Honi the Circle Drawer and the Two Thousand Year Sleep Tsafi Sebba - Elran The wide distribution of homiletic ( aggadic ) anthologies at the turn of the twentieth century bears witness to the formative role they played in the construction of the new Hebrew canon . This article examines the first popular , modern anthology , Sihot Minnei Kedem , by Ze ’ ev Jawitz ( 1887 ) , an anthology that paved the way for the famous anthologies of Berdyczewski and Bialik . The article interprets one of the stories from the anthology as an allegory to the Jewish condition at the turn of the twentieth century . It is the story of Honi the Circle Maker who slept for seventy years and woke up to a changed world in which his knowledge and beliefs were put to the test . Like other modern storytellers , such as Goethe and Washington Irving , Jawitz confronts Honi with the rule of time and compels him to choose between eternal life ( chayei olam ) and mortal life ( chayei sha ’ ah ) . This dilemma reflects ...
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