On Friendship, Part 1: A Jewish Rip Van Winkle Story

Over the next few days, I will be writing about friendship. To kick off this series, we begin with the story of a Jewish Rip Van Winkle.

Perhaps you have heard of the story of Rip Van Winkle? Author Washington Irving published the tale of Rip Van Winkle in 1819. Rip fell asleep for 20 years and awoke after the American Revolution was done and over. When he awakens on the mountain, he discovers shocking changes: his musket now rusty and rotting, his beard grown to a foot long, and his dog is nowhere to be found.

He returns to his village, and recognizes no one, nor anyone him. He arrives just after an election, never having cast a ballot in his life, and unaware that the American Revolution has taken place during his long sleep. When townspeople ask for whom he voted, he proclaims himself a faithful subject of King George III, because that is what he knew when he fell asleep twenty years previously. This proclamation to King George causes trouble, until one elderly woman recognizes him as the long-lost Rip Van Winkle. He soon learns that most of his friends were killed fighting in the American Revolution, and there is another man in the village going by the name Rip Van Winkle; it is his son, now grown up.

The author, Washington Irving, seems to be reminding us that all things adapt and change over time. The physical changes in the mountains take time as the seasons change; without time things cannot change. We also look for a clue in the story's opening and unfolding. Rip was basically sleeping through his life. He went to the mountain to escape his "nagging wife" and other chores and duties he was always procrastinating performing.

While we might think having more free time with no responsibilities, and a life with few wrinkles and challenges would be idyllic, the story of Rip Van Winkle tells us otherwise. What he missed in those 20 years, the difficult time of the Revolutionary War, his children growing up, and his wife dying, those were the very years that would have changed him profoundly and challenged him to grow as a person.

I mentioned a Jewish Rip Van Winkle story, so let's get to that.

The sages of the Talmud could not imagine a life without friendly companionship. Allow me to introduce you to Honi ha'Ma'agel, aka Honi the Circle-Maker, who was famous for his ability to successfully pray for rain. It is reported that, on one occasion, when rain had not appeared well into the winter (in the geographic regions of Israel, it rains mainly in the winter), Honi drew a circle in the dust, stood inside it, and informed G!d that he would not move until it rained. When it began to drizzle, Honi told G!d that he was not satisfied and expected more rain; it then began to pour. He explained that he wanted a calm rain, at which point the rain calmed to a normal rain. And this is how he came to be known as Honi the Circle-Maker. His story dos not end there.

The rabbis of old tell us that long after the rain incident, Honi fell asleep, waking after seventy years had passed, 3 1/2 times longer than Rip. When he awoke, he faced despair because he was shunned by a new generation of sages and scholars who neither recognized nor believed him. In his suffering, Honi prayed for death to release him from loneliness. And it is from this part of the story that an unnamed sage uttered, “Either friendship or death” (BT, Ta’anit 23a).

The Talmud tells us: “I have learned much from my teachers, but from my friends more than my teachers” (BT Ta’anit 7a). And Pirkei Avot in the Mishnah tells us, “Come and learn–which is the straight (right) path to which a person should adhere? A good friend.” and again, “Get yourself a companion." In the Hebrew Bible, in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 we read, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he has not another to help him up."

Clearly, abiding friendship is very much a crucial part of our spiritual growth. Perhaps if Rip Van Winkle had such a friend, he would not have slept through twenty years of his life.

While it might seem that sleeping through a few decades of life is only the stuff found in fairy tales, really, there are myriads of ways we can sleep through our lives. Some people sleep through their life with the aid of alcohol or drugs. Some from disability or illness which steals the oomph of life from them. Some numb out in front of TV or computers or CGI gaming.

Can a deep friend bring meaning to our lives when everything around us is crumbling? In the case of Rip Van Winkle, the story begs us to ask, Did they search for Rip, or was he forgettable enough not to have been missed all that much? Even Honi, considered a holy man, seems to have gone missing for seventy years, and we wonder how that cold happen?

Perhaps the deeper story for both of these men, the one we all write everyday with our lives, is in asking, What legacy are we leaving? Whose lives are we touching? What good deeds are we performing? Who are we ignoring in those tasks which take up most of our time day after day? Is the goal more important than the people who are here with us now? Are we seeking earthly accolades to the detriment of those who love us who are here, right now, needing our friendship?

We will continue to explore this topic in the coming days....