Yom Kippur

AND WRITE AND SIGN, AND COUNT, AND NUMBER, AND REMEMBER ALL THE FORGOTTEN THINGS AND OPEN THE BOOK OF MEMORIES.

(From the prayer, Unetanah Tokef)

 

Rabbi said: Which is the right course that a man should choose for himself?

That which is an honor to him who does it, and which also brings him honor from mankind.

Be heedful of a light precept as of a grave one, for you do not know the reward granted for each precept.

Reckon the loss incurred by the fulfillment of a precept against the reward secured by its observance, and the gain gotten by a transgression against the loss it involves.

Reflect upon three things, and you will not come within the power of sin:

Know what is above you: a seeing eye, and a hearing ear, and all your deeds are written in a book.

(Avot 2:1, based on Hertz translation)

 

 

 

 

Yonah and the People of Nineveh are in the Same Boat

Menahem Klein

Two facts are conspicuous in the beginning of the Book of Yonah. First, the story is not set in a particular time. We do not know when and under the reign of which king the Prophet Yonah lived and operated. This serves to make the Book of Yonah timeless. Paradoxically, detachment from any concrete context makes the book universally relevant.

Secondly, the Book of Yonah begins with a story told in manner of a chronicle. Factual and dry, it describes events taking place in a familiar environment - everyday occurrences. Today, conversations with God seem extraordinary, but not so in the biblical world. Certainly as far as the prophets were concerned, hearing God's voice is an everyday affair in Scripture. Yonah leaves for Yaffo, buys a ticket for a ship sailing in the opposite direction from that in which God has commanded him to travel, and the storms breaks out. Storms were suffered frequently in the sailor's world. The story opens with familiar and realistic materials, with which it gains our attention as readers. In addition, each of us harbors something of Yonah within himself: sometimes, we also prefer to escape our responsibilities towards others and ignore the voices which call upon us to go forth in the name of lofty ideals. We, too, sometimes prefer to hide in our own little space while a great storm roars around us, pretending that we have no part of it, denying the fact that it will only be quelled if we enter its very center and soothe it.

However, the Book of Yonah does not end there, and its message is not completed. Truth be told, that is only the first in a series of lessons which we will try to learn with the help of the biblical text and midrashim.

The sailors are not the kind of people whom we expect to find in their profession: Gentiles who have heard of the Hebrews and their God. Sea-farers who place great value on human life, even that of a fugitive who does not share their religion or nationality. Even when he asked them, the sailors refused Yonah's request that they save themselves and the other passengers by sacrificing him and throwing him into the sea. The Sages claim that the sailors tried to save the ship in any other possible way, "they threw the ship's cargo into the sea, but it did not help, they wanted to return to shore, but they could not, they took Yonah and stood him up on ship's bow... they submerged him up to his knees, and the sea calmed. They lifted him up and the sea became increasingly stormy" (Yalkut Shimoni in the name of Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer). When there was no alternative left but to throw him into the tumultuous sea, they prayed to God that He not hold the man's sacrifice against them.

According to the midrash, the sailors who were so anxious over the life of a foreign fugitive were allowed to see how the fish spat Yonah up onto dry land. This whole experience struck them with a great fear (1:16). According to the midrash, after seeing the fish spit Yonah up, the sailors returned to Yaffo, went up to the Temple in Jerusalem, and converted. And what of Yonah? Did the sailors' concern for human life make an impression upon him, convincing him to go to Nineveh in order to save the lives of tens of thousands of its inhabitants? No. He learned nothing from the way the sailors treated him, and he learned nothing from the terror which had seized upon the ships passengers.

After being thrown into the sea, Yonah passes through an experience which is opposite to that which had occurred on the ship. According to the midrash mentioned above, his stay inside the fish began as a pleasant, interesting and enlightening episode. Yonah enjoyed spacious accommodations inside the fish, where he saw "all that is in the seas and the depths." Yonah underwater is described as possessing a character opposite to that which he had above water. On board the ship he was passive - sleeping through his escape. Underwater, he exercises the great powers of influence that were typical of him before taking flight to Tarshish. On dry land Yonah was charismatic, inspiring not only Jews, but also people who had never known of him before. He was the right man to sway the hearts of the gentile residents of Nineveh, from the king down to the lowliest slave, to convince all of them to repent within a bit more than a month's allocated time. According o the midrash, Yonah came back to his old self while living under water, exhorting a whale not to eat his fishy host. In other words, while under water, Yonah was transformed again into the powerful prophet he had been before receiving the call to visit Nineveh. But Yonah left that call behind him.

In exchange for saving it (and, as a consequence, himself) from the whale, the fish that hosted Yonah showed him the ocean, "the paths that Israel passed through in the Red Sea... the place from which the waves come forth...the pillars of the earth and its foundations... Sheol of the underworld... hell... God's Temple... and he saw there the Even Ha-Shtiyah lodged in the depths, and he saw there the sons of Korah, standing on it and praying. And Yonah spent three days and three nights in the fish, but he did not pray," despite all he had seen and learned. Beneath the water, Yonah reaches more places and achieves deeper understanding than he did on land. New horizons opened before this uniquely talented man, but they do not move him to turn to God. Despite all he has learned, Yonah does not accept the mission to save the people of Nineveh. Only later, when God moves him into a pregnant fish, whose insides he must share with "365 thousands of tens of thousands of small fish...and he was sorely troubled, do to the congestion and filth, he immediately directed his heart in prayer." His own crush and discomfort brought Yonah to accept the mission to Nineveh. Yonah's condition was similar to that of Nineveh's inhabitants after they became aware of the danger hanging over them. Both were motivated by threats to their own personal safety. This is an entirely human reaction, but Yonah failed to understand it and develop sympathy for the people of Nineveh.

