’s must be falsified.

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However, what can I do to you, as you nag God and He does your bidding, like a son who
nags his father, and his father does his bidding. And the son says to his father: Father, take me
to be bathed in hot water; wash me with cold water; give me nuts, almonds, peaches, and
pomegranates. And his father gives him. About you, the verse states:

,‫ְוָתֵגל‬ ;q‫ ְוִאֶמּ‬q‫ָאִבי‬-‫ כה ִיְשַׂמח‬25 Let thy father and thy mother be glad and let her that
.q‫יוַֹלְדֶתּ‬ bore thee rejoice.
Prov 23:25

“Your father and mother will be glad, and she who bore you will rejoice”

Summary

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 CHONI HA'ME'AGEL'S SEVENTY-YEAR SLUMBER

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:1

The Gemara relates that throughout his life, Choni ha'Me'agel was bothered by the meaning of the
verse, "... When Hash-m returned the captives of Zion, we were like dreamers" (Tehilim 126:1).
When Hash-m returned the Jews from the seventy-year exile in Bavel, it was like they awakened
from a slumber of seventy years. Choni was perplexed how a person could sleep for seventy years.

Hash-m provided an answer to Choni's question. Choni met a man planting a carob tree, and he
asked him why he was planting a tree which would bear fruit only after seventy years. The man
told him that just as his father had planted a carob tree for him, he wanted to plant a carob tree for
his children. Afterwards, Choni sat down to eat his bread and was overcome with sleep. He was
hidden behind a rock formation, where he slept for seventy years. When he awoke, he saw the
grandson of the man who planted the carob tree picking carobs from the tree. He also saw that his
donkey had given birth to herds of donkeys.

When he discussed subjects with the Chachamim in the Beis Midrash, they commented that his
answers made the subjects "as clear as they were in the days of Choni ha'Me'agel." The Gemara
relates that they did not believe him when he said that he was Choni, and they did not give him
proper respect. He prayed to Hash-m to spare him the frustration, and he was taken from the world.

The question which bothered Choni throughout his life seems nonsensical. The verse says only
that "we were like dreamers (k'Cholmim)." It is clearly a metaphor: the years of the Babylonian
exile passed like a dream. The verse does not say that the exiles actually slept for seventy years.
Why was Choni bothered with how a person could sleep for seventy years?

The CHIDUSHEI HA'GE'ONIM (in the EIN YAKOV) and the VILNA GA'ON (as recorded
by his son in SA'ARAS ELIYAHU, p. 12) explain that the seventy years of slumber which Choni
wondered about represents the average lifespan of a person. Choni saw that the people in his
generation did not concentrate their efforts on Torah study and Mitzvah fulfillment, but they
wasted their time on material pursuits. He wondered how a person could neglect his primary
purpose in the world and spend his life focused on transient, meaningless pursuits (and thus "sleep
for seventy years").
Choni wanted to find out what motivates people to waste their time in this world and to spend their
seventy-year lifespan doing nothing more than sleeping, with their eyes closed to the true purpose
of life. This was the question which bothered Choni for so long.

Hash-m revealed to him part of the answer. Hash-m showed him a person planting a carob tree.
He asked the person why he was planting a carob tree if he would not be around to enjoy its fruits,
since a carob tree bears fruit only after seventy years. Choni recognized that most people waste

1
https://dafyomi.co.il/taanis/insites/tn-dt-023.htm

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their time in pursuit of meaningless pleasures in this world because the pleasure of Olam ha'Ba is
not immediate while the pleasure of Olam ha'Zeh is immediate. People prefer to receive immediate
gratification rather than to invest their energies in obtaining pleasure that will come only after
many years.

In his conversation with the man who planted the carob tree, Choni discovered the answer to his
question about why people waste their lives in pursuit of meaningless pleasures. The man -- by
planting a carob tree -- was acting in a way incongruous with the way other people act. The man
was willing to forgo immediate gratification and instead toil for a benefit which would be reaped
only seventy years later, just as one who engages in Torah and Mitzvos defers his pleasure to Olam
ha'Ba. Most other people prefer the immediate but fleeting pleasures of this world.
When the Gemara says that Choni "sat down to eat," it means that he realized that it was the desires
of this world (represented by eating) which shut a person's mind and lure him to meaningless
pursuits. The realization of the taste of worldly pleasures caused him to "be concealed by a rock,"
which refers to the Yetzer ha'Ra which entices a person to abandon his pursuit of Olam ha'Ba in
exchange for worldly pleasures (the Gemara in Sukah (52a) relates that "Yechezkel called the
Yetzer ha'Ra 'rock'") and to "fall asleep" and neglect the pursuit of a meaningful life for seventy
years.

When Choni awoke, he saw that his donkey ("Chamor") had given birth to many herds. When man
immerses himself in the material pursuits of this world, he becomes irreversibly entrenched and
cannot extract himself from the drive for worldly pleasure, which is represented by the Chamor.
(The Chamor, donkey, symbolizes a total attachment to the material pleasures of this world. The
word "Chamor" is related to "Chomer" and "Chumriyus," materialism.)

RAIN AND REPENTANCE

When Aba Chilkiyah (the grandson of Choni ha'Me'agel) and his wife prayed for rain, his wife's
prayers were answered first. The Gemara explains in its first answer that her prayers were answered
first because of the merit of her acts of Tzedakah: she gave food to the poor, while her husband
gave only money. She was available in her home at all times to help the poor, and whenever a poor
person came to ask for help she would give him something. In return for her superior fulfillment
of the Mitzvah of Tzedakah, her prayers for rain were answered first.

The Gemara's second reason for why her prayers were answered first is because she used to pray
that the sinners in her neighborhood do Teshuvah and repent, while her husband used to pray that
they die. In return, she was rewarded that her prayers for rain were answered first.

According to the Gemara's first reason (her acts of Tzedakah were superior), the element of reward
measure-for-measure, "Midah k'Neged Midah," is evident. Since she provided sustenance to the
poor, she merited that Hash-m provided sustenance to the world through her prayers for rain.

However, what is the relationship between her prayers that the sinners repent, and being rewarded
that her prayers for rain were answered first? Why should rain come in the merit of her prayers
that the sinners repent? (YEFEH EINAYIM, cited by BEN YEHOYADA)

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(a) The repentance of sinners is a form of renewal and rejuvenation. When they do Teshuvah, they
are considered as though they are returning to life from a state of death. Similarly, rain provides
new life to the world. (See BEN YEHOYADA.)

(b) The Gemara later (25b) relates that both Rebbi Eliezer and Rebbi Akiva prayed for rain, but
only Rebbi Akiva's prayers were answered. A Bas Kol proclaimed that the reason why Rebbi
Akiva's prayers were answered was not because he was greater than Rebbi Eliezer, but because he
was "Ma'avir Al Midosav" -- he was forgiving of insult.

What does the Gemara mean when it says that Rebbi Akiva was not greater than Rebbi Eliezer? If
Rebbi Akiva was "Ma'avir Al Midosav" while Rebbi Eliezer was not, then Rebbi Akiva indeed
was greater!

RAV YISRAEL SALANTER (in OR YISRAEL #28) explains that there are two different
approaches to the service of Hash-m. Rebbi Eliezer's attribute was strict adherence to the honor of
the Torah, to uphold and protect it. This attribute was similar to the attribute of Shamai, Rebbi
Eliezer's mentor (Tosfos, Shabbos 130b), as the Gemara in Shabbos (31a) describes. Rebbi Akiva,
a student of the academy of Hillel, approached Avodas Hash-m with a different attribute -- that of
humility and forgiving of insult, the attribute of Hillel (ibid.). Both are equally valid approaches
in serving Hash-m; one cannot be called "greater" than the other. This difference in approach was
the subject of dispute like any other Machlokes Tana'im. Although in this case the Halachah was
later decided in favor of Hillel (Shabbos 30b), this does not detract from the value of the Avodas
Hash-m of Shamai and his followers.

If both approaches are equally valid, why was Rebbi Akiva's prayer answered, and Rebbi Eliezer's
was not? The answer is that when one beseeches Hash-m for Rachamim (to bring rain), if he
embodies the attribute of Rachamim himself his prayers will be answered, measure for measure.

According to Rav Yisrael Salanter's explanation, Aba Chilkiyah's wife was answered first because
her attribute was that of Rachamim, as she demonstrated by her prayers that the sinners do not die
but repent. In response to her prayers measure for measure, Hash-m exercised His trait of
Rachamim and sent rain to the people.

Praying for Rain–Modestly

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:2

The Mishna (19a) related the story of Honi HaMe’aggel and the close relationship that he had with
God that allowed him to plead before Him on behalf of the Jewish people. Our daf relates that his
descendants shared some of his abilities and tells stories about their intervention on behalf of am
yisra’el (the people of Israel), even as they tried to avoid receiving credit for their success.

2
https://steinsaltz.org/daf/taanit23/

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One example is the story of Abba Hilkiyya, who was Honi HaMe’aggel’s grandson. He was
working in the fields when he saw the delegation of rabbis coming to ask him to intercede on their
behalf and pray for rain.

The Gemara relates that he refused to return their greeting and performed a series of strange
activities while he walked home, culminating in his entering his home with his wife, feeding his
children, and encouraging his wife to join him in prayer on the roof. Only when the clouds had
already gathered, and the rain began did he turn to the delegation and ask what they wanted. When
they responded that they were sent to ask him to pray, he told them that they did not need his
prayers, as it had already begun to rain.

When asked, he explained his odd behaviors – all of which related to his sensitivity to the needs
of others (e.g. he could not respond to their original greeting because he was paid by the hour and
speaking to them would have been stealing from his employer). He also explained that his wife’s
prayers were answered before his own because her place in the house allowed her to be more
directly involved in responding to the needs of the poor. As Rashi explains, this was true because
she was more readily available and because her charity responded to an immediate need (i.e. she
fed them, rather than giving them money).

Another one of Honi HaMe’aggel’s grandchildren was Hanan HaNehba (i.e. “the one who hides”)
who, according to the Gemara, received that nickname because he hid himself to avoid receiving
honor for his actions. According to some manuscripts of the Gemara, he would hide himself in the
lavatory – which may refer to his modesty, that even in the bathroom he was careful to remain
clothed, or, according to a tradition of the Ge’onim, when people came looking for him to pray for
rain, he hid himself in the bathroom so that he would not be found.

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 A man asleep on a table by (after) Arie De Vois

Choni the circle maker

Mark Kerzner writes:3

Once the rains were very late in coming, and people asked Choni to pray for rain. He told them to
hide away their clay ovens intended for the coming Passover sacrifice, then prayed for rain, but it
did not come. Choni then drew a circle and swore that he will not leave it until his prayer is
answered. A small rain started to trickle. "This is not what I asked for," - said Choni - "but a

3
https://talmudilluminated.com/taanit/taanit23.html

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powerful rain!" Immediately it started raining with force, and each drop was like a bucket. "That
is not what I asked," - said Choni - "but a normal beneficial rain." A medium rain started to fall -
but it would not stop! People collected on the Temple Mount because of the water, and asked
Choni to pray to stop the rain. He replied, "It is not proper to ask God to stop a blessing, even if it
is too much of it." Nevertheless, he then said, "Bring me a bull for a sacrifice." He took the bull,
put his two hands on its head, and said, "Master of the world, your children cannot stand too much
bad or too much good." The wind blew, the sun showed, and the rain stopped.

All his life Choni was bothered by the phrase, "When we came back from Babylon to rebuild the
Temple, we were like dreamers." This exile lasted for seventy years, but can anyone sleep for that
long? Once Choni saw a man planting a carob trees. The man told him that he was planting for his
grandchildren, just as his grandfathers planted for him, for it takes seventy years for a carob to
grow. Choni then sat down to eat and fell asleep. When he awoke, he saw a man by the carob tree
who told Choni that he was a grandson of the man he had seen earlier. Choni deduced that he had
slept for seventy years. He went to the study hall, where he heard the students say, "Today all is
clear to us, just like in the days of Choni the circle maker." He said, "I am Choni." But they did
not believe him and did not pay him proper respect. He prayed for mercy and died.

Abba Chilkiya was a descendant of Choni the circlemaker. The Jews needed rain, and a delegation
was sent to ask Abba Chilkiya to pray.4 Ultimately, Abba Chilkiya and his wife climbed to the
roof of their house to daven. Each stood at an opposite corner of the roof, and as they davened,
clouds began to form at the side of the sky closer to his wife. Abba Chilkiya was asked why his
wife's prayers were more readily answered, as indicated by the cloud formation building nearer to
her. He explained that although both he and his wife gave tzedaka to the poor, she always gave
food which was ready to eat. He, however, only had money to give. Her prayers were therefore
most productive because her kindness to the needy was more available and beneficial.

HaRav Shlomo Morgenstern points out that the curses in Parashas Ki Savo in Devarim feature a
verse warning that one's sons and daughters will be in distress, and the parent will only be able to
watch helplessly, unable to do anything about it. Why will one's hand be powerless? In his
translation and commentary (Devarim 28:32), explains that the parent will
be lacking in good deeds , and that, as a result, his prayers will be
ineffective. This is what the verse means when it says, “your hand will be unable to reach God.”
Generally, a person can spare himself from suffering by davening to Hashem. The Jews in Egypt
cried out in pain. Hashem obviously knew they were in pain, but He didn't rescue them until He
heard their cries and prayers. Clearly, a parent who sees his children in distress will daven to
Hashem for their rescue.

4
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Taanis%20023.pdf

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If so, why is it that this man described in Parashas Ki Savo will not be answered at a time of his
children's distress? Despite davening to Hashem, a person might not be answered due to a lack of
merit. This verse is speaking about a person who has inadequately performed acts of kindness.
Prayer itself cannot achieve its goal if the person is deficient in his actions. The Targum is teaching
us a new insight into the secret of prayer. Prayer alone, without merits, is ineffective. Merit alone,
without prayer, is also inadequate. Mitzvos and good deeds are the foundation upon which
effective prayer can be built, which enables us to approach ‫ ה”הקב‬.

Prayers are effective when pronounced by a person who performs good deeds. And, in fact, the
quality of the good deeds itself also determines the degree to which a prayer can penetrate the
Heavens, as evidenced in the case of Abba Chilkiya. Repentance, prayer, and good deeds can push
away an evil decree. When our prayers are surrounded by repentance and good deeds, we will see
the results.

Once the Mabit, zt”l, was asked a difficult question: “Rebbi, I don’t understand the Gemara in
Taanis 23. The Gemara tells us there that we desperately needed rain and Choni HaMe’ageil came
and drew a circle around himself and swore that he wouldn’t step foot out of it until rain fell.

Why did Choni HaMe’ageil make a circle in particular? And why is this fact considered significant
enough to be recorded for posterity in the Gemara? Couldn’t it have simply stated that he refused
to leave his place until rain fell?

The Mabit explained: “There is a very deep message hidden within the circle of Choni HaMe’ageil.
The sages taught that the world is round. For this reason, a circle alludes to the natural world or
the natural order of things. Choni made a circle around himself to show that if Hashem would not
help His children by sending rain, this would imply that we are subject to the natural order of
things, to the cycle of nature.

This is a tremendous desecration of Hashem’s Name, because we are His chosen people who have
been uplifted to higher things. This is why Choni said that he would only leave the circle when the
rain came. It was his way of showing that we are actually above the circular cycle of nature when
there are tzaddikim among us. When such lofty people are in our midst, all natural cosmological
and astronomical influences are suspended for the Jewish people.

