HONI AND AN INDIGENOUS LAND ETHIC
Let’s start with the carob tree story. This story is oft retold on Tu B’shvat because it encapsulates an earth based ethic.
Honi was out for a walk and he saw a man planting a carbo tree. Honi asked him how long it would take the tree to fruit. The man responds 70 years. Honi asks him if he expects to be around to enjoy the fruit in 70 years and the man says no, but his ancestors planted for him, so he is planting for his descendants.
Honi then sits down for a meal and falls asleep and stays asleep for 70 years. He wakes and sees a man gathering the fruit from the tree. He asks, not sure for how long he slept, if he is the man who planted the tree and the man replies that, no, that was his grandfather who planted the tree.
Honi realizes something is up (duh) and then sees herds of asses that he somehow knows are descendants of his own she-ass. Then he asks about his son, and is told that his son is dead, but his grandson is alive. He announces that he is Honi, but no one believes him, understandably enough. So he goes to the house of study where the teacher says this issue is clear to us as it was in the days of Honi because Honi (supposedly) settled conflicts amongst the sages. He cries out again that he is Honi, and again no one believes him. So knowing things aren’t right, he beseeches the divine to grant him the mercy of death, and he died.
As a point of fact, carob trees actually take 6 or 7 years to fruit, so it does take a faith in the future to plant something that won’t bear fruit for that long. Further, carob trees are relatively long lived; they will bear fruit for 80 to 100 years. I’m intrigued that Honi does not know these facts. Does he ask the question just to further the narrative or are our authors trying to tell us something about Honi not being in touch with this pretty basic agricultural fact?
Let’s turn to this vision of Honi resolving disputes amongst the sages. First, it says that whenever he came to the academy he would settle disputes. This seems to me to imply that he didn’t spend a lot of time there. That means he was doing something else with his time. We don’t know if that means he made his living as a farmer (though if he were that would make it more likely that he would know how long it took a carob tree to fruit), or a practicing magician or what—but it does at least imply the possibility that he wasn’t spending his time teaching at the academy. Second, for someone who supposedly resolved disputes, there’s no actual recorded example of Honi doing that. Just as we will see with Hanina ben Dosa if I write some blogs on another favorite of mine, Honi lives and dies without any trace of Jewish law connected to his name.
Honi’s mysterious partner who plants the carob tree in this story lives in a world that we have lost. How many of us are connected to any kind of land where our grandparents lived? How many of our grandparents were connected to a piece of land, as opposed to living in a city where the most they could even do was grow a few annual vegetables? How many of us live within a 100 miles of where our grandparents lived? Precious few of us can claim any kind of connection to any particular piece of land. We have so little local knowledge. This story, recorded by Rabbis who had great experience of exile, who were being buffeted about by imperial forces much stronger than they were, testifies to a need for rootedness which was threatened, even in their day. So much the more in ours.
The next blog post will be about some possible practices inspired by the example of Honi.