As the rest of the story demonstrates, Yonah set off for Nineveh with mixed feelings. He did manage to exercise his amazing powers of suggestion, although he did so warily and under God's duress. Thanks to him, the people of Nineveh repented, but Yonah disapproved of God's willingness to accept repentance that was spurred on by an existential threat. Yonah quarrels with God, despite the fact that he himself had only left for Nineveh after his own bitter experience beneath the sea.

Now it will not be the fish, or the sea, or the sailors who will teach Yonah, but rather God Himself. God will not do this by exposing the secrets and grandeur of creation to him; not through trips to the paths revealed when the Red Sea was split, not through visits with Korah's sons, who had been swallowed up by the earth, and not with the aid of the Even Ha-Shtiyah in the Holy of Holies. This lesson will be taught in a place that displays nothing of nature's magnificence, far from the Land of Israel and the Temple, in an open place east of Nineveh, and Yonah's instructors shall be a tiny worm and a modest gourd-plant. The book closes with a message appropriate to its timeless opening. There is no reason to wait for a miracle, to enter a holy place or witness rare wonders of nature in order to understand God's ways. One's plain and immediate surroundings will suffice for learning the book's central, climactic, message. That and more. Yonah craves death's release from the heat and sorrow which afflict him after the plant dries up. Yonah was not anxious for the human beings who lived under the danger of imminent death in Nineveh, but rather for a plant he had made use of. He had not raised the plant nor cared for it - he had merely exploited it for a short while. Perhaps, if the people of Nineveh had served him he would have been concerned for them as well. In contrast, God spares the people of Nineveh, even though they had spent most of their days in rebellion against Him, repenting only while under the threat of annihilation. God accepted their coerced repentance, just as He had accepted Yonah's coerced repentance. Both were cases involving human beings and all-to-human reactions. With this we return from the book's conclusion to its timeless, extra-national and pan-human beginning - to the point of view valued by God.

Dr. Menahem Klein, a member of the editorial board of "Shabbat Shalom" and the Board of Directors of Oz Ve'Shalom-Netivot Shalom, teaches in the Political Science Department at Bar Ilan University.

 

 

Repentance from Love and from Fear

Reish Lakish said: Great is repentance, for it makes deliberate sins count as accidental ones, for it is said, Return, O Israel to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in sinning (Hosea 14:2). A sin is deliberate, but he calls it a stumbling block!

Could this be?

Did Reish Lakish not say: Great is repentance, for it makes deliberate sins count as merits, for it is said, And when a wicked man turns back from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by virtue of these (Ezekiel 33:19). It is not a problem: Here [-the latter - refers to repentance] out of love [of God], here [-the former - refers to repentance] out of fear [of God].

(Yoma 86b)

 

Repentance raises a person up from all of the low-places of the world, but even so, it is not a stranger to the world. Rather, it lifts up the world and life with itself. It refines sinful tendencies. The powerful will, which breaks through all limits and causes sin is itself transformed into a living force that performs great and lofty works for the good and for a blessing.

(From Rabbi A.I. Kook ztz"l, Al Ha-Teshuvah)

 

The repentance which brings about a radical transformation of a whole way of life leading to a rebirth of the personality is repentance of redemption; another type of repentance, unlike this kind, is directed against a specific sin - it is repentance of expiation.

(Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, On Repentance, Pinchas H. Peli, editor, pg. 174)

 

On the eve of Yom Kippur, one should devote his attention towards placating all those against whom he has sinned, since Yom Kippur atones for sins between man and God, but Yom Kippur cannot atone for sins between man and his fellow, until he assuages him. Even if he merely teased him with words, he must appease him, going to him. If he is not appeased the first time, he must return again and a third time. Every time he should take three people with him to assuage him, in order that he forgive him, And if, after three attempts, he will not be appeased, there is no reason to continue cajoling him. These words are true of his fellow, but in the case of his rabbi, he must bring many friends (to intercede) until he is assuages. If he dies, he shall bring ten people and stand them by his grave and say, "I have sinned to the God of Israel and to so-and-so whom I have offended. This is done so that the heart of each person of Israel will be content with his fellow, so that there will be no room for Satan to speak against them.

(Tur Orah Hayyim, 606)

 

Our Father, our King, deal kindly with us and answer us, for we are without [good] deeds - treat us with charity and loving-kindness, and save us.

Then the Lord said: "You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared over night and perished overnight. And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well.

(Yonah 4:10-11)

 

God has mercy on man and beast, that is to say, on man as on the beast, and this reminds us of the parallel verse, You save man and beast, Lord (Tehillim 36:7). That is to say, God's mercy and kindness are completely independent of man and his deeds, as the prophet said, for my plans are not your plans nor are My ways your ways... But as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). God's relationship to man and to the world are none other than what is termed "the Divine matter" which is above all human actions and behavior, even above man's acts of repentance.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sihot al Hagei Yisrael Ve'Moadav, pg. 193)