Wow, this one is action packed! You've got great stuff about Choni, and his peculiar methods of getting what he wants from God. (Similar is chutzpahdickness (sp?) to the prayers of Hannah as outlined in Berachot.) Then you've got good ol' Shimon Ben Shetach basically calling Honi a spoiled child to God's doting parent. THEN, as if that were not enough, you've got the awesome Honi as Rip Van Winkle story, including the famous carob tree for future generations tale. I mean, this is an all-star (steroid free, one hopes) page of text.
One thing I want to mention is that I have (of course) heard the story about the guy planting the carob tree (interesting by the way, that it is davkah carob, since I think carob is viewed basically as the poor man's food, to the point where the rabbis often talk about carob as if it were animal food.) I did not know the context of the story was this amazing discussion of how long a dream can last. And the story seems to answer that a dream can last seventy years, even if different people are doing the dreaming in each successive generation. That is, I think, quite beautiful.
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The interplay between Honi and Shimon b. Shetach at the end of the first story seems to me symbolic of the tension between elite and folk religion. Shimon b. Shetach is the rabbi and represents the establishment that would never condone speaking to God with such audacity. However what Honi (who is not addressed as rabbi) does seems to better reflect the people's feelings about the God's stingy rain policy. It reminds me of the interplay between Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and R Hanina ben Dosa in Berakhot. Two men who also seem to represent the elite and the folk.
What strikes me about the sleeping story is the final phrase - hevruta or metuta. It has achieved some degree of popularity today as a kind of bad-ass learning slogan (at least in some circles). A quick Bar Ilan search of the Bavli and the Yerushalmi showed that this is the only place that that phrase appears. When learning it in the context of the sugiya, it is a much more somber and more depressing expression. Without a community who accepts Honi as Honi, it is not worth being alive.
Yikes dude, that is somber.
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