In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, Chapter 3 of Tractate Ta’anit, the Talmud turned from the laws of fasting to give us a feast of aggadah. This chapter, I learned from the Koren Talmud, is known in early commentaries as the “Chapter of the Pious,” because it mostly consists of legends about the great sages and their ability to work miracles with God’s help. In telling these stories, however, the Talmud is also pursuing a serious ethical investigation: The rabbis are trying to determine exactly what qualities enable men to win God’s favor. Just as important, the Talmud insists that even the power of the pious is capable of being abused. The ability to coerce God can lead to hubris and vanity—the vices that lie in wait for people proud of their own sanctity.
This is the lesson of one of the most famous anecdotes in the Talmud, which we read in Ta’anit 19a. During a bad drought, the people came to a holy man named Honi HaMe’aggel (“Honi the Circle-Drawer”) and asked him to pray for rain. With a certain hubris, Honi told them to make sure to bring their clay ovens inside, lest they be melted in the rain that his prayer was sure to bring. When he prayed for rain, however, nothing happened. So Honi, acting rather like a child who didn’t get his way, decided to manipulate God into doing what he wanted. “What did he do? He drew a circle on the ground [thus explaining his name] and stood inside it and said before God: Master of the Universe, Your children have turned their faces toward me, so 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.” At this, a trickle of rain started to fall, but Honi told God that it wasn’t good enough: “I did not ask for this, but for rain to fill the cisterns, ditches, and caves.” Thereupon the rain started to fall in floods, but Honi wasn’t satisfied with this either: “I did not ask for this,” he told God, “but for rain of benevolence, blessing, and generosity.” Finally, having got the amount and quality of rain he wanted, Honi asked God to make it stop.
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