This is the meaning of Hashem taking Avraham Avinu out of the stratosphere of the world to gaze
at the stars. This was meant to show him that Hashem had raised him far above the influence of
the stars and the order of nature. And it was this that would allow him to have children, because
by nature, Avraham was physically unable to bear children.

The Mabit concluded: “The verse says that Hashem took Avram outside, above the natural order
of things, and said, ‘That is how your descendants will be.’ (Bereshis 15:5) When will your

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descendants merit to transcend the circular cycle of natural influence? When they are truly ‘your
descendants’— when they are righteous like you!”

Rachel Scheinerman writes:5

Our daf contains the famous story of Honi the Circle Drawer, one of the mysterious wonder
workers that populate rabbinic lore. Though he has a close relationship to God — so close that he
can rely on God to answer him — Honi is not a rabbi. In fact, his behavior is anathema to the
rabbis.

In the mishnah that we read a few pages back, we learned that the community calls a fast on
account of any communal tragedy except for an overabundance of rain. This comment occasions
a story.

Jerusalem is experiencing a severe drought. Instead of blowing a shofar and declaring a fast , as
the rabbis prescribe, the residents call in Honi the Circle Drawer, a man known for speaking
directly to God and working miracles. Honi agrees to help, but when he finds that ordinary prayer
does not succeed, he sets about performing his signature brand of supplication — he draws a circle
on the ground and declares that he will not move until God brings the rain.

The ploy works. But as if to tease Honi, God sends the lightest rain possible. Standing firm in the
circle, Honi unabashedly addresses God again and demands rain that is strong enough to fill the
cisterns, ditches and caves. Abruptly, the rain comes down in a torrent — the kind that causes flash
floods and devastation. Again, Honi is unperturbed, and once again addresses God, asking for a
moderate rain of “benevolence, blessing and generosity.” Immediately, God grants it. The drought
is over and, for a brief moment, it looks like Honi has succeeded.

Except the moderate rain does not stop. It continues to fall until Jerusalem is underwater and the
residents must take shelter on the Temple Mount , the high point of the city. The people beg Honi
to pray for the rain to cease, but he heartlessly refuses, saying he will not pray for the end of rain
until the Claimants’ Stone — an ancient rock used as a lost and found on the Temple Mount —
has been washed away. (Recall: We began with a rule that the community does not pray for rain
to cease, but Honi does not cite that as his reason for refusing to help. And Honi has already proven
that he is not interested in rabbinic methods of supplication — otherwise he would have followed
the proper procedure for a drought and initiated a fast.)

At this point, Honi’s true colors are impossible to ignore. He loves the power, the prestige, the
showmanship, the drama. But he does not love the people or truly care for their wellbeing. It is at
this moment that Shimon ben Shetach, one of the rabbinic leaders of the community, offers a bitter
imprecation:

Were you not Honi, I would have decreed that you be ostracized, but what can I do to you? You
nag God and he does your bidding, like a son who nags his father and his father does his
bidding.

5
Myjewishlearning.com

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Honi has bucked the rabbinic method of dealing with drought, and though his methods initially
work, bringing the rain that is so desperately needed, the ultimate results are disastrous. The rabbis
are appalled, but because they recognize Honi’s extraordinary relationship with God, they stop
short of excommunicating him.

This is where the mishnah’s story, related back on Taanit 19, ends. In the Gemara we read today,
the rabbis seem eager to redeem Honi’s character. They understand his circle drawing not as some
foreign magical act, but as an imitation of the biblical prophet Habakkuk . Instead of painting him
as a lone actor, they surround him with a bevy of disciples who urge him on at every turn. And
when the rain begins to overwhelm the city, Honi does not express haughty disinterest in the plight
of the people, but regret that the tradition does not allow him to pray for the rain to end. And then,
seeing the devastation around him, he thinks the better of blindly following that law and says
something to his students that is wholly different from anything we have in the mishnah:

Nevertheless, bring me a bull. I will sacrifice it as a thanks-offering and pray at the same time.

They brought him a bull for a thanks-offering. He placed his two hands on its head and said
before God: Master of the Universe, your nation Israel, whom you brought out of Egypt, cannot
bear either an excess of good or an excess of punishment. You grew angry with them and
withheld rain, and they are unable to bear it. You bestowed upon them too much good, and they
were also unable to bear it. May it be your will that the rain stop and that there be relief for the
world.

Immediately, the wind blew, the clouds dispersed, the sun shone, and everyone went out to the
fields and gathered for themselves truffles and mushrooms that had sprouted in the strong rain.

In this version, Honi is a hero. He saves the city from drought, and then from flood. No longer
portrayed as a lone wolf wonder worker who shows no regard for rabbinic law, he is domesticated
as a student of the rabbis and the prophets. He is surrounded by disciples and knows how to follow
the law, and even when to break it. And his story is no longer a tragedy but a comedy, ending with
the people gathering truffles after the rain. In rewriting Honi this way, the rabbis transform him
from someone with a dangerous power into one of their own. And in so doing, they claim his
power for themselves.

Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:6

Unfortunately, when people cite Talmudic stories, they often omit the foundation of the story
which, in many cases, is a biblical verse. This then leads them to explore the meaning of the story
independent of the verse, and gives them greater license to overlay the story with their own
meaning - as opposed to considering how the story is a form of commentary on that given verse.

A great case in point is the story of Choni found in our daf (Ta’anit 23a) which is often told as
follows: ‘Choni Hame’agel once [dreamt that he] met an old man planting a carob tree. “How long

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will it take to grow?” he asked. “Seventy years,” the man answered. “Do you think that you will
live another 70 years?” Choni inquired. “Just as my ancestors planted for me,” replied the man,
“so too I plant for my children.”’ The Gemara then goes on to say that [the continuation of Choni’s
dream is that] he became drowsy, slept for 70 years, and woke up to find a similar looking man
picking fruit from the tree. Upon asking who he was, he explained that he was the grandson of the
man who had planted the tree.

The problem is that this is not how the story begins. It begins, as Rav Yochanan explains, by noting
that Choni was constantly trying to make sense of a particular biblical verse throughout his life -
namely: ‫‘ – ִשׁיר ַהַמֲּﬠלוֹת ְבּשׁוּב ה' ֶאת ִשׁיַבת ִציּוֹן ָה ִיינוּ ְכֹּחְלִמים‬A song of ascents: When the Lord brought
back the exiles of Zion we were like dreamers’ (Tehillim 126:1).

To remind ourselves, Choni died around 63 BCE, i.e. prior to the destruction of the second Temple,
but during a time of great strife and growing persecution in the country during which times the
people also suffered from a severe lack of rain. For Choni who, as I previously explained in my
post on Ta’anit 19a was compassionate, caring and loving and who was regarded as someone who
could beseech God to overcome the challenges that his generation faced, these were unsettling and
depressing times. True, he was living in Israel. But as a dreamer himself, he hoped for better times
and focused his attention on the meaning of this verse and on a time when the Jewish people would
live with greater security in Zion as dreamers.

And so he dreamt a dream of a man who laboured to dig, sow and grow a carob tree whose fruit
he was not going to enjoy but was going to be there for future generations. And, as Rabbi Yaakov
Lorberbaum (1760-1832) in his ‘Emet L’Yaakov’ explains, this provided Choni with a measure of
comfort in knowing that while the Jewish people were suffering in his days, and while he foresaw
that they would continue to suffer from persecution and exile in the future, there would be a time
when, ‘the Lord will bring back the exiles of Zion when we will be like dreamers.’

Around a century after Choni’s death, the second Temple was destroyed. Soon after, the Jews were
exiled, and in the ensuing 2,000 years the Jewish people experienced repeated persecutions. Yet
while we are far from living in a perfect world, and while the Jewish people continue to experience
challenges in many parts of the world, I am currently sitting in my house in Israel writing this
thought on Daf Yomi and, cognizant of the journey of my ancestors which took them to many
countries, realising the fulfilment of the words, ‘A song of ascents: When the Lord brought back
the exiles of Zion we were like dreamers’.

There are many important lessons we can overlay onto this story about Choni. But when we
understand that it is a commentary on a verse, we come to realise that its main message is primarily
about the restoring a people to its land and about the period in Jewish history when –
notwithstanding the difficulties we have experienced – we return to Zion and feel like dreamers.

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 Differences between a Jewish and non-Jewish tale

Israel Drazin writes:7

There are many instances where both Jews and non-Jews tell stories with some variations on
the same plot. In many of these instances, the Jewish version attempts to use its version to teach
Jews proper behavior. The following is an example.

Rip Van Winkle

Washington Irving (1783-1859) published “Rip Van Winkle” in 1820 and the tale became the first
internationally famous American short story. It made Irving internationally famous. Rip had an

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aversion to all kinds of profitable work. He found it impossible to keep his farm in order. He was
a rather simple, lazy, good-natured, kind, lovable man to everyone but his wife who was
exasperated by Rip’s failure to do his chores. She hen-pecked poor Rip daily. But his wife’s
behavior gained him universal popularity, for the constant complaints and threats of a termagant
wife is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.
Rip’s only escape from the labors of the farm and the clamor of his wife was to stroll away into
the woods and sit at the foot of a tree.

One day as he was sitting under his tree, a strange man (later identified as a ghost of a long-dead
inhabitant of the area) approached him and enticed him to drink a delicious intoxicating liquor.
Rip drank liberally and soon fell asleep.

When he awoke, he saw that everything had changed. A new stream was in the area. His beard had
grown a foot longer. When he arrived at his town, he discovered that he had been asleep for twenty
years. Many of his friends had died. His wife was also dead. (Rip was unsure whether he should
be happy or sad about being released from petticoat government.) His son was now grown but was
as lazy and unproductive as he had been. But his daughter was also grown, had married, and
brought Rip to live at her house, and Rip found a place to sit daily on the bench at the door of the
local inn.

There are many versions of such tales in various cultures. The following is a Jewish version.

Honi Hamaagel
Honi Hamaagel (Honi the circle maker) was an especially pious Jewish man who lived during the
first century BCE. The Talmud states that he was so pious that he had a special relationship with
God and was able to be a miracle worker.[1] He would be able to pray for rain when the populace

17
needed the precipitation. He would draw a circle, step inside it, and inform God that he would not
step out of the circle until it rained. Due to his piety, he was always successful; God did not want
to see this pious man stranded in a circle.
According to Talmud,[2] while traveling Honi saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked him,
“How long would it take (for this tree) to bear fruit?” The man answered, “Seventy years.” He then
asked, “Are you sure that you will live another seventy years?” The man answered, “No. But I’m
not planting this (tree) for myself, but for the next generations and the ones that follow.” Honi
shrugged his shoulders and left. Later, when he sat down to rest, he slept for seventy years. When
he awoke and retraced his prior walk, he saw a man plucking carobs from a tree. He asked, “Did
you plant this tree?” The man answered, “No. My grandfather planted it. My father told me that
his father planted this tree for me.”

Similarities
1. Both stories focus on men well-liked by their communities.

2. Both sleep for an unusual length of time and awaken to see changes in their surroundings.

Differences
1. Rip was lazy, did little to help his wife and nothing to aid his community. Honi devoted
himself to helping the general population.

2. Honi was pious and loved by God because of his piety. Rip only thought of leisure.

3. God is not mentioned in Rip’s story.

4. Rip slept for twenty years, one generation, while Honi slept for seventy years, using the
number seven that appears frequently in Jewish tales and which makes it possible for
readers to see the impact of the action taken in the story two generations after the first act.

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 5. Rip’s wife is disparaged in his tale. No women appear in Honi adventure.

6. Rip does not change. He was lazy before he slept and lazy when he awoke. He made no
contribution to his fellow citizens before and after the sleep. Honi changed. He did not
seem to understand why the man planted a tree for a future generation before he slept; he
left the man shrugging his shoulders. Later, the story tells the impact upon the man’s family
and presumably both the reader and Honi learnt a lesson from what they saw/read.

7. Rip’s story is fun to read but has no lesson for the reader. Honi’s tale teaches a profound
lesson.

[1] Babylonian Talmud Taanit 19a and 23a.

[2] Taanit 23a.

Rip Van Winkle, Tu B’Shvat and the Secret of Jewish Perseverance

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Jonathan Feldman writes:8
On Tu B’Shvat we appreciate the experience of planting trees or eating the fruit of trees that
will bear fruit leading to a better future.

Four months ago, a friend gave my wife a small sapling kumquat tree as a birthday present. We
replanted it into a bigger pot, and every few days after watering it I would check to see if it grew.

I didn’t see progress, so I figured I’d wait another few days. (My wife does not just wait; she talks
to the plants and gets more results than I do!) Four months later, we are still waiting.

The first lesson to be drawn from this experience is that trees do not grow a lot in the
winter. However, the bigger lesson is that trees teach us about patience and investing in the future.
For a people that has lasted 3300 years, patience and long-term vision are essential aspects of
Jewish consciousness. The holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the New Year for trees, is upon us, and one of
the central themes to be learned from this holiday is the principle of patience. In order to fully
understand this concept, I need you to be patient and allow me to share a fascinating story from
the Talmud about resolution and investing in the future.

The Key to Jewish Continuity

One of the most unique figures in the Talmud is Choni Hamagel, Choni the Circle Maker
(Babylonian Talmud Taanit 23a). His name might sound like that of a native American Chief, but
really, he was one of the sages of the Talmud. So how did he get his name? In times of drought,
he would draw a circle on the ground and declare to the Almighty that he would not leave the circle
until the rain came. And sure enough, the rain would come.

One day Choni was walking along and saw a man planting a carob tree. Choni asked the man why
he was planting if there was a good chance that he would not see the tree bear fruit, which only
comes after 70 years. The man’s answer is the key to the secret of Jewish continuity: Just as he
found a world full of carob trees in his life because his ancestors planted for him, so too he decided
to plant for his descendants.

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It seems that hearing this message was not enough, Choni needed to experience it. Choni ate a
meal and fell asleep and slept for 70 years! When he awoke, he saw a man gathering carobs from
the tree and asked if he had planted the tree. The man answered no, I am the son of the man who
planted. It was then that Choni realized he had slept for 70 years.

He returned home only to find out that his son had passed away and only his grandson was still
alive. In the study hall, he heard scholars lamenting that they no longer had Choni to answer their
questions. When he told them that he was indeed Choni, they did not believe him. Choni was so
upset he prayed for mercy and died. The Talmud then concludes this tale with the quote “either
friendship or death,” meaning that without his peers, Choni felt his life was not worth living.

What is this puzzling and tragic Rip Van Winkle-like story meant to teach us? The lessons from
this story share themes with holiday of Tu B’Shvat. Choni’s story teaches that we plant trees for
the long term, and that with a tree, like in life, the fruits often only come after many years. The
fruit of our story, the carob, is an example of a fruit which takes a lifetime to bear fruit, and we
have the custom to eat it on Tu B’Shvat.

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Children take decades to raise, careers are built over a lifetime, and Jewish life is built across
lifetimes, centuries and even millennia. Jewish continuity is an enterprise for which others have
laid the foundation, and our role is to continue to build that foundation for those who will come
after us. The idea of acting for the future generations is also very relevant to the preservation of
our planet, which has become a dire issue. We must think about how the way in which we use the
planet will affect future generations. This is why Tu B’Shvat has become the ‘Jewish Earth Day.’

