Daily Kavanah – Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Folly and Fate

By Rabbi Ron Stern

As you enter the 20th hour of your Yom Kippur fast, your brain is fogged, your stomach is gurgling, your head is pounding, and you’ve got that Yom Kippur taste in your mouth, the last thing you might be looking for is humor, yet that is exactly what the Book of Jonah offers.

Though we don’t often turn to the Bible as a sourcebook for comedy, there are a few intentionally funny stories. While it may not be side-splitting, from our giddy state of Yom Kippur hunger, Jonah at least engenders a chuckle—and there’s a powerful message in the tale, as well.

Without retelling the entire story, let’s review its satirical bits: A hapless prophet dodges his mission and attempts to flee from the all-knowing, all-seeing God from whom he received his mandate. Absurdity! Jonah seeks shelter from a raging storm that he knows was sent by that same God, and while the pagan sailors pray to that same Jewish God for protection, Jonah—who has a direct line to God—is silent. Not advisable. Rather than accept his Divine directive, Jonah instructs the sailors to cast him overboard. The compassionate pagans refuse until the situation becomes dire. As Jonah sinks to the depths, he’s swallowed by a fish (sent by God) who won’t allow him to avoid the Call (it’s not a whale in the Biblical story). He’s summarily vomited up on the shore. There are many ways he could have been saved, but to have been rejected as potential fish food is the ultimate affront.

Having exhausted his options for escape, Jonah grudgingly agrees to God’s request that he tell the people of Nineveh that they only have a few days to change their ways or their city will be destroyed; all the while grumbling that he’s going to be humiliated because the merciful God will probably forgive the people. Poor Jonah: The people actually listen to him! If only every prophet had that problem. When the city repents, Jonah doesn’t give thanks for the lives that are saved or for the people’s change of heart. Instead, he admonishes God: “See, I told you, God, that I’d be humiliated!” A true narcissist.

The story ends when the gourd that had been giving Jonah shelter from the hot sun withers. Jonah laments the shriveled plant until God rebukes Jonah for the compassion he shows a plant but failed to extend to Nineveh. The only character in the story that has shown no piety, compassion, or repentance is the story’s namesake. And he’s the Jew—the pagans in the story show reverence for God, a willingness to repent, and gratitude for their forgiveness. Yes, it’s a story filled with irony, satire, and humor, but its establishment as the reading on Yom Kippur was an act of rabbinic brilliance. The story of Jonah grabs our attention. It makes us laugh and, hopefully, we see ourselves in the story.

Jonah shirks his responsibilities—so, too, do many of us. Jonah fails to heed God’s call and the Divine imperative. On Yom Kippur we are called to confess for a litany of sins—surely, we are guilty of a few—but we are more likely to point out those in others. Will we heed the call to ensure that our pious words are linked to pious actions? Our story’s hero is fortuitously saved from drowning by a passing fish. Do we adequately acknowledge all the coincidences and circumstances that secure our own existence, or do we falsely believe that we are the sole source of our good fortunes? Finally, an entire city heeds the call and changes its ways. The king of Nineveh himself dons sackcloth and ashes in humility. He earns his forgiveness. Are we Jonah? Or among the repentant people of Nineveh? Are we so haughty that we can’t admit our sins, change our ways, or seek forgiveness?

The question at the core of the High Holy Days is: How can we become the best version of our true selves? As the sun tracks its way toward the horizon, the wisdom of our tradition offers this story as one more source of inspiration, goading us to change.