A Big Fish Story?

A Yom Kippur Message
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 the 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 God'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 God's presence, God 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 God'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, seems to make a mistake at every turn. Even though he eventually follows God's bidding, he still walks out of tale as the recipient of one final rebuke from God.

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 God told me to do." He gives the message to the Ninevites, gets really depressed over their repentance, and asks God to kill him. God 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, when he again wants to die, until God points out Yonah's flaw in reasoning as to the merits of sparing Nineveh from destruction.

God's message is simple. Humans and animals are My creatures too – no matter where they come from and where they seem to be heading. There is always room for people to change their ways – they just need to want to change, and to recognize that changing is a long-term process that has to start somewhere.

The classic interpretation is that the fish really was summoned to swallow Yonah. On the other hand, the Daat Mikra commentary on Yonah records a possible interpretation, suggested by Rabbi Yosef Kaspi, that the big fish story was really just a big fish story – that the first two chapters of the book of Yonah were really a prophesy, and that Yonah dreamt of the city of Nineveh, whose Akkadian symbol was a fish in a house (the word "Nin" means "fish", and neveh means "city") – and that Yonah envisioned himself trapped in a fish for three days in lieu of going to Nineveh which was a three day journey (compare 2:1 and 3:3).

I like this latter possibility because it removes the part of the tale that almost paints Yonah as a bumbling prophet, and puts his choices in terms of a subconscious vision that can be filled with mistakes he might have made had he been awake – but are merely reflections of what he "might" have wanted to do, even though, as a prophet, of course he is going to do God's bidding right away.

Perhaps Hertz's comment about not begrudging Gentiles of God's love, which seems somewhat anachronistic, is meant to be a message to our non-Jewish neighbors that on our holiest day, we are thinking of their welfare as well. In the face of doom, the sailors and Ninevites returned to God on their own terms, through the influence of the story's lone Jew.

Since we believe that all of humanity are judged on this day, we want anyone who might be interested in "seeing what the Jews are thinking about today" to know that we believe everyone in the world has the capacity for good and the capability to return to God in whatever way they deem appropriate - with choices that benefit one another and humankind as a whole.

            

I also believe this passage is meant to show one more lesson. There is one time when the Torah declares straight out that "God loves you." It is Devarim 23:6, which reads, "Of course, God did not consent to listen to Bilaam, and God your Lord transformed the curse into a blessing for you, since God your Lord loves you."

            

Peace in the world and peace between neighbors of different faiths can only come about when leaders, or prophets such as Bilaam and Yonah respectively, ultimately do what God asks of them – bless or guide the [perhaps detested] foreigners for whom they may have personally harbored contempt, so "the other" can survive and thrive on this earth, left alone by outsiders who do not know what is best for them. This is not to suggest Yonah hated the people of Nineveh (though it is clear Bilaam hated the Jewish people), but it is clear that he felt telling Nineveh to repent would reflect badly on his own people who were unrepentant.

            

In the end, we are all God's creatures, and He would like us to find a way to live in harmony in this world, no matter how we might personally feel about "others." This prophesy is no "big fish story." It is the tale of all tales "when the wolf and lamb live together in harmony" (Isaiah 11:6). May we all live to see such a prophesy fulfilled speedily in our days.