The timing of Tu B’Shvat serves as a message similar to the lesson learned by Choni. Tu B’Shvat
marks the beginning of the New Year for trees, so one might think the holiday would fall out just
before the new crop of fruit. But instead, it falls out in the tail end of winter in Israel. The cold,
rain and darkness of winter are not over in mid-February, not even in Israel. Yet the Talmud tells
us, and science corroborates, that the sap begins to rise and nurture the tree six weeks before the
beginning of spring. We learn that even though we might not outwardly see how our efforts are
impacting the world, the seeds planted will eventually blossom and a brighter future bearing fruit
will emerge.

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Our family made Aliyah immediately after the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, and when
we look out our window and see the Judean forests, we know they are there because the previous
generations of Zionists had the vision to understand the significance of planting for the future. For
us, moving to Israel was so important because we wanted to plant roots for our family in our
homeland. We hope that we will be able to contribute to the physical and spiritual building of the
land. which will lay the foundation for the next stage of our personal, family, and national destiny.

Israel education: Are you a Honi Ha’Meagel or a Shimon ben

Shetach?
Ilan Bloch writes:9

Perhaps Honi and Shimon ben Shetach are really on a spectrum and our job as Israel educators
is to try and find our point on the axis between their two hashkafot (philosophical worldviews) —
one which works for us as educators and for the learners themselves, which is suitable in terms of
the content knowledge we are trying to convey, and which accords with the policies of the
institution in which we are teaching or guiding.

Our Sages teach (Taanit 23a) that halfway through Adar rain had not yet fallen. The people send
a message to Honi Ha’Meagel (Honi the Roof Thatcher), asking that he pray for rain, which he
does, but to no avail. He then draws a circle and stands within it, beseeching God to open the skies,

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even stating that he would not leave his circle until God did so. God responds with only a drizzle.
With chutzpah (audacity) he exclaims to God that he wanted more, and God responds by opening
the floodgates. With even more chutzpah, he tells God that this deluge is too much, and a regular
amount of rain starts to fall. Overall though, the land is flooded (people even need to ascend the
Temple Mount to gain shelter) and Honi lays his hands on a bullock for a thanksgiving offering,
asking that the rains now stop. The clouds dissipate, the sun shines and the people go out into the
fields to gather mushrooms and truffles. Disaster is averted. Honi manages to serve as an
intermediary between the people and God, bringing deliverance to them in a miraculous manner.
Shimon ben Shetach tells him that if not for the fact he was Honi Ha’Meagel he would surely be
excommunicated. Who acts so petulantly toward God, making demands again and again?! It is as
though Honi is a toddler acting as one would expect when trying to convince his parent to grant
him something special!

Honi makes things easy for the people, he gives them what they want, and he successfully serves
as an intermediary, bringing the people and God closer to one another. Shimon ben Shetach wants
the people to have to work harder to strengthen their relationship with God and to try to achieve a
greater level of spiritual loftiness. He does not want them to rely on miracles or miracle-makers;
he wants the onus to change the situation to be on them.

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Honi seems to be the hero of the story, whereas Shimon ben Shetach perhaps comes across as a
stodgy man, making unnecessary demands of the people, pushing them unreasonably when easier
alternatives exist. Honi may well bring people closer to God, but the relationship might be one that
is juvenile and shallow. Shimon ben Shetach may well push for a deeper, more complex
connection, but people might give up on the endeavor because of the effort involved or may find
such an attachment once achieved to be uninspiring, and even artificial.

How might we understand this passage in regard to Israel education? An articulate and inspiring
tour guide or teacher can spoon-feed his charges, serving as entertainer-in-chief, while offering
Zionist sound bites or easy-to-digest messages. He may even receive top grades in terms of student
feedback. His students may view him as their intermediary to connect with Israel; he might even
be considered to be a miracle worker in the field of education and tourism.

A tour guide or teacher might also have higher expectations of her students. She may embrace the
Socratic method continuously, even when students are exhausted; every new topic taught might
need to be acquired by the students through hard work, rather than be simply transmitted by the
guide/teacher. She might not prepare a source sheet or course reader but rather force students to
look up original works to find a relevant quote or text. Every lesson or tour experience might call
for indefatigable efforts on the part of students and force them to ponder controversial and
complicated issues and clarify where they stand in relation to them. Her students may even hate
some lessons or tours. By the end of the Israel program or school semester or year, the teacher
might well not be seen as the central actor in the educational enterprise; student evaluations of her
might not be as high as those of her colleague who embraces the approach of Honi. The students
may have learned a lot and achieved a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the content
matter, but they may well be missing some element of splendor, wonder and fun.

Perhaps Honi and Shimon ben Shetach are really on a spectrum and our job as Israel educators is
to try and find our point on the axis between their two hashkafot (philosophical worldviews) —
one which works for us as educators and for the learners themselves, which is suitable in terms of

25
 the content knowledge we are trying to convey, and which accords with the policies of the
institution in which we are teaching or guiding.

Where do you stand? Are you more of a Honi or a Shimon ben Shetach? Why?10

The Hills of the Gallil

Lessons from Choni HaMa'agel

Vardah Littmann writes:11

10
Inspired by a class with Nechama Goldman Barash.
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High in the Gallilian hilltops, where the breeze sings through the tall grass and sways the trees, there is found the grave-
site of the famed sage from the Talmud, Choni HaMa'agel, located above the village of Hatzor HaGlilit.

The Talmud speaks about Choni HaMa'agel who was the most pious person of his generation. But how do we know if a
person is really pious? The Talmud gives the criterion that allows others to tell if the person is really a pious person This
condition is, the ability to influence the bringing down of rain. The key to rainfall is in the Hand of G-d . It orders for
one's prayer for rain to be effective one must find favor in the eyes of G-d by making his 'will' the 'Will of G-d , so that
G-d will make His 'Will' the 'will' of the one praying and answer his prayer for rain. The rabbis of the generation knew
that Choni was always able to cause the rain to fall with his supplications. During a year of drought they sent him a
message to request rain. Choni took his staff and drew a circle around himself, in the sand. He then swore that he would
not leave the circle until rain fell. (The sages say he is called HaMa'agel because he drew this circle - ha-magel means
the circle maker). In heaven there was a hash decree of drought against the Jewish nation and G-d did not want to give
them rain. Yet, because of the honor of the pious one, so that Chonie should not be bound by his oath and should be able
leave the circle, G-d made a few tiny drops fall. Choni said "I did not ask for such rains."

So G-d decided that He would exchange the decree of drought to one of a flood. A flood can cause great devastation. In
those times the houses were not well built, and a too heavy rainfall could cause them to cave in and collapse. On the Day
of Atonement, the High Priest would request that the rains should not be too heavy in the coming year and thereby cause
the houses of the people to be their graves.

As Choni finished speaking, great big heavy drops started falling, Choni then said "I did not ask for this type of rain,
Your people, Israel, cannot deal with bad decrees and they cannot deal with too much good. We need rain in the correct
measure." G-d accorded, and gentle beneficial rain began descending- rain of blessing and all the empty wells filled up
and the soil was saturated.

The Talmud says that the sages censured Choni. Rav Gamliel sent him a message. "If you were not Choni, I would put
you into excommunication, but what can I do if you act before G-d as a son before a father."

We see from the above story that Choni was the pious one of the generation. He was also one of the greatest torah
scholars of his generation, but he had difficulty with one verse. The first verse in of Psalm 126 states -"A song of ascents,
when the captivity of Zion returns we will be like dreamers".

The meaning of this is that at the time of the return to Zion, it will seem the exile was a long dream. The Babylonian
exile lasted seventy years. Choni felt it was farfetched to be able sleep for so long.

Choni knew that an allegory was intended as the verse says, "like dreamers". But Choni also knew the premises that
when an allegory is given, the simple meaning of the allegory must also be applicable. If a man cannot in actually sleep
seventy years, then the verse would not use this allegory saying, 'as if we dreamt seventy years'. Thus Choni had difficult
with the plain understanding of the verse. It was therefor decided in Heaven to show him that such a phenomena is
indeed possible.

The Talmud continues the narrative. One day Choni was riding along on his donkey. A great exhaustion overtook him.
He got off his donkey to rest. In the nearby field he saw an old man planting a carob tree. Choni asked the man when

27
this newly planted tree would bear fruit. He was told that this type of carob bears fruit only seventy year after it is first
planted. Choni wondered "Do you intend to eat from this tree?”

"Just as my ancestors saw to it that when I came into the world I found fruit trees that I could eat from, so to I am making
sure my descendents will have fruit trees available when they come into the world." Answered the old man. Each
generation makes sure the following generations' needs are met.

Fatigue overwhelmed Choni and he lay down next to the sapling and fell into a deep sleep. From heaven it was made
sure no one would notice him. No one would disturb him. Seventy years later he woke up. How did Choni know seventy
years had passed? He saw that the tree that had been planted on the day he fell asleep, was now bearing fruit. He
understood that Heaven was showing him that it is possible to sleep for seventy years.

Choni then came into to the House of Learning but he did not recognize anyone there. He inquired about Choni's sons,
his own sons. He was told they had passed away. Who was around? Gandsons? Great grandsons?

People were learning Torah and Choni joined in. His explained the chapter being learned and enlightened their minds.
He put down the correct premisses. He easily paved a way though the most difficult passages. The learners said to each
other, "Such explanations only Choni used to give"

“Yes, it's me- Choni."

They ridiculed him.

Chonie went outside and pleaded, "Either friendship or death." In essence he was saying "If I am not appreciated for
who I am, I rather die." G-d took his soul.

This is an awesome lesson.

Choni certainly knew the teaching;”One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is worth the entire next world".
So why should it bother him he is being mocked. He should learn. For each hour he will acquire more of the next world.
He can learn and pray. He can teach Torah to others. All agree his comprehension of Torah is very profound. He can
keep the Shabbat. Why should he care if others are belittling him?

We see from here that even for the greatest most pious person in the entire Jewish nation, it is worthwhile to give up on
one's next world, so that people should not laugh at him.

So let's conclude from here how careful we should be with the way we treat others. To try being extra careful with their
honor and esteem. We should be careful with what we say to others, and how we phrase, what we say it to them. We
should treat everyone, both adults and children, with the maximum of deference and respect.12

12
Based on a lecture by Rabbi Sholom Meir HaCohen Wallach

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 Letting go of the old Israel: A talmudic insight about 70 years

The famous story of Honi the Circle-Maker has a profound hidden message for what it means
to be 70 years old

Francis Nataf writes:13

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The Jewish tradition has much to say about the timespan of 70 years. Its most important association
is with the Babylonian exile — it being the number of years that this exile is said to have lasted.
The Talmud, however, weaves this seemingly nondescript fact into a much larger tapestry with the
story of Honi HaMa’agel (Taanit 23a). The deceptive charm of the story of the man that slept for
70 years belies its profound insights about the place of man in history.

While the Talmud directly connects the 70 years that he slept with the years of the exile, the story
is more subtly informed by the notion (Tehillim 90:10) that 70 years is the length of an average
lifespan. Putting the two together, Honi was deeply disturbed that an entire generation could be
born and die in exile; that it could not see the fruits of its political or spiritual labors to end the
exile and rebuild the Jewish nation. However, to help him see that productive people’s lives are
never in vain, God had Honi witness the planting of a carob tree, fall asleep and not wake up until
70 years later, when the tree was finally producing fruit.

But the story does not end there. When Honi returns to his home, he finds neither his peers, nor
those of his children. Rather, he enters the world of his grandchildren. And while the new
generation has heard of the great talmudic sage, they do not understand him; nor does he
understand them. And so he finds that there is nothing left for him to do but die. He accordingly
prays that God take his soul and is immediately answered.

The lesson of the first part of the story is well known — that our actions have value, even if we
may not live to see it. But the second part of the story may tell us something even more important.
And that is that the ultimate value of our actions is out of our own purview. The meaning they
would have for us cannot possibly be the same as what they will have for our grandchildren, who
will live in a different reality. And I suggest that we look to the 70th anniversary of the State of
Israel with the above teaching in mind.

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The founding fathers sought to create a haven for all those Jews fleeing the virulent anti-Semitic
persecutions they had so long endured in exile. More than anything else, the state was to give the
Jews the ability to protect themselves. But having lived through the Holocaust made the precarious
nature of Jewish survival continue to be a central part of the identity of Israel’s founders. One
could never be sure of the next day and, so, risk was to be avoided at all costs.

While anti-Semitism has not disappeared, its nature and scope are far different from what it was
in the 1930s and ’40s. The days when entire Jewish communities could be plundered and destroyed
while governments turned a blind eye or worse are largely behind us. I cannot say that such
occurrences will never come back, but those that believe that every Marine Le Pen or Jeremy
Corbyn are harbingers of a return to those darker days misunderstands the profound change the
world has undergone.

Nor is the security of Israel anywhere as precarious as it once was. Its first three decades were ones
in which it was not clear that Israel would survive the threat represented by all of its neighbors.
Today, the two longest borders are with nations that are not only at peace with us, but often
involved in helping to secure those borders for us. And, as recent events show, our remaining
enemies have much more reason to be scared of Israel’s might than visa-versa.

All of this is to say that what the founding fathers gave to their grandchildren and great-
grandchildren is vastly different from what they knew — the tree they planted proved much
sturdier than they could ever have imagined. Without becoming oblivious to the dangers that
continue to exist or forgetting the Holocaust, young Jews are — correctly — less prone to think
that their national existence is threatened. And that mindset will eventually bring about a different
— hopefully better — Israel. It will be an Israel that fully understands that with power and wealth
comes responsibility; one that does not panic every time it is criticized; and one that can finally
plan for the next 70 years instead of worrying about the next 70 days. But most importantly, it will

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be a country unafraid to be different and allow itself to dig into its own deep and rich heritage and
define its values independently of other cultures.

Seventy years is a time to appreciate those who planted the tree so that we can now enjoy it. But
it is also a time to let those who are living with the reality of that tree — as it actually is now —
decide how best to make use of it.

Hassidim and Academics Unite: The Significance of Aggadic

Placement
Rabbi Yitzchak Blau writes:14

What guided our sages’ decisions when they placed aggadic (non-legalistic) passages in the
Talmud? Perhaps they came armed with a treasure trove of quality material, such as the account
of R. Shimon bar Yohai in the cave and the final moments of R. Hanina ben Teradyon’s life, and
they simply looked for associations enabling the insertion of this material into the Talmud. If so,
analyzing the placement will not contribute to meaning. Alternatively, the sages built upon
thematic connections in arranging the aggadot. Talmudic stories can connect to themes of the
tractate, the chapter, or a preceding sugya (talmudic passage), be it halakhic or aggadic. If so, study
of placement enhances understanding.

