Parshah Commentary
On the Day of Atonement, we break from the regular parshah cycle to return to selections from Parshat Acharei Mot (reading one part in the morning and another in the afternoon). But each year, I find myself compelled less by these passages than by another biblical text traditionally read in its entirety on Yom Kippur. The book of Jonah—the afternoon haftarah, or selection from the Prophets portion of the Bible—is one of the most elusive stories in classical Hebrew literature. The overarching narrative is familiar, but the text itself is considerably darker than the family-friendly fable of Jonah and the whale. God orders the prophet to travel to the city of Nineveh to persuade its inhabitants to repent of their wickedness. Instead, Jonah boards a ship heading in the opposite direction. When a storm threatens to wreck the boat, everyone on board pleads with their gods and throws their possessions overboard—except for Jonah, who bafflingly falls asleep. Later, after he begrudgingly accepts his mission and succeeds in leading the Ninevites to repentance and divine absolution, Jonah is so angry at God’s compassion that he begs for death: “Please, Eternal One, take my life, for I would rather die than live.”
According to some classical commentaries, this desire to flee from life itself is exhibited not only in Jonah’s suicidal plea but throughout the story. One midrash teaches that “Jonah went on that voyage only to cast himself into the sea.” Jonah’s denial of life also extends to those around him—illustrated, for instance, by his choice to run away from God and thus abandon the Ninevites to their destruction, and then to endanger his fellow passengers by napping rather than taking responsibility for his actions, which brought forth God’s wrath upon the seas. But why is Jonah so callous toward his own life and the lives of those around him? One midrashic tradition, which offers an unexpected origin story for Jonah, suggests a possible explanation. In the book of Kings, the prophet Elijah miraculously resurrects a recently deceased, unnamed boy. Several commentators, following a rabbinic tendency to link unidentified minor characters in the Bible with other more central characters, interpret this boy as a young Jonah. Viewed through the lens of this midrash, Jonah’s seeming indifference to life can be understood as a response to his death and resurrection—an absolute, unassimilable rupture in experience that would surely cause severe and abiding trauma.
Read on Yom Kippur, a time of reflection on our mistakes, the book of Jonah invites us to recognize ourselves in the prophet, and to see the ways that our own trauma numbs us—both to our lives and to the suffering that surrounds us. Just as Jonah falls asleep while the ship threatens to capsize, so do we ignore the catastrophes that threaten to engulf us and our communities; just as Jonah bitterly wishes that God would destroy the vast city of Nineveh, so do we cruelly wish for the total destruction of those we consider our enemies.
It might also prompt us to hear God’s rebuke of Jonah as rebuke directed toward us. “Should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons?” God asks Jonah, insisting that all life is sacred, that the fact of life makes moral claims on us. Jonah does not respond; this question, left unanswered, concludes the book. This Yom Kippur, as we consider how we have acted over the past year, we stand like Jonah before the divine insistence that we not evade responsibility for our own lives and for the lives of all who share this planet. Our pain and trauma, the text reminds us, do not justify us falling into apathy or cruelty. Jonah is silent—but how will we respond?
Daniel Kraft is a writer, translator, and educator living in Richmond, Virginia.
