Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
There is a Gemara (Talmud) in Ta’anit which has bothered me for many years. In it (23a), Rabbi Yochanan tells us that all his life, Choni HaMa’agal (of “circle-in-the-sand-until-it-rains” fame) was bothered by a pasuk (verse) in Tehillim:
“Shir HaMa’alot, b’shuv Hashem et shivat Tziyon, hayinu kecholmim — A song of ascents: when God returned the captivity of Zion, we were like dreamers.”
The Jewish people spent seventy years in exile in Bavel (Babylonia) between the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) and the rebuilding of the second. Choni wondered: What exactly does it mean to compare those seventy years to a dream? Can someone sleep for seventy years? Does someone dream that seventy years have elapsed?
The Gemara famously relates that Choni was eventually shown the answer in a remarkable way: he fell asleep and remained asleep for seventy years. [Author’s note: If you thought Washington Irving’s story of a man in the Catskill Mountains who slept for twenty years and woke up in a world very different from the one he left behind was original, it’s more likely that he had a Jewish neighbor who learned Masechet Ta’anit.]
But what always bothered me wasn’t Choni’s question. It was how much the question bothered him. We are very familiar with verses that seem poetic, metaphorical, or otherwise in need of explanation. Why did this one trouble Choni so deeply that, as the Gemara puts it, it pained him his entire life? Why couldn’t he simply accept that the verse contained some deeper meaning and move on?
Every time I’ve learned this Gemara, I’ve wondered about that. Recently, I heard a tragic story that gave me a new perspective on what Choni may have been struggling with.
A Lifetime Like a Dream
Let me explain.
I didn’t find any commentaries who agreed with what I’m about to suggest, so I could very well be wrong. The Ben Yehoyada offers a different approach. He suggests that something needed to be accomplished through Choni’s seventy-year sleep, and therefore Hashem drove him to ask a question that would ultimately lead to that experience.
My approach is much more pragmatic. Seventy years, which was the amount of time we were in Bavel after the first Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, correlates to the lifespan of a human being, as it says in Tehillim, “The days of our years in them is seventy years…”
My thought here was that Choni was wondering: Can a person really go through an entire lifetime oblivious to the fact that he is just like a dreamer? This world is like a passing dream. The things we see and experience aren’t real. They are scenarios created by Hashem to test our mettle and help us grow. If I were Choni, my wonderment would grow and pain me every time I saw people forgetting about Hashem and thinking this world was concrete on its own. How can you remain in your slumber?! You’re approaching the end of your life; do you not yet see that this is all make-believe?!
The Missing Rope
And that’s where this terrible story came up. On June 13, 2026, a woman in Brazil decided to go bungee-jumping. That’s where people have an elastic rope tied to themselves, then jump or, as in this case, are propelled off a bridge or tall structure. They freefall for a time, and then are stopped short of hitting the ground or the water by the bungee cord. It’s thrilling, exciting, and people record the event for posterity.
In this case, the three men involved in this operation seemingly forgot to connect the rope to her. When they tossed her from 130 feet in the air, there was nothing to stop her fall. The woman survived the fall but passed away hours later from her injuries.
I wondered what she thought about as she fell. She probably imagined this was the greatest time of her life. She was really living! She was getting the rush of adrenaline as she filmed her freefall for her friends to watch later, except she didn’t live to tell the tale. If she was unaware that the rope had not been secured, she would have gone through the entire fall without realizing the situation she was truly in. She, like someone in a dream, would have had no idea of the actual harm that was about to befall her at the end of her journey.
Waking Up
And that, I think, is what bothered Choni HaMaagal. That a person could live an entire life chasing “the dream.” The dream of honor, wealth, pleasure, which will ultimately lead them to a very ignoble end. When they reach the end of their rope, they will have nothing to cushion the fall if they haven’t realized that this world is intended for us to achieve and accomplish eternal things. If they don’t realize the peril of missed opportunities and not having a secure connection to Hashem, then, when they finally grasp the severity of their plight, it will sadly be too late.
By Rabbi Jonathan Gewirtz
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