As far as I know, the major traditional commentaries on aggadic material, Maharsha (R. Shemuel
Eidels, 1555–1631) and Maharal (R. Yehudah Loeb of Prague, 1520–1609), did not raise questions
of placement. However, in the nineteenth century, R. Zadok Hakohen from Lublin made a
programmatic statement that all aggadot relate conceptually to their talmudic location. Stories
about the Temple’s destruction are found on pages 55b–58a of Gittin, a tractate about marriage
and divorce, since the destruction represents a breach in the marital relationship between God and
the Jewish people.[1] Aggadot about the manna can be read on pages 74b–76a of Yoma, a tractate

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about the laws of Yom Kippur, because eating this heavenly food reflects a less corporeal
consumption that reminds us of the angelic transcendence of the physical on Yom Kippur.[2]

R. Zadok also notes how placement at the beginning of tractate can set the tone for the entire
tractate. Pesahim (mainly concerned with the laws of Pesah) begins with a long discussion about
what the word “ohr” means in the opening Mishnah. It then proceeds to a discussion of different
values involved in speaking well, including refined speech, clear discourse, and brevity. For R.
Zadok, this fits the topic of the exodus since he connects refined speech with yihus, lineage or
pedigree, and sees the exodus as emphasizing Jewish uniqueness.[3] I would like to suggest an
alternative connection. Dialogue plays a bigger role on Pesah than on any other holiday. The Torah
commands us to relate the exodus story over to our children, and the Seder attempts to facilitate
this momentous conversation. Therefore, the tractate begins with a study of proper discourse.

R. Zadok assumes purposeful placement regarding every aggada. Such an assumption expresses
his belief in omnisignificance, an apt term coined by Dr. James Kugel describing the eschewal of
technical explanations in the search for a maximum of religious meaning.[4] R. Zadok goes so far
as to suggest a deeper explanation for why the mitzvah to write a Sefer Torah appears specifically
in siman 270 of the Shulhan Arukh. This commandment corrects the sin of Judah’s son Er (see
Genesis 38), whose gematriya (the numerical value of the Hebrew letters) is 270.[5] Many of us
will find this degree of omnisignificance too extreme, but we can still accept a more moderate
version of R. Zadok. Perhaps some placement is meaningful while others are more arbitrary.

Let us move from the Batei Midrash of nineteenth-century Poland to the libraries of contemporary
academia. Yonah Fraenkel deserves a lot of credit for initiating literary academic study of talmudic
stories. He showed that these tales are not merely historical accounts but finely crafted literary
creations. Fraenkel also insisted in the principle of “closure,” which reads each story as an
independent unit. His approach resembles the literary theory called New Criticism, which
champions focusing on the poem itself, with an indifference to the biography of the author or
historical context. Along similar lines, Fraenkel contends that we should analyze an individual
story about a given sage without bringing in information from other stories. A sage can be poor in
one tale and quite wealthy in another.[6]

Fraenkel notes a contrast between biblical and talmudic writing, in that only the former operates
within a historical framework. Megillat Rut begins with a historical context, the time of the judges,
and ends with a clear historical direction, heading toward the Davidic dynasty. Talmudic stories
do not function that way. Even when a string of stories on roughly the same theme appears
together, such as the aforementioned aggadot about the Temple’s destruction, they are not
seriously connected to each other in a chronological or thematic fashion.
More recent scholars disagree with Fraenkel arguing that context does matter. Ofra Meir utilizes
different versions of stories in rabbinic literature to show how they are shaped by context. The
story of R. Shimon bar Yohai hiding in the cave appears in the Jerusalem Talmud without the
Babylonian Talmud’s theme of the tension between Torah study and mundane work. In the
Babylonian Talmud’s immediately preceding Gemara (Shabbat 33b), R. Shimon bar Yohai states
that the illness called askara is a punishment for bittul Torah (wasting time on activities unrelated
to Torah). Thus, R. Shimon’s call for intense dedication to Torah study was already lurking in the
background of this passage and helped focus the ensuing presentation. Furthermore, R. Elazar son

33
of R. Yossi attributes askara to the sin of lashon hara (gossip), which also appears in the story
when Yehuda ben Gerim relates the rabbinic conversation to the Roman authorities.[7]

Meir notes the identical phenomena regarding two versions of R. Hananya ben Hakhinai spending
over a decade away from home studying Torah and then shocking his wife upon returning home.
In the Babylonian Talmud (Ketubot 62b), the story appears in a larger context discussing when
husbands have the legal right to eschew domestic responsibilities in order to study Torah. In a
midrash (Vaiykra Rabba 21:8), the story supports a theme of not suddenly entering one’s abode,
fitting the biblical context of Aaron’s sons illegally entering the Holy of Holies. Meir shows how
differences between the two accounts reflect the themes of each version.[8]

Jeffrey Rubenstein adds more arguments in favor of looking beyond the story itself. [9] He notes
literary connections running through extended passages such as key words and thematic continuity.
For example, the verb tikun comes up repeatedly in Shabbat 33b, first as something the Romans
do, then as something R. Shimon bar Yohai does, and finally as something our patriarch Jacob
does.[10] To use an example from Fraenkel himself, a series of stories about husbands spending
significant time away from home to study Torah play off each other (Ketubot 62b). In one story,
R. Hama bar Bisa tries to avoid the mistake of R. Hananya ben Hakhinai from the preceding tale.
Furthermore, the entire picture balances stories critical of the rabbis for avoiding domestic
responsibility with the successful model of R. Akiva spending many years away.[11]

Yonatan Feintuch’s recent book, Panim el Panim, makes a major contribution to aggada study and
brings more evidence showing the importance of context. He points to a series of stories about
confronting the evil inclination (Kiddushin 82a). In the first few, rabbis struggle with sexual urges
and the tales encourages great precaution to prevent sin. However, in the final story, we see R.
Hiyya renouncing sexuality with his wife leads to martial tension, R. Hiyya consorting with
someone he thinks is a prostitute, and R. Hiyya punishing himself by sitting in a burning oven.
This balances the preceding message; we cannot address the challenges of temptation with
complete abstinence. These examples indicate that reading each story in isolation will miss some
of the force of the overarching message.[12]

Beyond literary context, Rubenstein also stresses the importance of cultural context. We can turn
to other talmudic sources for help “when confronted by a symbol, such as a column of fire, or a
motif, such as a sage forgetting his studies.”[13] To use an example of my own, carob trees appear
in the stories of Honi haMe’agel sleeping for 70 years (Ta’anit 23a), in the oven of Ahkhinai when
R. Elazar utilizes miracles to support his halakhic position (Baba Mezia 59b), and when R. Shimon
and his son live in the cave (Shabbat 33b). Consistent usage of the same tree does not seem to be
coincidence. In the Honi story, carob trees produce fruit only after an extremely long duration.
Maharsha suggests that the choice of carob trees adds to the miraculous quality of R. Shimon’s
survival in the cave since the tree that grows to feed him normally takes decades to bear fruit.[14]
To be fair, Fraenkel himself did not always adhere to his closure principle. He understands the
significance of Moshe sitting in the Bet Midrash’s eighteenth row (Menahot 29b) based on a
different talmudic story (Hulin 137b).[15] In a chapter on future directions for aggadic scholarship,
he mentions the idea of a topos, a commonplace theme in a given body of literature.[16] Thus,
even the champion of “closure” occasionally saw the value of looking beyond the individual story.

34
Feintuch’s work includes several models of how aggadic stories impact on adjacent
halakhic sugyot. They can present another opinion. The halakhic discussion of the five afflictions
of Yom Kippur ultimately decides that only not eating and drinking are included in the biblical
command of afflicting oneself on Yom Kippur whereas the other prohibitions come from a
different source. Feintuch shows how the subsequent aggadot (Yoma 74b–78a) relate to
abstinence as a kind of innuy (affliction), differing from the preceding halakhic texts.[17] From
this aggadic perspective, innuy is not only concrete discomfort or pain but even the absence of
pleasure.

Secondly, the aggada can reveal some of the difficulties in applying the abstract halakha in the real
world. One Gemara (Bava Batra 22a) grants special selling privileges to scholars who function as
traveling salesmen. In a following story, R. Dimi comes to a town intending to sell dates. One of
the locals, R. Ada bar Ahava, asks R. Dimi an obscure halakhic question and stumps the latter. R.
Dimi doesn’t receive the privileges of a scholar and his dates therefore turn rotten. Feintuch
suggests that applying this law proves difficult in practice since determining who qualifies as
a talmid hakham (sage) can bring out scholarly competition and become a major source of social
tension. The aggadic tale adds an important dimension to the legal ruling.[18]

Finally, a talmudic story can convey a level of extralegal piety. Berakhot 33a teaches that someone
engaged in prayer interrupts his prayer if a life-threatening situation emerges. For example, a snake
may not endanger the person praying but a scorpion will. Nevertheless, a preceding story tells of
a pious fellow who does not interrupt his prayer to return the greeting of an important Roman
official. In theory, ignoring the Roman is a very dangerous gambit. Feintuch explains that this
story presents a level of super piety, which would allow for taking on risks in the pursuit of intense
devotion to God.[19]

Yakov Blidstein offers a similar read of aggadic stories about not destroying trees. In one tale, the
son of R. Hanina apparently perishes for cutting down a tree. In another, Rava bar R. Hana resists
eliminating his own tree despite its negative impact on his neighbor, R. Yosef (Baba Batra 26a).
Rava was willing to have R. Yosef remove the tree but refused to do the act himself.[20] Blidstein
explains that while halakha actually allows for cutting down such trees, the aggadic material
reflects a religious attitude extremely committed to the ideal of bal tashhit (not being destructive).
R. Zadok and university professors obviously do not approach Talmud from the same vantage
point, yet the parallels between them are intriguing. Both think that placement and context matter,
and both find religious meaning in their analysis of these literary issues. I would like to close with
one further parallel. We noted earlier how R. Zadok thinks that placement of a sugya at the
beginning of a tractate can be telling. Several academics have made the identical suggestion about
an aggada at the beginning of Avoda Zara relating how the nations of the world complained that
they were not given a chance to accept the Torah. This conversation appropriately sets the stage
for a tractate about the relationship between Jews and gentiles.[21]

Perhaps this happens on a meta level at the beginning of the entire Talmud. The first line in the
Talmud questions how the Mishnah could simply jump into the details of keriat shema without
initially establishing the existence of a mitzvah to recite the Shema. The Gemara answers that the
Mishnah works off biblical verses establishing the Shema requirement. R. Zadok and a
contemporary Israeli scholar think that this opening question and answer begin the Talmud to

35
establish an idea that the reader will carry through the entirety of the Talmud. R. Zadok explains
that the rabbinical discussions found in all of the Talmud are rooted in the biblical world. This
ancient legal dialogue is not just a conversation of intelligent humans but a discussion of the divine
word.[22] Ruth Calderon says this opening conveys how each rabbinic text builds upon earlier
texts. Unlike R. Zadok who speaks of God, Calderon writes about the nature of being part of an
ongoing literary canon. Both think the placement here at the start of our talmudic journey was
purposeful.[23]

Parallels between Hassidic rebbes and university professors should encourage us to realize that
these two worlds need not always remain completely apart. The yeshiva world has much to gain
from the keen insights of Fraenkel, Rubenstein, and others. Conversely, academics would benefit
from utilizing the interpretations of traditional rabbinic commentary. We need not collapse
methodological distinctions and theological assumptions to learn from each other.

[1] Peri Zaddik, Beresihit Kedushat haShabbat ma’amar 3. On this methodology in R. Zadok, see Sarah Friedland, “Shekhenut
veKorat Gag: al Shnei Ekronot Darshanut Zuraniyim biKitvei R. Zadok Hakohen miLublin,” Akdamot 8 (Kislev 5760) pp. 25–43.
[2]Peri Zaddik Devarim le’Erev Yom Hakipurim 5.
[3] Ohr Zarua laZaddik 7:2.
[4] Kugel utilizes the term in The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven, 1981) when writing about
rabbinic interpretation of Tanakh. For the extension of this principle to rabbinic texts, see Yaakov Elman, “Progressive Derash and
Retrospective Peshat: Nonhalakhic Considerations in Talmud Torah”, Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah, ed. Shalom
Carmy (Northvale, 1996), pp. 227–287.
[5] Mahshavot Haruz 15.
[6] Yonah Fraenkel, Sippur haAggada-Ahdut shel Tokhen veTzura (Tel Aviv, 2001) pp. 32–50.
[7] Ofra Meir, Sugyot bePoetica shel Sifrut Hazal (Tel Aviv, 1993).
[8] Ofra Meir, “Hashpaat Ma’aseh haArikha,” Tura 3 (1994), pp. 67–84.
[9] Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore, 1999) pp. 10–14. For
Rubenstein, this is part of a larger thesis claiming that the stammaim (authors of anonymous passages in the Talmud) were quite
creative and active in their redaction of the aggadot. For my purposes, the central point is that the placement was done purposely,
irrespective of who did the placement and editing.
[10] Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, pp.105–38.
[11] Yonah Fraenkel, Iyumin beOlamo haRuhani shel Sippur haAggada (Tel Aviv, 1981), pp. 99–115.
[12] Yonatan Feintuch, Panim el Panim: Shezirat haHalkha vehaAggada beTalmud haBavli (Jerusalem, 2018) pp. 129–149.
[13] Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, p. 12.
[14] R. Shmuel Eidels, Hiddushei Aggadot Shabbat 33b s.v. Itrahesh Nisa.
[15] Fraenkel, Sippur haAggada, p. 44.
[16] Ibid., pp. 369–372.
[17] Panim el Panim, pp. 219–236.
[18] Ibid., pp. 161–183.
[19] Ibid., pp. 83–106.
[20] Yakov Blidstein, “Ana lo Kayzna…Mar e Niha Lei Leikuz: leErkhei Halakha veAggada beSugya Talmudit Ahat Dialektika o
Konflict,” Safot veSifruyot beHinukh Yehudi: Mehkarim LIkhvodo shel Michael Rosenak ed. Yonatan Cohen (Jerusalem, 5767),
pp. 139–145.
[21] Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, pp. 235–238.
[22] Zidkat haZadik 10.
[23] Ruth Calderon, Alpha Beita Talmudi: Osef Prati (Israel, 2004), pp. 239–241.

36
 Religion and Climate Change: Rain Rituals in Israel, China, and
Haiti

Haiyan Xing and Gerald Murray writes:15

Human populations confront three distinct climate challenges: (1) seasonal climate fluctuations,
(2) sporadic climate crises, and (3) long term climate change. Religious systems often attribute
climate crises to the behavior of invisible spirits. They devise rituals to influence the spirits and
do so under the guidance of religious specialists. They devise two types of problem-solving rituals:
anticipatory climate maintenance rituals, to request adequate rainfall in the forthcoming planting
season, and climate crisis rituals for drought or inundations. The paper compares rainfall rituals
in three different settings: Israel (Judaism), Northwest China (ethnic village religion), and Haiti
(Vodou). Each author has done anthropological fieldwork in one or more of these settings. In
terms of the guiding conceptual paradigm, the analysis applies three sequentially organized
analytic operations common in anthropology: (1) detailed description of individual ethnographic
systems; (2) comparison and contrast of specific elements in different systems; and (3) attempts at
explanation of causal forces shaping similarities and differences. Judaism has paradoxically
maintained obligatory daily prayers for rain in Israel during centuries when most Jews lived as
urban minorities in the diaspora before the founding of Israel in 1948. The Tu of Northwest China

15
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/11/554/htm

37
maintain separate ethnic temples for rainfall rituals not available in the Buddhist temples that all
attends. The slave ancestors of Haiti, who incorporated West African rituals into Vodou,
nonetheless excluded African rainfall rituals. We attribute this exclusion to slavery itself; slaves
have little interest in performing rituals for the fertility of the fields of their masters. At the end of
the paper, we identify the causal factors that propelled each systems into a climate-management
trajectory different from that of the others. We conclude by identifying a common causal factor
that exerts a power over religion in general and that has specifically influenced the climate
responses of all three religious’ systems.

