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Rabbi's Corner...
Yom Kippur 5770 Whale Torah
Rabbi Raachel Jurovics
Yom Kippur 5770
September 28, 2009
Whale Torah: Lessons from the Depths of the Sea
Once again, we hear God’s call to Jonah to proclaim judgment upon Nineveh, an imperial capital known for cruelty and excess, and witness the unfolding of the prophet’s fruitless effort to evade the divine commission. We’ve heard this story before, and we know that when Jonah finally gets around to conveying God’s demand for t’shuvah to Nineveh, he becomes Scripture’s most successful prophet, a prophet whose call for self-transformation is actually heeded in his day and time!
Before we can even wonder how he could imagine escaping his obligation, we find ourselves asking why he would want to avoid serving as God’s messenger to the Ninevites? Midrash tells us that Jonah had prophesied before: the first time, his message was fulfilled; the second time, after he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, God relented when the Israelites resolved to repent. Instead of honoring Jonah as the catalyst for their t’shuvah, the midrash records that the Israelites called him a lying prophet. Thus, when the Holy One sent him to Nineveh, he reasoned: “I know that this people is more inclined to repentance than Israel, and so they are likely to heed me. Then, God will direct his anger at Israel, who are slow to repent. Is it not enough that Israel call me a lying prophet? Shall the nations of the world do likewise? I have no choice but to flee.” (See Book of Legends, 133)
Flee he does, but a great tempest assails the ship, and the sailors pray mightily to their varied gods as they heave cargo overboard to lighten the vessel. Jonah? He goes below decks to take a nap, an intensely human gesture of denial we can all relate to—how much easier it is to avoid the uncomfortable than to confront it. To Jonah’s credit, when asked he takes responsibility for the storm and offers the sailors a way to calm it: throw him overboard. [Read Text Selection #2]
Once Jonah is tossed overboard, God ordains a great fish, which tradition has named a whale (yes, taxonomically speaking, not a fish), to swallow Jonah. The short version of the rest of the narrative: Jonah prays, the whale spits him out on shore, he prophesies to Nineveh, Nineveh repents, God renounces the planned punishment, Jonah pouts—he already knew God was too merciful for his tastes!—God teaches Jonah compassion for all life by means of the Parable of the Gourd Plant, and we end with one of the best punch lines in literature, biblical or otherwise, “And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a 120,000 persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle!”
So, we might say, Jonah learns from the sailors that the God of Israel is a universal God, from whose domain he cannot flee; from the Ninevites, he learns that repentance followed by deeds merits divine mercy, even when human judgment would condemn the transgressors mercilessly; and from God, that God prefers mercy to the unbending, strict justice before which all life would wither, and that God and Jonah (and we, too) are intertwined in a seamless web of creation nurtured and sustained by the divine will.
But, what did Jonah learn from the whale? Rabbi Shefa Gold calls the prophet’s time in the whale’s belly a forced meditation retreat or vision quest. “During this time, [Jonah] finds his prayer and through a close brush with death [he] returns to face The Presence who has called him. Finally, he accepts his Divine mission. [Sometimes,] life sends us on a forced retreat during an illness, an injury or when someone near us dies. Yom Kippur is also a kind of retreat where we leave the ordinary things of our lives and are sent to our depths to find the true voice of prayer and accept upon ourselves the mission we might otherwise try to avoid. In this acceptance, the dry land appears beneath our feet, reminding us of the time that the Red Sea split [so we could make our way to] . . . freedom.” (www.rabbishefagold.com/Jonah.html)
The vehicle for Jonah’s finding his prayer and accepting his mission was a creature as miraculous as the rescue at the Red Sea. That [whale], said Rabbi Tarfon, had been designated since the six days of creation to swallow Jonah. Jonah entered its mouth just as a man might enter a big house, and he was able to remain standing there. The two eyes of the fish were like two windows giving light to Jonah. But, according to R. Meir, a pearl was suspended from the innards of the fish, and, like the sun, which gives light at noon, it gave light to Jonah and made it possible for him to see all around him in the sea and in the depths.” (See Book of Legends, 134)
I don’t know if we were using whale oil to light our lamps in Rabbi Meir’s day, but we all know that many species of whales have been hunted to near extinction for their oil and for other precious products rendered from their huge, magnificent bodies in the intervening centuries. That a whale served as a container for Jonah to become enlightened works literally and metaphorically to remind us of all that these ancient creatures have to teach us.
At the heart of the whale’s teaching, we find the same lesson God underscored for Jonah: that all life is precious, all life has potential for transformation, that we human beings are beneficiaries of the gifts of many other creatures, and, sadly, that we are often inadequately grateful for the blessings we receive, as Jonah was of the shade-giving gourd plant. Painstaking research has made us aware that language centers evolved in whale brains independently of the later, similar evolution in our brains; we now know that whales live in variable societies, with distinct cultures; that they have names, recognize one another as individuals, share music, communicate over vast distances underwater; that they collaborate in hunting for food and in defense against predators; that they dream, play, appreciate kindness, and forgive transgressions.
We go out on boats to watch whales, and now realize that they are looking back, intentionally, openly, and with concern. In places where previous generations of whales have experienced merciless slaughter, as in the birthing lagoons of Baja California, current generations are bringing their offspring close to our small boats, showing off their calves and permitting us to touch, coo, bless and be blessed. They haven’t forgotten that we can be dangerous, but they respond to our showing up with benign intent by welcoming us and showing us kindness, letting us get close enough to be touched by the wonder of their fearful symmetry.
God reminds Jonah that what the natural world provides comes to us directly from God’s own source of boundless life and potential and that we are obligated to care for all of it. When we act out of this divine imperative to honor all of creation, we find redemptive transformation, of which I offer but one example:
“A female humpback was spotted in December 2005 east of the Farallon Islands, just off the coast of San Francisco. She was entangled in a web of crab-trap lines, hundreds of yards of nylon rope that had become wrapped around her mouth, torso, and tail, their weight of the traps causing her to struggle to stay afloat. A rescue team arrived within a few hours and decided that the only way to save her was to dive in and cut her loose.
“For an hour they cut at the lines and rope with curved knives, all the while trying to steer clear of a tail they knew could kill them with one swipe. When the whale was finally freed, the divers said, she swam around them for a time in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back and visited with each one of them, nudging them all gently, as if in thanks. . . . As for the diver who cut free the rope that was entangled in the whale’s mouth, her huge eye was following him the entire time, and he said that he will never be the same.” (Charles Siebert, “Watching Whales Watching Us,” The New York Times Magazine, 7/12/09.)
As we enter the mid-afternoon of Yom Kippur, we circle back once again to Jonah’s encounter with God’s preference for mercy over strict judgment—and just as that rescued whale circled in joy around the divers who brought her redemption and renewed life, we begin circling around our anticipation of the end of the day, the time we know our prayers will be heard with acceptance and love. Every year, Jonah’s stubbornness and frustration remind us how hard it is to forgive, to forgive ourselves and others. But every year, we have a new opportunity to learn from the whale as he did, that when we are called forth to pursue repentance and renewal, we will find all of creation eager to help us succeed, even when we have transgressed against it by indifference or in cruelty. May we learn from Jonah’s great whale that all of creation is itself the container of our enlightenment, the holy space in which we learn to care for one another with divine kindness, leniency, and hope. Keyn y’hi ratzon.
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