Yom Kippur 5772: A big fish story?

In our tradition, the High Holidays are viewed as a time period when all of humanity, not just its Jews, are judged for the coming year.

In his introduction to book of Yonah, the haftarah read at Mincha on Yom Kippur, Rabbi J.H. Hertz writes, “The essential teaching [of Yonah] is that the Gentiles should not be grudged G-d’s love, care and forgiveness. It is this grudging which is so superbly rebuked throughout the Book, and most of all in the final chapter, which must rightly be considered the climax of the story.”

Explaining how this book fits naturally into the theme of Yom Kippur, Rabbi Hertz continues to elucidate its important lessons: “It is impossible to run away from G-d’s presence, G-d takes pity on all His creatures, He is ever willing to accept true repentance.”

For us, one ironic aspect of the tale is that there are two significant groups of people who recognize G-d’s role in their lives, and commit to a level of repentance that saves their lives – and neither group consists of any Jews. The former is the group of sailors on the ship that threw Yonah overboard, and the latter are the people of Nineveh.

The lone Jew in the story, the prophet himself, makes a mistake at every turn. Even though he does follow G-d’s bidding by the end of the story, he still walks out of the end of the story as the recipient of one final rebuke from G-d.

First he is told to go to Nineveh, but he runs to Tarshish. When everyone on his ship is working like mad to save themselves from the storm, Yonah is dreaming away in lala-land. After he is thrown overboard, he wallows for three days in the belly of a large fish until he realizes “I better do what G-d told me to do.” He gives the message to the Ninevites, gets really depressed over their repentance, and asks G-d to kill him. G-d helps him forget his worries through the growth of a shade-giving-kikayon, but the quick demise of the kikayon puts Yonah into even further depression, where he again wants to die until G-d points out Yonah’s flaw in reasoning as to the merits of sparing Nineveh from destruction.