1. Introduction
Human populations through the ages have been confronted by three distinct meteorological
challenges: (a) seasonal climate fluctuations, (b) sporadic climate crises (such as droughts,
inundations, hurricanes), and (c) long term climate change. Challenges (c) and (b) are interrelated;
climate change increases the frequency and severity of sporadic climate crises.
Though the theme of climate change has surged in current international discourse,
ethnographers have been recording statements from elders around the world, principally in
agrarian villages, about the “good old days” when the skies behaved as they are supposed to. Some
decades ago, one of the authors (Murray 1968), while doing research in the Spanish Caribbean,
recorded verbatim laments from farmers about how the rains had diminished over the years
sabotaging the viability of their livestock-raising slash-and-burn agropastoral economy. When
asked why the rains had stopped, an elderly Dominican farmer answered in the Spanish dialect
spoken in the mountains of the Cordillera Central:

Well, some people say it’s because the mountains have been stripped of trees. But that’s not so.
No, señor! Like the elders used to say, this is the fulfillment of a prophecy. It had to happen. The
rains were going to become scarce. These hills were going to be covered with roads. We used to
say, “No, that can’t possibly happen… You have to be stupid to believe that!” Is that so? Well just
look. The hills are crisscrossed by roads everywhere! … Our animals are disappearing. They say
that there will be a time where children will ask their fathers, “Papá, what kind of a bone is that?”
And the father will answer, “Mi hijo, that belonged to an animal that we used to call a cow…”.
(Murray 1968, pp. 92–93)

The farmers interviewed knew well the effects of diminished rains on their livelihood.
However, they had folk-explanatory theories about the remote unseen causes of this process.
Additionally, as has been true of populations around the world, both normal climate fluctuations
and aberrant weather crises are viewed as under the control of an invisible but powerful spirit
world. It should also be noted: even popular awareness of anthropogenic factors does not preclude
the attribution of climate change to supernatural beings. The Dominican farmer cited above knew
well that it was a sawmill company, not the Dios of his Catholicism, that transformed the mountain
ecology with lumber-extraction roads; farmers also know that the long-term decline in rainfall is
somehow related to the removal of tree cover. That does not, however, prevent the inclusion of
invisible spirits as remote causal agents of the crisis. Humans cut trees and build roads, but the
invisible spirit world has power to guide (or permit) the human behaviors that are the immediate
efficient causes of climate crises.

38
 It is here that religion has entered throughout human history. In these pages, “religion” is
defined as a cultural subsystem with cognitive, behavioral, and organizational components: belief
in invisible spirits, rituals to interact with the spirits, and specialist leaders who guide others as to
the nature of the spirits and the rituals needed to influence them. Across the globe and throughout
history, climate fluctuations and crises have been attributed to the action of invisible spirit beings.
However, religions go beyond folk-theological speculation. Under the guidance of
specialist/practitioners believed to have more knowledge of and/or power over the spirits, ritual
interventions are designed to manage the weather. There are two generic types of rituals. The most
frequent are the climate maintenance rituals that occur before the expected rainy season to petition
the invisible powers to send the right amount of rain at the right time. There are also climate crisis
rituals that spring into action when the skies (and/or the spirits) are misbehaving, either by
withholding rain or by sending catastrophic deluges or hurricanes.

In these pages we will be exploring the involvement of three distinct religious systems in
climate issues. Our approach will be ethnographic, focusing on systems in which each of the
authors has carried out field research. We will compare three distinct, unrelated religious systems
in terms of their ritual involvement with rainfall issues. In our comparison, we have been surprised
at some of the patterns that have emerged. It is not only the skies that behave in unpredictable
fashion. So also do religious systems.

All three of the systems to be studied here behave in counterintuitive ways with respect to
weather. One of them has, for 2000 years, maintained obligatory daily rain-and-crop related rituals
long after its practitioners ceased being farmers and had long ago left the only territory of relevance
to the rituals. One would have predicted the disappearance of the rain rituals long ago. Another
system places rainfall under the control of particular animal spirits that in the western world are
considered to be demon-driven enemies of the human species. Additionally, the third system,
whose adherents desperately need increasingly scarce rain for their fields and crops, have a ritually
rich folk-religious system that nervously avoids rituals that would address climate issues.

The first religious system to be dealt with is the majority religion in Israel: Rabbinic Judaism,
quite different in many core details from its historical predecessors Patriarchal Judaism and
Temple Judaism. Murray spent several months on the Gaza strip in a religious agrarian
Israeli moshav shortly before it was demolished by the Israeli government. He has also participated
in hundreds of synagogue rituals in the U.S. and other countries and has taught courses in the
Anthropology of Judaism. Another is the religion of the Tu ethnic group studied by Xing in
Northwest China. They are an agropastoral group that is heavily involved in the Tibetan Buddhism
that is the dominant religious tradition in the region of the Tibetan Plateau in which they live.
However, they have maintained as well their own separate ethnic temples; the major function of
Tu temple ritual at the moment is precisely that of managing critical but increasingly unpredictable
rainfall, an option that is not available in the Buddhist rituals in which they also participate. The
third is the religion that arose among African slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue and
that has persisted as Haitian Vodou. It is a theologically and ritually complex folk-religion that
emerged during slavery and that survived after the slave revolt and national independence in 1804.
Murray spent nearly two years in a village where Vodou was practiced by some 60% of the village
population. He has made multiple return visits to the village, the most recent one being in 2017.

39
 Both authors are anthropologists. Our methods were accordingly based on observations and
interviews carried out in the local languages (Hebrew in Israel, Qinghaihua and Mandarin in
Northwestern China, and Creole in Haiti.) In Haiti, Murray in addition carried out 100% surveys
of the entire village including questions that dealt with involvement in Vodou. Our goal in these
pages goes beyond ethnographic description. We assume that the structure of religious belief and
ritual is not a product of cultural whimsy; the evolution of religious systems is driven by causal
factors, at least some of which can be tentatively identified. We will venture into explanatory
efforts at the end of the article. After first presenting some basic ethnographic information on each
of the systems, in the end we will identify some factors that may help explain the counterintuitive
trajectories into which the different religious systems have veered in their shifting cultural-
evolutionary involvement with rainfall and crops. We will see that the response of religious
systems to climate crises is governed not only by climate fluctuations and ecological factors. The
nature of ritual responses to rainfall is also governed by sociopolitical factors that operate
independently of objective environmental factors. We will see that the exercise of State power has
affected all three systems.

2. Israel: Judaism and Climate Concerns

Israel is located on the southeastern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. Currently it has an
estimated 2020 population of 9.2 million living on 21,000 km2, yielding a per km population
density of 417 per km2, the highest of the three countries considered here. It also has the highest
annual per capita GDP of over $40,0001. In terms of religion, 74% of Israelis are Jews; they
practice Judaism with varying levels of observance (or non-observance). 18% of Israelis are Arab
Muslims, and 2% are Christians, most of the latter being Arabs.

We will examine here the surprisingly high level of explicit concern for climate and field
crops in the daily, weekly, and annual liturgy of Rabbinic Judaism, the religion of the Jewish
majority in Israel. The word “surprising” is not an over-dramatization. As we will see, the
obligatory climate-related passages in the daily Jewish liturgy deal only with rainfall and crop
fertility explicitly in Israel/Palestine. The Babylonian Talmud, which was compiled during
centuries when Jews were still farmers, did modify the timing of the prayer for dew and rain to
accommodate the timing of the rainy season in nearby Iraq. Jews around the world in subsequent
ages adopted this modified timing but made no accommodations to the rainy season in their
specific countries. The text of the prayers accommodates the rainy season only in Israel and
Babylon.

However, for some two millennia, before massive Jewish immigration to British-controlled
Palestine and (as of 1948) to the State of Israel, almost the entire Jewish world lived as urban
minorities in diaspora countries around the world engaged in non-agrarian pursuits. Their prayers
for rain in Palestine, which they recited word-for-word from the synagogues of urban Europe,
North and South America, North Africa, and elsewhere, would have benefitted the Muslim farmers
who replaced the Jews several centuries ago.2 Did diaspora Jewry entertain sustained conscious
humanitarian concern during centuries for the Muslim farmers of Palestine? It is unlikely. The
counterintuitive survival of these prayers demands, first, documentation, and then explanation.

40
2.1. Rabbinic Judaism and Its Predecessors

To place Judaic weather prayers in historical context, it is useful to distinguish three historical
phases of Judaism. Patriarchal Judaism was the religious system that emerged under three founding
ancestral figures described in the book of Bereshit (Genesis) of the Hebrew Bible: Abraham, his
son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob. Biblical texts describe them all as livestock raisers. None were
farmers. The principal ritual offered to the Hebrew God was decentralized animal sacrifice carried
out by the founding patriarchs on stone altars constructed on hilltops. In this phase of Judaism,
there is no textual evidence for ritual concern with the rains. The promised reward for fidelity to
the covenant was not abundant rainfall and crops, but abundant offspring and a land of their own.
The patriarchs experienced drought and famine. Their response to drought was emigration to
irrigated Egypt, not rituals to bring the rains to Canaan or to the other territories where they lived.

The next phase, Temple Judaism, arose after the establishment of an Israelite monarchy and
the subsequent building of a temple in Jerusalem. At that time, the Hebrews (by then called bnei
Israel—children of Israel or Israelites) were no longer pastoral nomads, but hillside farmers with
livestock as a secondary pursuit. The core ritual of Temple Judaism continued to be animal
sacrifice. It was, however, restricted. It could be done only inside the Jerusalem Temple and could
be performed only by a hereditary priestly caste. Since the Israelites were by then hillside farmers
practicing rainfall agriculture, concern with drought figured prominently in the scriptures dealing
with this period. However, there is no evidence that rainfall-related texts were incorporated into
daily and weekly liturgies. The core of Temple Judaism focused on thrice-annual pilgrimages to
Jerusalem for animal sacrifices in the Temple, not on the daily synagogue liturgy, including
prayers for rain, that is performed today.

All of this changed when the Temple was destroyed for the last time by the Romans in 70
CE, and Rabbinic Judaism emerged. The Jewish priesthood could no longer function in their major
role (animal sacrifice). The new leaders who emerged were the rabbis, who had been scholars and
teachers in the centuries when the Temple stood. Formerly of less authority than the Jerusalem
high priesthood, the rabbis eventually found themselves in the position of leadership vacated by
the now-unemployed sacrificial priesthood.

The rabbis preserved Judaism by switching the focus from animal sacrifice. Rabbinic Judaism
focused (and still focuses) on daily and weekly prayers in the synagogue, study of sacred texts,
and meticulous observance of behavioral commandments and prohibitions. It was under the rabbis
that rainfall concerns were incorporated into the heart of the evolving Jewish liturgy. For centuries
after the destruction of the Temple, Jewish farmers continued to live in Palestine under foreign
Roman and later Byzantine rule. Because they were farmers, rainfall concerns were built into the
newly constituted daily and weekly synagogue liturgies.

The rebuilding of the Temple and restauration of animal sacrifice in a messianic future is a
theme that was incorporated into the evolving Jewish liturgy. However, Judaism switched its ritual
focus. The focus now was on observance of detailed rules concerning daily prayer, strict sabbath
observance, food restrictions, menstrual laws, studious analysis and commentary on the scriptures,
and the careful observance of hundreds of additional commandments.3 The rabbinic role and the
meticulous observance of behavioral commandments had existed in embryonic form as local

41
religious addenda to the core sacrificial rituals of the high priesthood4. However, rabbinic authority
went from the periphery to the core of evolving Judaism.

After destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, rabbinic leadership emerged when the majority of
Jews in Israel were still farmers concerned with fickle weather. Rainfall-related texts had been
drafted when the Temple was still standing. It was under rabbinic leadership that they were
incorporated into a newly created Jewish prayer book (siddur) as one of the obligatory daily
elements of the Jewish liturgy. One clarification deserves repetition. The texts regarding rain and
crops apply only to the Holy Land, to the “good land which the Lord is giving you”.

2.2. Rainfall Ritual in Judaism

Let us now examine some of the rituals that to this very day religious Jews all over the world
pray to ensure rains in Israel. Rabbinic Judaism mandates lengthy prayer three times a day, in the
morning and afternoon, and in the evening after sunset. It emphasizes the obligatory nature of daily
prayer, including those that allude to divine intervention in the rain and crops of Israel. Though of
little direct relevance to Jews in the diaspora, they have been prayed by Jews, almost all of them
in the diaspora, for two millennia.

There are at least four distinct elements of climate-related ritual in the Jewish prayer book,
two of them part of the obligatory daily prayers: the Shma Israel, the Amidah, the Prayer for Rain,
and the Prayer for Dew. The first is recited twice daily, the second thrice daily. The third and the
fourth are each recited once per year when Israel’s rainy season is about to begin and end.

Rain Passage 1: The Shma Israel: Twice Daily Weather-Related Ritual in

Judaism

The core of the Shma Israel consists of a brief invocation (Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God,
the Lord alone5), followed by three scriptural passages. The second one (from the 11th chapter of
Deuteronomy) focuses on rain.

And it will be, if you will hear and obey my commandments that I am giving to you today, to love
the Lord your God and to worship Him with all your heart and with all your soul, I shall give rain
for your land at the proper time, the early rain, and the late rain, and thou shalt harvest thy grain,
thy wine, and thine oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be
sated. Take care lest your heart be lured away, and you turn astray and worship other gods and
bow down to them. For then the Lord’s wrath will flare up against you, and He will close the
heavens so that there will be no rain and the earth will not yield its produce, and you shall swiftly
perish from the good land which the Lord is giving to you.6

This passage has been read in public services twice a day by religious Jews minimally for
1200 years and possibly for two millennia. Several things should be noted.

As the text indicates, the promises and threats apply only to the land of Israel—“to the land
which the Lord is giving to you”. If you disobey, you will “perish from the good land”. The passage
specifically mentions the crops—grain (wheat and barley), grapes, and olives—that were among

42
the most important in the agriculture of the pre-monarchic Israelite farming tribes that inhabited
the climatically challenged hill country east of the region’s coastal plain.

What was the divine logic behind a puzzling gift of a climatically challenged Promised Land
where the flow of milk and honey was so easily jeopardized? The same Deuteronomic text (11:10–
12) explains why the Israelites were to practice rainfall agriculture rather than more prosperous
irrigation agriculture.

For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which
you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the
land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the
rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are
always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

In other words, God himself would see to the watering of Israelite fields via rainfall. Unlike
Egyptians with their irrigation systems, Israel instead would have to look up to heaven and trust
God to supply water. This meteorological reminder has been repeated twice a day by religious
diaspora Jews for close to two millennia.

Rain Passage 2: The Thrice-Daily Amidah: The “Standing Prayer”

Along with the Shma Israel, the Amidah is the second core element in the Jewish daily
prayerbook. It consists of 19 blessings (one of them inserted later as blessing #12). The Amidah is
recited silently, by obligation, three times a day in a standing position facing the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem. When praying in a morning or afternoon minyan (a required quorum of ten), the prayer
leader recites the Amidah out loud after all have said it silently.

