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Many are familiar with the legend of Rip Van Winkle, who sleeps through a generation of historic changes, falling asleep with the American colonies subject to English rule and waking to discover a free United States of America. Thousands of years earlier, the Talmud offers a similar story. Often called the story of Honi, the Circle Maker, here is his tale:

One day, Honi the Circle Maker, was walking along the road. He saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi said to him, “How many years does it take for a carob tree to bear fruit?” The man responded, “Seventy years.”

Honi then asked him, “How do you know if you will live another seventy years and taste the tree’s fruit?” The man said to him, “I found a world full of carob trees. Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I plant for my children.” Honi then sat down and ate a plentiful dinner.

As often happens after a big meal, drowsiness overcame him, and Honi fell asleep. Miraculously, a rock formation rose around him, and he became hidden. He slept for seventy years. When he awakened, he crawled from the rocks and went for a walk. He saw a man picking fruit from the carob tree.

Honi said to him, “Are you the one who planted this tree?” The man responded and said to him, “No. I am his grandson.” Honi was startled and exclaimed, “I must have slept for seventy years.” (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 23a)

We are now fully into the month of Elul, the thirty-nine-day period of introspection that culminates with the closing of Yom Kippur’s gates of repentance. During this time, we are instructed to look within and ask these most compelling questions:

• “Whom have I wronged?”
• “How might I do things differently?”
• “What have I done for future generations?”
• “How have my actions contributed to our people’s future, the flourishing of humanity, the earth’s survival, and my grandchildren’s prosperity?”

The imagery of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is clear: none of us is innocent of wrongdoing, none of us is perfectly righteous. All of us can change; everyone can correct our failings.

On the High Holy Days, we are awakened from our slumber by the piercing sound of the shofar, the “tick-tock-tick-tock” of the clock of time passing by, squandered, and by the inner compulsion that we are ever approaching our destiny… which is not nearly as grand as once we dreamed. On these sacred days of Elul and the first days of Tishrei, we are invited to look ahead by looking back. How can we change? How can we do better?

Or, as more aptly asked by Honi in what was rhetorical for him but is anything but for us: how do our actions today plant for those still to come?

Shabbat Shalom.