Hi all!
Well, Yom Kippur (
http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday4.htm) starts this Sunday at sunset & runs until nightfall on Monday.
We'll read the Book of Jonah during afternoon prayers on Monday.
Jonah 1:15 says:
So they [the sailors] took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea...
Yet in 2:4, Jonah says:
For You [God] cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas...
There is no contradiction. Both verses are entirely correct. While the sailors did the actual, physical work of chucking Jonah overboard, they were merely God's tools. Thus, when Jonah says it was God who cast him into the sea, he is correct. Jonah's
For You [God] cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas...
is the same as Joseph's remark to his dumbfounded brothers in Genesis 45:8
So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God...
Joseph & Jonah both know that while God may not be the proximate cause of any given thing, He is the Ultimate Cause of all things.
The rabbi at our old synagogue in our old neighborhood in Jerusalem once gave a brilliant (I think) talk about Jonah. God has something He wants Jonah to do (go to Nineveh, but that's beside the point). The first time God wanted to get Jonah's attention (1:2), He asked him nicely. But Jonah wasn't keen; he tried to run away from God, and boarded the boat for Tarshish. God tried to get Jonah's attention a second time, this time not so nicely (i.e. He hurled a storm at the boat). Jonah still wasn't keen; he went down in the hold of the ship & went to sleep. God tried a third time to get Jonah's attention, this time very un-nicely; i.e. He cast him into the belly of the whale. Now Jonah had no choice but to pour his heart out to God & turn to Him with all his soul (because otherwise he was doomed). Our rabbi said that how often in our lives do we try to evade what we know to be what God wants us to do by trying to run away from Him (so to speak) or by going to spiritual sleep & pretending not to hear Him? When God wants to get our attention, the first time, He'll ask nicely. If we don't listen, the next time may be not so nicely. And if we still don't listen, then He may put us into a position where we have no choice but to turn to Him and pour out our hearts to Him.
Our rabbi made one more fascinating comment. He noted where Jonah fled to. He fled to the west (Tarshish is in Spain, far to the west of the Holy Land), not to the desert to the east, or to Egypt & Syria in the south & north, respectively, but to Tarshish, in the west. When we want to run away from God and the way He wants us to lead our lives, our rabbi said, we're still running to the west, to the empty materialism & permissive hedonism of modern Western culture. Like Jonah, we're still fleeing to the west.
On Yom Kippur 1999, I was walking to afternoon prayers with Yohanan (who was then almost 3) on my shoulders & he was telling me all about Jonah (i.e. as he heard it from his 1/2-day daycare). DW & I try not to hit Da Boyz, as a means of disciplining them, except as a last resort in exceptional circumstances. We're into giving time-outs, i.e. if Da Boyz do something naughty, they're sent to their room, to stay there for a while, alone, with the door closed. So, as Yohanan & I were discussing Jonah, he told me that, "Jonah tried to run away from God." I asked him if that made God happy or angry. Yohanan said, "God got very angry," and then told me how God put Jonah, "in the fish's tummy," as a, "big punishment." Yohanan was quiet for a few seconds and then he told me, "Daddy, God gave Jonah a time-out."
In 2004 on Yom Kippur, Naor (who was then almost 4) told DW & I that, "Jonah tasted yucky and that is why the fish spit him out."
In the spring of last year, we met my uncle (from the US) in Tel Aviv & went to Old Jaffa (
http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/English/Tourism/Sites/Jaffa.htm). As we walked along the port (passing Simon the Tanner's house), looking at the boats, I told Da Boyz that we were at the very spot where Jonah boarded a boat & tried to "run away from God." They were very impressed!
Perhaps,
the reason why we read Jonah on YK is
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way...
God saw not their jaw-jawing but their
actions.
Our Sages identify Jonah with the same mentioned in II Kings 14:25 but believe that he prophesied well before Jeroboam II's actual reign. Our Sages identify Jonah with the prophet sent by Elisha to annoint Jehu (II Kings 9:1).
Our Sages teach that Jonah feared that it would look bad for us if the non-Jews of Nineveh repented after being admonished only once while we had stubbornly refused repeated admonitions to repent. Not wanting to make us thus look bad, he fled. When you realize that to the ancients Spain & the Straits of Gibraltar were the edge of the world, Jonah was trying not merely to leave the Holy Land but to get as far away from it as he possibly could.
I've always thought that God's
"You had pity on the gourd, for which you neither labored nor made grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night;and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?"
gives the lie to those who claim that it's, "My way or the highway to hell," & that unless you believe a certain way God doesn't give two hoots for you.
I use Jonah as an example to teach our boys that we can never run away from God. This past summer, we went to a park just outside Jerusalem where there is a natural spring-fed pool. The water flows into the pool through a tunnel which, with a flashlight, you can follow all the way back underground to the source of the spring. Naor & I were in there & we turned off the flashlight to experience the pitch darkness. Naor said, "Daddy, God can see us even in here, right?" (I
love that kid!)
Be well!
ssv
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