References to divine intervention in the climate of Israel occur in the second and ninth
blessings. The wording, however, has to be changed according to the season. During Israel’s rainy
season, blessing #2 praises God, because he “mashiv haruach umorid hageshem” (brings the wind
and causes rain to fall). During the dry season, either those words are omitted or (in
certain siddurim) God is praised because he “morid hatal” (brings down dew). The worshipper
must be sure to use the proper climate passage in the proper season. If a person makes a mistake
and praises God for marshalling wind and rain during the dry season, the entire Amidah has to be
repeated again from the beginning. Wind and rain could be harmful outside of their season. If the
one praying mistakenly asks for dew instead of rain during the rainy season, there is less danger
of grave harm, and the prayer need not be repeated.7

Whereas blessing #2 of the Amidah simply praises God’s power over wind and rain, blessing
#9 contains an explicit petition concerning crops and moisture. During Israel’s rainy season, the
wording is “Bless this year for us, O Lord our God, and all its crops…and give dew and rain as a
blessing on the surface of the soil…” As with blessing #2, during the dry season the word “rain”
is omitted. In some siddurim even “dew” is omitted.

43
 The frequency of these climate-related prayers is astounding. Religious Jews all over the
world recite blessing #2 21 times per week. Blessing #9 is recited 18 times during ordinary weeks,
being omitted on Sabbath (and Festivals). Considering the Shma Israel and the Amidah, the
frequency of obligatory, explicit climate prayers in Judaism is substantially greater than has been
documented in any other known religious system.

Rain Passage Complex #3: The Seasonal Prayers for Rain and Dew

There are, however, other prayers as well. Rainy seasons begin only once a year in Israel,
usually in October/November. Shortly before the winter rainy season (hopefully) begins, a special
additional prayer for rain is inserted during a joyful late-Autumn festival called Shemini Atzeret.
This particular rain prayer, which was drafted later during the Common Era, has an
anthropologically interesting twist to it: It alludes to an angel (Af Bri) who is “Master of the Rain”.
In the evolution of Rabbinic Judaism, the number of angels was multiplied beyond the four who
are mentioned by name toward the end of the Hebrew Bible.

Angels were conceived as having been given dominion by God over different natural
phenomena. The angel Af Bri is the “Sar Matar” (master of rain). No prayer is directed to the angel
himself. The prayer is to God, requesting that he instruct the angel Af Bri to distribute rainfall and
to “soften the wasteland’s face when it is dry as rock”.8
2.3. Crisis Measures: When the Hoped-for Rain Does not Materialize

The major biblically recorded climatological crises affecting Jews are almost all associated
with drought, not with flooding. With one possible exception, there are no formulaic prayers in the
Jewish prayer book specifically drafted to counteract an ongoing drought, which has been a major
problem both in ancient and contemporary Israel. In rabbinic Judaism, the ordinary daily prayers
for rain continue to be prayed during times of drought. Under the rabbis during the Second Temple
period and after, one standard response to drought was collective penitential fasting combined with
the recitation of prayers, many taken from the book of tehilim (Psalms).

The Talmud (Talmud, Tanit 19a n.d.) also describes a particular Jewish wonder worker who
brought rain in times of a persistent drought in the Holy Land during the first century BCE. Honi
ha-Meagel (Honi the Circle-Drawer) drew a circle in the ground, stood in the circle, raised his eyes
(but probably not his fist), and warned God that he was not leaving the circle until God sent rain.
A tiny sprinkle came. “Not enough!” shouted Honi. A deluge came. “Too much!” The entire
population of Jerusalem had to flee up to the Temple Mount because of the flood waters. Finally,
the right amount came. Some rabbis wanted to excommunicate Honi for his dangerous
impertinence. However, common sense prevailed, and they backed off. (What if the rains suddenly
stopped?). Some commentaries give a more benign interpretation of why Honi was not
excommunicated. The rabbis admired him for treating God as a Father who can be badgered by
his child. Whatever the case, in accordance with Jewish theology, the Talmud indicates that it was
not Honi, but God himself, who produced the rain.

To summarize: for two millennia, urban religious Jews all around the world have been in
effect petitioning for rain in Palestine three times a day. It should be noted: This does not mean
that the focus of Judaism is the weather. It is simply being pointed out that, whatever is considered

44
to be Judaism’s main focus, it is an empirical fact that climate issues are raised several times a day.
If there has been a religion more concerned with the weather than Judaism, it has not yet been
documented. The paradox is that virtually none of those diaspora Jews who for centuries prayed
for rain in Palestine would have benefitted directly if the prayers were literally answered and the
rain fell on Muslim farms. We will show in the analytic conclusion that in fact, despite the surface
content of the liturgical texts, diaspora Jews were not in fact praying for the wellbeing of
Palestinian Muslim farmers. However, first let us examine the rainfall concerns of two other
religious systems.

5. Exploration of Causal Factors

In the opening paragraphs, we indicated that it is not only the climate that behaves
unpredictably; so do religious systems. In this final section, we will examine three paradoxes we
have encountered in our comparative analysis and explore possible causal factors nudging each
system into its particular ritual trajectory with respect to climate.

5.1. Israel: Sacred Texts and Adaptive Allegories for the Diaspora

The paradox in Judaism consists of the survival, during over a millennium and a half, of thrice
daily obligatory rituals regarding rainfall and agriculture in Israel that had virtually no relevance
to the Jewish people at large, almost all of whom were pursuing non-agrarian urban pursuits in
diasporas around the world. We can identify several factors—each of them necessary, but none of
them alone sufficient—that have produced the current pattern of climate allusions in the daily
liturgy of Judaism.

Ecologically Stressed Agrarian Economy in the Israelite past.

There are two major material factors—one ecological, the other economic—that led to the
birth of a religious concern with Holy Land rainfall in Judaism. The ecological factor is the
historically scarce and fluctuating rainfall regime of the Holy Land. The economic factor is the
agro-pastoral status of the majority of the Jewish population at the time the two major liturgical
texts (the Shma and the Amidah) were composed17. There was a Jewish farming population in
Israel and (despite urbanization and occupational diversification) most Jews in Israel were still
farming the land and raising livestock. It is no surprise that the religious leaders of an ecologically
stressed agropastoral economy included climate issues in their public liturgies.

The Reliance on Sacred Written Texts

That, however, explains the origin, but not the survival, of rainfall rituals after they became
irrelevant to the population reciting the prayers. A relatively brief period in the distant past of
Jewish involvement in ecologically stressed agriculture does not explain the enigmatic survival of
these prayers during two millennia of Jewish life in the urban diasporas of other countries. Muslim
farmers had long-ago replaced the Jewish farmers in the territory that was once Israel. The Jews
in the urban diaspora for millennia voiced daily rain prayers for Palestine. Did they entertain
sustained conscious humanitarian concern for the Muslim farmers of Palestine? It Is unlikely. Nor
were the Jews primarily concerned with the land and crops of their diaspora settings. In the first

45
place, diaspora Jews were not and are not farmers. Furthermore, the rainfall texts in the Jewish
liturgy apply only to the climate and soil of the Holy Land and immediate surroundings. So the
question persists: Why have centuries of Jewish worshippers in the urban diasporas of Europe,
North America, and South America continued expressing prayerful concern for rainfall that would
benefit the harvests of Arab-speaking Muslim farmers in Palestine?

The answer is to be found in the coalescing of three conceptually independent historical

processes that did not co-occur in Chinese shamanism or in Haitian Vodou:
1. reliance on written religious texts,
2. a belief in word-for-word divine revelation behind those texts, and
3. the eventual incorporation by the rabbis of some of these texts as obligatory daily
prayers that have to be recited word by word several times a day.

We recall that the synagogue rabbis had replaced the Temple priests as the main religious
authorities after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. They are the ones who later
designed the prayer books with substitute rituals. They are the ones who, out of respect for
tradition, mandated diaspora Jewry to continue the daily climate prayers for the Holy Land from
which most Jews had long ago emigrated.

Unlike the Chinese Tu and Haitian Vodou, Rabbinic Judaism is based on sacred texts. In
Judaism, the most sacred text is the handwritten Torah scroll containing the Five Books of Moses.
Every synagogue has one or more of these voluminous Torah scrolls. They must be handwritten
by soferim (scribes), much as traditional accounts depict Moses writing down the first twelve
Torah scrolls in the Sinai desert (one for each tribe).

However, sacred texts are not enough. The fact that a passage is in the Torah does not mean
it will become a dynamic part of Jewish liturgical life. To attain its full power, a passage has to be
selected and built into the official daily or weekly liturgy of the religious system. Whereas Judaism
encourages spontaneous prayer from the heart, it differs from most other religious systems in the
imposition by the rabbis of a daily obligation to recite lengthy formulaic prayers—i.e., pre-written
texts that must be prayed word for word every day by religious Jews.

The written instrument for this is the siddur, the Jewish prayer book that places in order the
multiple parts of the Jewish daily and weekly liturgy. Whereas the sefer Torah, the Torah scroll,
functions as a sacred warehouse containing the entire contents of the five books of Moses,
the siddur functions more as a catapult that organizes a subset of texts and prayers that will be shot
heavenward several times a day. The siddur contains selections from the Torah and other parts of
the Hebrew scriptures, as well as passages from later Jewish writings. The rainfall prayers were
included in the two central elements of the siddur, the Shma and the Amidah. These two
documents, the sefer Torah and the siddur, have been the core documents around which Jewish
synagogue ritual has centered in the centuries following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
in 70 A.D.

In short, it is the rabbis who have preserved earlier traditional prayer texts. It is also the rabbis
who have required recitation of these prayers word for word several times a day from the siddur.
In short, it is rabbinic decree that has perpetuated the expressions of climate concern in Judaism,

46
even when the passages voicing these concerns were of no relevance, or of marginal relevance, to
the diaspora Jews praying the prayers.

The Process of Rabbinic Allegorization

However, contemporary rabbis seem aware that rainfall in the Holy Land would be of little
urgency to Jews in the diaspora. The rabbis have reestablished the relevance of these climate texts
by re-defining the prayers for rain as allegories of something else. For the Jewish worshipper in
the urban diaspora, the promise of rainfall and the threat of drought in the Shma Israel are
frequently interpreted as a generic allegorical allusion to reward and punishment for obeying or
disobeying divine commandments. Donin (1980, p. 148), for example, spends nearly two pages
discussing the weather passage in the Shma Israel without a single allusion to rain, drought, or
crops. He discusses the text as though it concerned only the generic issue of reward and punishment
for obeying or violating the 613 commandments binding on Jews. In other words, climate passages
have been converted into an allegory of something else.18 In a similar manner, modern exegetes or
homilists may treat the Amidah’s request that God bless the year with rainfall as a prayer that God
will bless one’s business, one’s profession, or one’s income. The human brain has the creative
power to allegorize, to create similes and metaphors, and to see meaning beyond the literal
meaning of words. This power is regularly marshalled, in Judaism, as in other religions19, with
respect to prayers written thousands of years ago in situations that no longer apply.

Why not eliminate the prayers when they no longer apply to the current circumstances of the
population? Some Reform prayer books have precisely done that. In the world of traditional
Judaism, however, this is not feasible, desirable, or necessary. In view of the conservative power
of the written word, especially the words of sacred texts, it is difficult to eliminate or even change
the texts. One does not eliminate texts whose literal meaning has become irrelevant, one simply
allegorizes them into some other meaning.20 This maintains the relevance of the weather allusions
in the Shma and the Amidah among modern Jewish populations where the literal meaning of the
text has lost its urgency. Orthodox Jewish business owners, physicians, or lawyers in Paris or
Manhattan have no need for rainfall for olive groves and grapevines in Palestine. They have none.
However, rainfall and drought have been allegorically converted into promises of reward or threats
of punishment for obeying or disobeying the commandments.

Now that Jews constitute a 74% majority in Israel, however, and now that about half the Jews
in the world live in Israel, the prayers for rain retrieve their original relevance. A particularly
serious five-year drought ended in 2018. Though much farming is now dependent not on rainfall,
but on sophisticated computerized drip irrigation systems, the main source for those systems is
water pumped from the Sea of Galilee, a lake in northern Israel. By 2018, the lake had dropped to
its lowest recorded level since 1920 and was just centimeters from the ecological point of no return
in terms of salinity. The Minister of Agriculture called for a special day of prayers. The Chief
Rabbis of Israel summoned people to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site,
inviting them to pierce the heavens with prayers for rain. (They were warned to bring umbrellas).
In line with standard procedure for Jewish weather-crisis rituals, the day chosen was a fast day.

Thousands prayed for rain at the Western Wall, in synagogues throughout Israel, and in the
diaspora. It turned out that no umbrellas were needed on that day in Jerusalem. However, as one

47
religious source happily reported (FFOZ 2018), less than a week later, despite gloomy weather
forecasts, suddenly “…the heavens did open up and poured down. It rained for days, filling streams
and streets till they gushed, and it even raised the Sea of Galilee…” For centuries, the rabbis in the
diaspora had treated the daily prayers for rain in the Holy Land as allegories of something else.
Since the return of Jews to this ecologically vulnerable country, however, the climate prayers for
rain have ceased being allegorical. Those reciting them mean exactly what is written.

Summary and Conclusion: Identifying a Common Causal Force

6.1. The Impact of State Power on the Evolution of Religion

In this final section, we will discuss a unifying theme that has informed the evolution of all
three systems: response to State behavior. In all three systems, a macro-political variable—the
behavior of the State—not directly linked to ecological concerns has exerted a major impact on
the evolution (or suppression) of rain rituals. We can summarize the dynamics sequentially.

Impact of State power on Judaism

It was the power of the Roman State in 70 CE that destroyed the sacrificial rituals of Temple
Judaism and led to the emergence of contemporary Rabbinic Judaism. The Jewish farming
population survived in Palestine under later Roman and early Byzantine States. Daily synagogue
prayer and textual exegesis replaced animal sacrifice as the major ritual focus. It was at this phase
that rain rituals, of importance to the Jewish farmers who were still a majority in Palestine. entered
the Jewish prayer book under rabbinic authority.

However, the arrival of another State—the Islamic State—in 636 CE eventually brought an
end to Jewish farming in Palestine, as most Jews eventually opted for emigration from the Holy
Land. However, since the rainfall passages had become a core element in the Shma Israel and the
Amidah prayers, these prayers for rain in Palestine were carried by Jews, under rabbinic
supervision, into the diaspora. No longer of literal relevance, we have seen that the logic of the
rainfall passages was preserved by converting them into allegories of reward and punishment for
obeying or violating the 613 commandments. As a further causal insight, we can see that the
Hebrew-language siddur, the Jewish prayerbook, was a unifying force contributing to the survival
of the Jewish population as an ethnic minority under the different States of the diaspora. The
invention of printing led to a further homogenization and standardization of different variants of
the Hebrew siddur in different parts of the Jewish world (Jacobson 1966). The daily use of the
Hebrew prayerbook by Jews who no longer spoke Hebrew as their mother tongue contributed to
continuity of Jewish religious and cultural identity in settings in which other groups were absorbed
into local cultures and disappeared as discrete sociocultural entities. Jewish rainfall rituals are part
of this historically unusual survival story, as Jews have adapted to different State powers
throughout history.

We can see three distinct phases of Jewish response to State power. (1) the Roman State
destroyed Temple Judaism and paved the way for Rabbinic Judaism. (2) the Islamic caliphates in

48
Palestine led to emigration and conversion of Jews into stateless minorities in different lands; and
(3) the rabbinic success in preserving daily prayers in Hebrew for Jews around the world who no
longer spoke Hebrew allowed Jews to resist the State-supported forces for religious and cultural
assimilation that led to the disappearance of other ethnic minorities. Therefore, the rabbinically
mandated rainfall prayers for Palestine, recited thrice-daily in Hebrew, were among the vehicles
that contributed to the unusual survival of Jews as a distinct, self-conscious ethnic group in States
around the world that successfully absorbed, diluted, assimilated, and eliminated other ethnic
minorities.

