Segue from Yom Kippur to Sukkot through the Lens of Yonah

 

The story of Yonah was always a bit of a conundrum for me. I never understood what was so grandiose about it, or so earth shattering about it that it was given prime real estate on  Yom Kippur. Leading up to Mincha, and right before Ne'ila, year in and year out, we read the story – one that sounds more like a parable, or an Aesopian tale, about a man being swallowed by a fish. Truth be told, I always thought there was something nice about it on a sheerly utilitarian level; the fast is at its height, my stomach is rumbling – and here we get to kill a good half an hour, with little intense concentration, or kavanah that you were supposed to muster for the other segments of the Yom Kippur davening. Unfortunately, until this past year, that had been my take on the Book of Jonah (we call it Yonah in Hebrew), somewhat puerile and seemingly failing to grasp the import of the momentous idea portrayed by this pithy yet powerful work.

On a lark, leading up to Yom Kippur, I heard a shiur by a rabbi whose shiurs I have frequented for the last few years, Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Faivelzon. I'd like here – in the next 15 minutes before I have to leave for daf yomi – to share one or two of his insights.

Interestingly, Yonah's first step after deciding to refuse to convey God's prophecy is to leave Eretz Yisrael. He did not think it becoming to stay in the Land of Israel, God's land, a land steeped in prophecy and divine connection, and simultaneously abnegate the will of the One above. He saw the two as being conflictual, and that's why he fled by boat, heading for the nearest shore.

Furthermore, the debate between Yonah and Hashem was stark in the divergent approaches each party took. Hashem commanded Yonah to convey a message that harkened the idea of repentance, of mercy; Yonah felt that Hashem was misguided in his design for a better world, feeling that din or judgment was the more germane divine attribute in the case of the errant people of Ninveh. What's mesmerizing about the narrative is that so few historical characters are famed for their rejection of God's ways; Avraham, the pinnacle of devotion, strives to sacrifice Isaac; Yonah is famed for refusing to heed Hashem's directives.

And what does he do? He flees. He knows that he's risking his life – and will die. He goes to the bottom cabin, falls asleep, accepting the divine will, knowing that he is risking his very life because of his refusal to assimilate Hashem's life view on the relevancy of tshuva in relation to the errant ways of Ninveh's inhabitants. And he gives it all. There's no budging him, he won't move. It's a 0-sum game; either God wins, or he wins. And in his thinking, mind you, he's going to die for his principles, knowing that he could not kowtow to the divine imperative, because inside of him, it simply didn't jibe with his perspective of divine justice and morality.

Then, what touches Yonah more than anything after he is spewed from the mouth of the fish, is that Hashem, the Master of the Universe, still seeks a connection with him. He knows that Hashem has not forsaken him, that He will still talk to him, that He believes in him and from there he derives the strength to go and tell the people of Ninveh to forsake their ways. Hashem does not scold Yonah. And he does not convince him at this point that Ninveh's inhabitants are worthy of mercy. He simply reiterates his request that Yonah fulfill his mandate, and mission.

Yonah goes to Ninveh, its people do tshuva, but of a very shallow type. They don't understand that tshuva is a life-changing process. They even have their livestock fast; they don't comprehend, that tshuva, at its core is a uniquely human experience. Humans can sin, and introspect. Can an animal veer from its divinely-mandated purpose?! And so, the people of Ninveh do tshuva, but in a way that doesn't suffice for Yonah. They may rend their clothing, but as the Yerushalmi states, they only returned the hamas in their hands. If they had stolen goods stored away in the recesses of their homes, they did not return them. Only that which was publicly visible, did they return.

Yonah is very pained by Hashem's decision, after the fact, to save the people of Ninveh. Even then, after the people, and their king, on mass, return in large part to God's way, Yonah is not content and is pained that he was the vehicle or medium through which God's plan was carried out.

In the end, Hashem gets the last word, proving him with a shade tree and then taking it away. At that point, Yonah already had a sukkah, a means of shielding himself from the scorching sun. Yonah asks to die after the tree is removed not because he is hot, but rather because the tree symbolized the fact that Hashem still cared about him; that's why he felt such great joy about God placing it in his midst. And as such, what Hashem tells him is that for me to remove this tree, obliterate its memory, have it come one day and go the next would be trivial compared to the enormity of erasing the lives of 12,000 people. Interestingly, that's how the book ends; Yonah, does not concede that God is right. Perhaps the take home message is that it is our part to aim to fulfill the divine imperative but to always keep the channels of communication open, something Yonah initially failed to do. Ultimately, and perhaps this is what Hashem wants us to learn from the story of Yonah, even insincere tshuva, half-baked and half-hearted is dear and worthy of Hashem's heavenly embrace.