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9. Gumo, Sussy. 2017. Praying for Rain: Indigenous Systems of Rainmaking in Kenya. The Ecumenical Review 69: 386–
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12. Hurbon, Laennec. 1972. Dieu dans le Vodou Haïtien. Paris: Payot.
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15. Metraux, Alfred. 1959. Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Schocken.
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Population Growth. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, Department of Anthropology, New York, NY, USA. [
18. Murray, Gerald. 1981. Peasant Tree Planting in Haiti: A Social Soundness Analysis; Port-au-Prince: USAID.
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Mooney. Montreal: Centre for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University, pp. 188–231.
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New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA.
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1 The Central Intelligence Agency (2019) factbook, which compiled the statistics, also included the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.
2 There was always a small Jewish presence in Byzantine and Ottoman Palestine. However, this Jewish “Yishuv” was not agricultural. It
consisted of urban religious Jews dedicated to Torah study, principally in Jerusalem but also in Safed and other cities. They were
supported during centuries, not by farming, but by the halukka system, which solicited funds from the Jewish Diaspora for Jews
studying Torah in the Holy Land.
3 The traditional number of commandments by which Jews are bound is listed as 613. Of these, 248 deal with mandatory behaviors and
365 deal with forbidden behaviors. Except for seven “Noachide” laws binding on all humans, the 613 commandments are largely
viewed as binding only (or principally) on Jews. Non-Jews, for example, are not viewed as sinners if they eat pork or work and travel
on Saturday.
4 This is seen in the New Testament in differences between the strict ritual demands of the Pharisees and the more relaxed approach
common in the popular Judaism of northern Galilee. This set the backdrop of the famous conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees
(Pharisee in Hebrew means “separated—perushim”—not “hypocrite”).
5 A traditional translation says, “the Lord is One”. The original command was an explicit prohibition against worshipping the deities of
the nations that surrounded Israel. The ordinary English translation, however, construes the passage as a metaphysical affirmation of
God’s unity rather than a prohibition against idolatry. This affirmation of God’s unity came to be emphasized by the rabbis in Christian
Europe, with its trinitarian theology. This is a reinterpretation of the meaning of the original text: worship only the Hebrew God.
6 The translation is by Murray and departs slightly from conventional translations. At a certain point, our translation uses the archaic
“thou” and “thy” forms to indicate that the Hebrew suddenly (and enigmatically) switches from the you-plural to the you-singular,
which is not distinguished in modern English. The verb ‫‘(עבד‬avad) is translated as “to worship” rather than the more conventional “to
serve”. Anglophones generally go to religious events in synagogue, church, or mosque to “worship” rather than to “serve”.
7 The ArtScroll Siddur (Sherman and Zlotowitz 1985, pp. 1078–79) lists eighteen complex rules governing procedures if an individual
praying privately mixes up Israel’s dry and rainy season in prayer. Recitation of the proper climate prayer is so crucial that many
synagogues post a sign reminding those praying which passage to pray during the current season. See also (Donin 1980, pp. 78–80).
8 Sherman and Zlotowitz (1985, p. 753). The Hebrew verb (yatriach), which we have rendered as “instruct”, usually means “harass” or
“bother”. God is apparently being urged to make sure that Af Bri distributes the upper waters. The passage is written in a later (and
often cryptic) form of Hebrew liturgical poetry called “piyyutim”. The allusion to divinely provided rainfall, however, is clear.
9 A list of publications (many of them in Mandarin) dealing with the Monguor/Tu can be found online
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monguor_people.
10 Having the likeness of an animal. The term zoomorphic spirit (having a life-like form) is also used, which could include both non-
human animal spirits and plant-like spirits.
11 Cartwright (2017) also points out the difference between the Chinese and the Western dragon figure.
12 Kinanbwa is the pseudonym of a village in Haiti’s Cul de Sac Plain.
13 Vodou adherents are also involved in Catholic rites. The Catholic group here refers to the subgroup of Catholics (katolik fran) that
distance themselves from Vodou. Based on 100% survey of the research village, public adherents of Vodou constituted 62% of the
village population, 23% were katolik fran, and 15% were evangelical Protestants. (Murray 1977). In the intervening decades the
evangelical sector has become the majority.
14 We are following current practice and call it Vodou, as many anglophone and francophone writers currently do. The term “Vodou”
avoids images of “sticking pins in dolls” that the eerie word “voodoo” evokes. Villagers traditionally had no separate noun for their
folk-religion; they referred to it with a verb phrase “serving the lwa (spirits)”.

50
15 Hebblethwaite (2015) analyzes historical data on the slave trade from Geggus (1996) to reconstruct the sequence by which different
lwa reached the colony of Saint-Domingue from different parts of Africa.
16 Murray (1991) documents a similar ritual ploy surrounding the fertility of the female womb. Only God can decree that a child be
conceived in the womb. Once the child is there, however, sorcery can “trap” it and arrest its growth. The affected woman is “in
perdition”. A childless woman may be diagnosed by an oungan as having a child in the womb that has been trapped by a force that
the oungan can deal with. This ritual fiction provides hope for the woman (and income for the oungan).
17 Religious Jews might argue that the texts of the Shma were dictated by God to Moses in the Sinai desert. Secular scholars assume that
they were written later, when the Jews were already farmers in the Holy Land.
18 Corrigan et al. (1998), in their comparison of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,) go even further. Their discussions of Jewish ritual
look favorably on Reform efforts to update Judaism. Belief in post-mortem reward and punishment, alive and well in the traditional
community, is seen by many in the Reform community as part of the obsolete archaisms that should be purged from Jewish religious
life. In their treatment of the Shma, they mention neither the literal text of the weather nor the allegorical theme of reward and
punishment.
19 Cf. multiple allegorical passages in the New Testament, such as the enigmatic injunction by Jesus not to cast your pearls before swine.
The Galilean Jewish disciples to whom this Sermon on the Mount (Mt. chap. 5–7) was directed presumably had few pearls and no pigs.
20 Israeli farmers today, who constitute less than 1% of the local Jewish population, have no need to allegorize the climate references in
the Shema and the Amidah. The Hebrew-speaking settlers in Gaza, among whom (deleted for peer review) lived for several months
before their expulsion and the demolition of their homes by the Israeli government, did not depend on rain for their greenhouses, but
on a sophisticated computerized drip irrigation system. This system, however, was fed by pipes from northern Israel. Their irrigation
system in Gaza, close to Egypt in the south, depended on rain falling up north. They did not grow wheat, grapes, and olives, but
flowers for export, including poinsettias for the Christmas market in New York City. Unlike diaspora Jews, these Israeli farmers, who
prayed in synagogue every day, had no need to allegorize the rainfall texts. They literally depended on the rain to feed the lake that fed
their drip irrigation system. (The past tense is being used. The farmers were subsequently expelled from Gaza by the Israeli
government.)
21 It must be pointed out that TCM does not entail spirit healing. A major diagnostic emphasis is on discovering imbalances in the flows
of energy (qi) in the human body of a sick person. Healing entails the reestablishment of the proper energy flows. Neither in diagnosis
nor in therapy do TCM doctors invoke or consult with spirit beings.
22 To avoid romanticizing, recent events involving the Muslim Uighur of Xinjiang and crackdown on Christian churches could be
interpreted as the pendulum swinging back. In the case of Islam, the reversal could also be seen as simply a continuation and radical
application of a fierce determination to stamp out any perceived threat to “national unity”, as defined by the Party. If this interpretation
is correct, ethnic diversity will continue to be supported as long as it does not cross certain political lines. The final chapter has yet to
be written.
23 Some scholars view the revolutionary role of Vodou as a romanticized exaggeration. The discussion falls outside this article.
24 The hypothesis could be validated or falsified by searching for rainfall rituals in other well-known Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian
religious systems that also arose during slavery. Among these are Trinidadian Shango, Cuban Santeria, and Brazilian Candomble. In a
brief perusal we have found no rain rituals. But systematic research on this specific question has yet to be carried out.

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 “Coming Full Circle”

RABBI WAGENSBERG writes:16

Parshas Bechukosai begins by telling us that if we involve ourselves in the study of Torah (Rashi
Bechukosai, 26:3, citing Toras Kohanim, 26:2), we will receive rain and produce (Parshas
Bechukosai, 26:4), and we will live in peace (Parshas Bechukosai, 26:6).

It turns out that three points have been made here: 1) engage in the study of Torah, 2) receive
parnassah (livelihood; represented by the rain and produce), and 3) live in peace. One question
that could be raised is, “What is the connection between these three points?”

In order to begin answering this question, we are going to turn to a fascinating story that is found
in the Talmud.

16
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Rabbi-Wagensberg--on-Parshas-Behar-Behuchosai
2020.html?soid=1104865020373&aid=68GhqShru4M

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The Gemara (Ta’anis, chap. 3, “Seder Ta’aniyos Eilu”, pg. 23a) tells us that once upon a time,
there was a terrible drought. Most of the winter had already passed, and there was still no rain. A
delegation went to Choni Hama’agal (Choni the Circle Drawer) and begged him to daven to
Hashem that it should rain. Choni “ug ugah” (drew a circle) on the ground and stood inside of it.
Choni said to Hashem, “Master of the Universe, Your children have turned to me for I am like
a member of Your household. I swear by Your Great Name that I am not going to budge from
here until You have compassion on Your children.”

Immediately, it began to drizzle lightly. Choni said to Hashem, “That is not what I asked for. I
asked for rain that would fill cisterns, ditches, and caves.” Suddenly, it began to rain with
tremendous force. Choni said to Hashem, “That is not what I asked for. I asked for rain of
benevolence, blessing, and bounty.” Then it began to rain normally, and it continued to rain so
steadily that there was flooding, and the people had to climb to the top of Har Habayit (the Temple
Mount) to save themselves from drowning.

The people said to Choni, “Rebbi, just as you davened that rain should fall, daven that it should go
away.” Choni said to them, I received a tradition that teaches that one should not pray to remove
excessive good. However, I understand the predicament that we are in, so I will pray.”

Choni said to Hashem, “Master of the Universe, Your Nation Israel whom You have taken out of
Egypt cannot endure excessive punishment nor excessive good. If You get angry with them, they
will not be able to endure, and if You shower abundant bounty upon them, they will also not be
able to endure. May it be Your will that the rains stop so that there will be relief in the world.”

Suddenly, the wind blew and dispersed the clouds. The sun began to shine, and the people went
out to the fields and began collecting truffles (a rich flavored fungus that grows underground and
is valued as a delicacy) and mushrooms.

There are a number of questions that come to mind regarding this story. For instance, what was
the meaning behind drawing a circle in the ground? This circle was so momentous that from that
day forward Choni was nicknamed “Choni Hama’agal” (Choni the Circle Drawer). What was that
circle all about?

Additionally, how was it ok for Choni to swear by God’s Name that he would not leave the circle
until Hashem brought rain? Since when is it OK to give God an ultimatum? Was Choni threatening
God? How was it Ok to force God’s hand, so to speak? And yet, it worked. How did it work?

The story continues. Afterwards, Shimon ben Shatach sent a message to Choni. In that message,
Shimon ben Shatach was very upset with Choni. So much so, that Shimon ben Shatach said that
he should place Choni under a ban for causing there to be a chilul Hashem (a desecration of God’s
name).

You see, there were worshippers of an idol called Ba’al. Those idolaters said that their god, Ba’al,
would make it rain. In order to disprove Ba’al and those idolaters, Eliyahu Hanavi swore that it
would not rain for three years (Melachim Aleph, 17:1). But now Choni swore that it should rain.

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Therefore, no matter what happens, Choni’s words will cause there to be an oath in vain, because
if it does not rain as Eliyahu Hanavi swore, it will make Choni’s oath in vain, and if it does rain as
Choni swore, it will make Eliyahu’s oath in vain. Either way, there will be a chilul Hashem.
Therefore, Shimon ben Shatach wanted to excommunicate Choni Hama’agal for creating a
situation which would result in a desecration of God’s Name.

However, Shimon ben Shatach said, “What can I do? You (Choni) are like a son who acts
petulantly (unreasonably impatient) before God, and He (God) still grants your every wish. You
are like the son who asks his father for a hot bath, and then changes his mind for a cold shower,
and the father gives his son whatever he wants. You are like the son that asks for nuts, almonds,
peaches, and pomegranates, and the father delivers his every whim. About you (Choni) it is said,
‘Your father and mother will be glad, and the one who bore you will rejoice’ (Mishlei, 23:25).”

Another difficulty with this story is Shimon ben Shatach’s criticism. Apparently, there was no
chilul Hashem between the two oaths because Choni Hama’agal did not live at the same time as
Eliyahu Hanavi. Rather, Choni lived hundreds of years after Eliyahu Hanavi. Therefore, both oaths
could be fulfilled without any contradiction. Eliyahu’s oath that there should not be rain came true
in his day, and Choni’s oath that there should be rain came true in his day. If so, what was bothering
Shimon ben Shatach?

The Shvilei Pinchas begins by answering the first question, at least partially. One connection
between parnassah and shalom (points 1 & 2 of Parshas Bechukosai) is based on a Gemara in Baba
Metzia (chap. 4, “Hazahav”, pg. 59a) where Rav Yehuda said that one should be very careful with
one’s produce (i.e. money) because many arguments break out in a household because of financial
difficulties (see Tehillim, 147:14). In fact, Rav Papa said that there was a common phrase that
people used to repeat which says, “When the barley is gone from the pitcher, strife comes knocking
at the door.”

From this source we see that a good parnassah breeds shalom because when there is enough money
to go around, people are more relaxed, and harmony prevails. This source just explained the
connection between points 2 & 3 in Parshas Bechukosai.

The Shvilei Pinchas adds that the answer to the other part of the first question (concerning the
connection between Torah study and parnassah and peace) can also be understood in light of the
fact that the study of Torah serves as a segula (charm) which brings parnassah, as it says, “If there
is no Torah, there is no flour (meaning parnassah; Avos, chap. 3, “Akavya”, Mishna 21; the opinion
of Rebbi Elazar ben Azaria).

Not only is Torah study connected to parnassah, but it is also connected to peace. This is found at
the end of Meseches Berachos, (chap. 9, “Haroeh”, pg. 64a) where Rebbi Elazar said in the name
of Rebbi Chanina, “Torah scholars increase peace in the world.”

Therefore, the three points made at the beginning of Parshas Bechukosai are all connected. The
first point about Torah study, leads to the second point about parnassah, and it also leads to the
third point about peace. It seems that peace is a goal that we should be striving to achieve.

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Now we can begin to address the questions related to the story of Choni Hama’agal, because we
are going to see that this story was also about peace. But first, we must share two other Talmudic
passages.

The Gemara (Berachos, chap. 1, “M’eimasai”, pg. 4b) cites Rebbi Yochanan who asked why the
letter nun is missing from the Ashrei prayer. Meaning, although the Ashrei prayer goes along the
acrostic of the Aleph Beis, there is no sentence in Ashrei which begins with the letter nun. The
question is, “Why?”

He answered that it is because the letter nun stands for the “nefilah” (downfall) of the Jewish
people (see Amos, 5:4). Since the first letter of “nefilah” (downfall) begins with the letter nun, it
makes the letter nun an ominous letter. Therefore, Dovid Hamelech did not want to begin a verse
with the letter nun.

However, Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak said that Dovid Hamelech still found a way of incorporating
the letter nun into Ashrei. The letter nun is found in the verse that begins with the letter samech.
That verse reads, “Somech Hashem L’chol Hanoflim” (Hashem supports all the fallen ones;
Tehillim, 145:14). The word “noflim” (fallen) in this verse begins with the letter nun, and yet the
verse begins by saying that Hashem “somech” (supports) all those noflim.

So, it turns out that since the letter samech is the first letter of the word somech, it stands for
support, and since letter nun is the first letter of noflim, it stands for fallen. We are about to see a
Mishna and a Gemara which are going to shed more light upon these two letters.

The Mishna (Ta’anis, chap. 4, “Bishlosha Perakim”, Mishna 8, pg. 26b) quotes Rebbi Shimon ben
Gamliel (Rashb”ag) who said, “There were never joyous days for the Jewish people like Tu B’Av
(the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month Av).” This statement has perplexed even the greatest of
minds over the centuries. In what way is Tu B’Av the most joyous of all other days? What
happened on Tu B’Av that made it the happiest day of the year?

Although the Gamara itself provides several answers to this question, Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua
Heshel of Apt (the Apter Rebbe, 1748 Poland – 1825 Ukraine) in his sefer Ohev Yisrael (Shavuos,
pgs. 266-267; Likkutim Chadashim, pg. 330) offers a phenomenal approach in understanding the
meaning of Tu B’Av. His explanation will become clearer through the lenses of another Talmudic
passage.

At the end of Meseches Ta’anis (chap. 4, “Bishlosha Perakim”, pg. 31a) Rebbi Elazar says that, in
the future, in Gan Eden, Hashem is going to make the tzaddikim sit in a “mechol” (circle).
Hashem’s Divine Presence will be in the center and each tzaddik will point to the Shechina in the
center and say, ‘Behold, this is our God, we hoped to Him that He would save us, this is Hashem
to Whom we hoped, let us exult and be glad in His salvation,’” (Yeshaya, 25:9).

The Apter Rebbe explains the idea behind this circle of tzaddikim in the following way. He says
that each tzaddik has his own unique approach in serving Hashem. All of these approaches are
beautiful and true (Eiruvin, chap. 1, “Mavui Shehu Gavoah”, pg. 13b) because each tzaddik uses
his God given talents and strengths to serve Hashem in the best way that he can. Each tzaddik was

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meant to fulfil his own unique function and mission in this world. As such, all tzaddikim are equal
because they all participated in Divine service to the best of their abilities.

Therefore, each tzaddik is equally close to Hashem. This is why Hashem will have these tzaddikim
sit in a circle with Hashem’s Divine Presence in the center. This will demonstrate that each tzaddik
is equally close to Hashem. At that time, there will be tremendous rejoicing amongst everybody
because of the equality and comradery that will exist between everyone.

The Apter Rebbe says that now we can understand the Rashba”g’s statement a little bit better. The
Rashba”g said, “There are no happier days on the Jewish calendar than TU B’Av.” We thought
that the Rashba”g was referring to a specific date on the Jewish calendar. However, there is an
alternative understanding of “Tu B’Av.” “Tu B’Av” does not just mean the “fifteenth day of Av,”
but rather it could also mean the “fifteenth letter of the Aleph Beis.” This is because the word “Av”
is spelled aleph beis. Therefore, “Av” can refer to the Aleph Beis.

The fifteenth letter of the Aleph Beis is the letter samech. The shape of a letter samech is round.
Therefore, the letter samech represents the circle of tzaddikim in Gan Eden. This futuristic event
will take place after the final Geula. At that time, there will be no jealousy, but rather boundless
joy amongst everyone because of the equality between them.

This is what the Rashba”g meant when he said that there is no joyous occasion that can compare
with Tu B’Av because Tu B’Av refers to the celebration that will happen when we are all sitting
in a circle around Hashem’s Shechina, represented by the fifteenth letter (Tu) of the Aleph Beis
(Av). At that time there will be more joy than we have ever experienced before.

The Shvilei Pinchas adds that this will help us understand why the letter nun represents nefila,
whereas the letter samech represents semicha. It is not just because the word nefila begins with a
nun, and the word semicha begins with a samech. It is much more than that.

A regular letter nun is in the shape of a half-broken circle. This brokenness hints at sinas chinum
(baseless hatred) and argumentativeness which ‘breaks’ people apart. This is what causes our
nefila.

The tikkun of this brokenness is hinted to in the letter samech. This is because the shape of a letter
samech is round which is a complete circle without any brokenness. This completeness will
transpire when we are all sitting in a circle equally close to Hashem. When we strive for such unity,
we will merit the redemption and that will be our somech (support).

Therefore, the meaning of the verse, “Somech Hashem L’chol Hanoflim” is that some people naflu
(fell) in sinas chinum. But Hashem will somech (support) them by making us all like a samech,
sitting in a circle equally close to Hashem. Then there will be no jealousy or strife; just unity and
love.

Now we can understand another meaning behind why Choni drew a circle. The Shvilei Pinchas
says that Choni saw that there was no rain. As such, there was no produce. That meant that there

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was no parnassah. As a result of that, there was no harmony because very often financial
difficulties arise when money is tight (Baba Metzia ibid).

Therefore, Choni specifically drew a circle because a circle is the same shape as the letter samech.
By drawing a circle, Choni was saying that he wanted to connect to the energy of the letter samech.
The energy of a samech is peace because it represents the peace between everybody sitting in a
circle around the Shechina in Gan Eden.

Choni was trying to say that he was going to work on shalom (peace) and achdus (unity). When
Hashem sees that we are in pursuit of shalom, Hashem will grant us our wishes, measure for
measure, and give us something that will help achieve that desired shalom. That something is rain,
because when it rains, there is produce. Then there is parnassah, and then people will be more
relaxed, and then there can be harmony and peace.

In order to address the remaining questions (how Choni could give God an ultimatum; and what
was bothering Shimon ben Shatach if there would be no chilul Hashem because Choni lived
hundreds of years after Eliyahu Hanavi), we are going to have to share a kabbalistic secret.

The Rama M’Fano (Rabbi Menachem Azaria of Fano, Italy, 1548-1620) in his sefer, Gilgulei
Neshamos, (#8), cites his Rebbi, Rabbi Yisrael Sarug Ahkenazi, who received a teaching from the
Arizal who said that Choni Hama’agal was a gilgul (reincarnation) of Eliyahu Hanavi.

The Shvilei Pinchas says that there are some sources which support this notion. The Gemara
(Ta’anis ibid) quotes Rebbi Yochanan who said that Choni was bothered by a verse in Tehillim
(126:1) which seems to imply that a person can sleep for seventy years (see Rashi ibid). Choni
wondered how a person could possibly sleep for seventy years.

So, once upon a time, Choni was walking down the road when he saw a man planting a carob tree.
Choni asked him how long it takes for this tree to bear fruits. The man said that it takes seventy
years. Choni asked, “Are you certain that you will be alive in seventy years from now to enjoy its
fruits?” The man responded, “When I came into this world, there were carob trees here for me to
eat from. A long time ago, my forefathers planted them for me. Therefore, I am planting this tree
for my descendants in the future.
Satisfied with that answer, Choni sat down to have a meal.

Suddenly, sleep overcame him. As he slept, a rocky formation enclosed over him which hid him
from sight. He slept for seventy years. When he woke up, he saw a man gathering fruit from the
carob tree. Choni asked him, “Are you the man who planed this tree?” The man responded, “No,
my grandfather did, I am his grandson.” Choni said to himself, “I must have slept for seventy
years.”

Choni rushed home. He saw a man in his house. Choni asked him, “Are you the son of Choni
Hama’agal?” He replied, “No, Choni’s son has passed on, but I am Choni’s grandson.” Excited,
Choni said to him, “I am Choni Hama’agal,” but his grandson didn’t believe him.

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Disappointed, Choni went to the Beis Midrash. He overheard the scholars there discussing a Torah
topic, and finally they said, “The law is as clear to us as in the days of Choni Hama’agal. Remember
how Choni was able to field any question that the Sages posed? This was because Choni had such
clarity in Torah that he was able to resolve any difficulty. Well, today we feel that we reached the
clarity of Choni about our subject matter.”

Excited, Choni said to them, “I am Choni!” However, nobody believed him. Choni felt saddened.
Therefore, he prayed that Hashem should take his soul away, and Hashem answered that prayer of
his as well.

The Shvilei Pinchas points out that from this story we see that Choni had the ability of answering
all questions and resolving all doubts. It is interesting to note that this is precisely the same ability
that Eliyahu Hanavi possesses. We can see this from the following.

When the Sages of the Talmud are engaged in a heated debate, and they cannot conclude, the
discussion ends with the word “teiku.” As a word, “teiku” means “unresolved.” However, the
Tosafos Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller, 1579 Poland – 1654 Prague; Meseches Ediyos,
chap. 8, “Heyid”, Mishna 7) says that “teiku” is also an acronym which stands for, “Tishbi Yitaretz
Kushyos Va’abayos” (the Toshabite [a reference to Eliyahu Hanavi] will answer questions and
problems).This means that one day Eliyahu Hanavi will come and resolve these unanswered
debates in the Talmud.

By the fact that both Choni and Eliyahu possessed the same ability of resolving even the most
perplexing aspects of Torah, it lends support to the idea that Choni was indeed a gilgul of Eliyahu.

Moreover, there is a historic pattern which supports this idea as well. In Seder Hadoros (Rabbi
Yechiel Halprin, Minsk, Belarus, 1660-1742), regarding his biographical sketch of the Tanaim and
Amoraim (#8), it says that the drought in the days of Choni lasted for specifically three years
before they came to him to pray on their behalf.

Interestingly, the drought in Eliyahu Hanavi’s time also lasted for three years until Eliyahu prayed
that it should rain again. This identical pattern further indicates that these two personalities (Choni
and Eliyahu) were connected to each other spiritually.

This information will be very helpful in answering the remaining questions. This is because Rebbi
Yehoshua said in the name of Rebbi Yochanan ben Zakai, in the name of his Rebbi, in the name
of the Rebbi before him, going all the way back to a Halacha from Moshe at Sinai, that one of the
primary functions of Eliyahu Hanavi is to bring peace to the world (Meseches Ediyos, chap. 8,
“Heyid”, Mishna 7). This peace is meant to prepare the world for the ultimate peace that will exist
in the circle that we will sit in around Hashem.

Since Choni was a gilgul of Eliyahu, it would stand to reason that he also had that same purpose
of bringing peace to the world. Since this mission was not completed in the days of Eliyahu, he
had to come back as Choni and continue doing that job.

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This is how Choni was allowed to speak to God with force. Choni was saying to Hashem that the
mission which God had sent him to the world to do was make as much peace as possible so that
the world would be ready for the totality of peace which will be experienced as we sit around
Hashem’s Shechina in Gan Eden.

Choni argued that rain must come so that there will be parnassah which breeds peace. This would
help prepare the world for the ultimate peace in Gan Eden. This was the mission that God sent
Choni on to begin with. Therefore, Choni knew that he could make demands of God and give
Hashem ultimatums because Choni knew that this in and of itself was Hashem’s will. This is
precisely what Hashem wanted of him.

It turns out that Choni’s ugah (circle) was meant to generate peace which would prepare the world
for the ultimate peace that will be experienced in the “mechol” (circle) of tzaddikim around
Hashem’s Shechina. The Ben Yehoyada (Meseches Ta’anis, pg. 23a; Rabbi Yosef Chaim of
Bagdad, Iraq, 1835-1909) points out that the words “ugah” and “mechol” share the same numerical
value, 84. This numerical equivalency teaches us that Choni’s ugah was in order to prepare the
world for the future mechol.

The Shvilei Pinchas adds that this is why Choni’s nickname was Hama’agal after the circle that he
drew. This nickname meant to convey that Choni was the one whose mission was to bring peace
to the world represented by the circle which hinted at the future circle of the tzaddikim in Gan
Eden.

The Shvilei Pinchas says that this also explains what was bothering Shimon ben Shatach. Shimon
ben Shatach claimed that although Choni lived hundreds of years after Eliyahu, nevertheless, to
the trained eye that can kabbalistically see that Choni was a gilgul of Eliyahu, there is going to be
somewhat of a chilul Hashem because Eliyahu took an oath that there should not be rain, and yet
Choni swore that there must be rain. This looks like a contradiction stemming from the same
person. That was the chilul Hashem.

However, Shimon ben Shatach did not excommunicate Choni because, on the contrary, people
will also see Hashem’s incredible Hashgacha Pratis (Divine intervention) by causing there to be
reincarnations spanning the generations. Meaning, Eliyahu had sworn that it should not rain in
order to disprove the worshippers of Ba’al who claimed that Ba’al could make it rain. Although
Eliyahu had good intensions, simultaneously, Eliyahu caused the Jewish people to suffer in a
terrible drought for three years.

Therefore, Hashem brought Eliyahu back down to Earth in the form of Choni so that Choni would
bring relief to the world which was suffering from a drought that Choni did not cause. When Choni
davened and brought the rain, he fixed the old problem of withholding rain from the Jewish people
when he was Eliyahu.

This explains why Shimon ben Shatach compared Choni to a son whose father fulfils his every
wish. The word for son is “ben.” The word “ben” is numerically 52, which is the same exact
numerical value as the name “Eliyahu.” This shows us that Shimon ben Shatach understood who
Choni’s previous transmigration was.

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Shimon ben Shatach had added that Choni was like the son who demands nuts, almonds, peaches,
and pomegranates from his father, and is granted it. Shimon ben Shatach meant to say that he
understood that Choni just wanted to bring the Jewish people produce (represented by those fruits)
so that they would have parnassah and subsequently have peace which would help prepare the
world for the final Geula when complete peace will prevail.

In conclusion, this story about Choni Hama’agal is all about peace, which is also one of the
messages of Parshas Bechukosai, as we mentioned earlier.

As a means of a practical application of this teaching, let us try, a little bit more, to daven, not just
for ourselves, but for each other. This means not just to daven for our families, friends, neighbors,
and co-workers, but to daven even for strangers. May I be so bold as to suggest that we even daven
for people that we cannot stand.
In this way we demonstrate that we want to live in peace and harmony with each other. As such,
we will be zocheh to the Geula Shileima when there will be total peace as we dance in a circle
around the Shechina in Gan Eden.

So, may we all be blessed with the willingness to follow in the path of Choni Hama’agal and daven
for each other’s physical and financial well-being, so that we bring peace to the world, and thus
deserve to witness Hashem somech – or shall I say samech - us noflim at the time of the Geula,
when Hashem will perform Nissim for us, when we will point to the Shechina with our fingers as
we sit in a circle around Hakadosh Baruch Hu, which will give Eliyahu Hanavi such nachas that
his mission has finally been fulfilled.

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 17

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http://kerem.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Kerem-12-Hyim-Shafner-....-The-Dream-of-Exile.pdf

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 Honi the Circle Drawer

Isaiah Ben-Pazi writes:18

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Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period , 2017, Vol. 48, No. 4/5 (2017), pp. 551-563

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