Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Selichot, 1994

by Harold M. Schulweis

“It ain't necessarily so.
It ain't necessarily so.
The things that you’re liable
To read in the Bible
It ain't necessarily so.”

Sportin' Life's agnostic hymn is followed by the chorus

“Jonah he lived in a whale,
Jonah he lived in a whale.
He made his home in
A fish's abdomen,
Jonah he lived in a whale.”

Sportin' Life's lyric is correct if you read the book of Jonah with a flat literalism. Read the book literally, you end with those trivializers of the sacred text, with those who go to great lengths to show that it could have happened just that way. So Bishop Jebb in Melville's Moby Dick surmises that Jonah might have lodged in the whale's open mouth rather than its open belly. Others suggest that it wasn't a whale at all but another kind of sea monster that could swallow a person and offer him abdominal hospitality for three days and three nights. Still others suggest that Jonah was thrown overboard and was then picked up by a vessel with a whale at its figure head. The whale even figured in the Scopes trial of July 1925, when Clarence Darrow cross-examined William Jennings Bryan and ridiculed the fundamentalist's defense of the story.
 
This sort of fundamentalist literalism deflects attention from the revolutionary spiritual character of the book of Jonah that the rabbis courageously introduced at the Mincha prayers of Yom Kippur. They placed it there because it is a powerful parable of the spiritual meaning of the Days of Awe. Moreover, it captures the unique character of Judaism that lies at the root of prayer, repentance and prophecy.

The story is told quickly in four brief chapters. Jonah, the son of Amittai, is told by God to deliver God's judgment over Ninveh because of its wickedness. Ninveh is “Sodom city” and we know what happened to Sodom. Ninveh was the evil capital of Assyria, which would later exile the northern kingdom of Israel.

Jonah hears God's voice. Jonah is to tell God's truth to the citizens of Ninveh. Forty days more and Ninveh will be destroyed because of its sinfulness. But defiantly Jonah turns a deaf ear, suppresses the voice of prophecy, and boards a ship heading to Tarshish in the opposite direction of Ninveh. But God thwarts his escape by whipping up a violent storm and Jonah buries himself in the hold of the ship. The storm does not abate – the captain and the sailors suspect that Jonah may somehow be the cause of the terrible turbulence and throw him overboard. Jonah is swallowed by a fish, spends three days and nights in the belly of the fish and is then spewed out onto the dry land of Ninveh. There in Ninveh, Jonah begrudgingly preaches God's word. Ninveh is an evil empire. Ninveh will not stand. God does not lie. But the king of Ninveh and the people repent. The uncircumcised fast, the pagan Ninvehites clothe themselves in sackcloth, sit in the ashes on the ground and they do good deeds. God sees their actions, how they turned from their evil ways, and “mirabile dictum,” God relented of the evil He had said to do to them and did not do. Ninveh was saved by God. And Jonah was greatly distressed and it angered him.

Why is Jonah angry and with whom?  And why did he suppress his prophesy?  Why did he flee to Tarshish?

All out of love for his people, Jonah would serve only his people and no other people. He is loyal only to his fellow Jews. He said to himself “Why should I preach repentance to the uncircumcised? The citizenry of Ninveh are Israel's enemies. Let them be damned. Who cares about them and the fate of their civilization?” Jonah was a loyalist, a patriot, a Jewish prophet. But Jonah forgot what a Jewish prophet must be, what his people were meant to be, and what kind of God calls him to service.

Through Jonah we are reminded of the power of atonement for all the world. The God of Israel is not a tribal deity. God loves Israel as the apple of His eye, but He is not the Creator or Protector of Israel alone. He is the one God whom Abraham discovered as the Ruler of the entire universe. Father Abraham, the father of Israel, is mandated to be the father of all the families of the earth. God created the world and God created Israel to live in the world, among the peoples of the world whom God created.

But Jonah, in the name of his love for Israel, fled from God. Flight is an ancient-modern strategy of escape. If the world appears too seductive, if it threatens to assimilate you, turn your back on the world. Isolate yourself, insulate yourself, convert Judaism into a sect, run to the nearest cave.

We read in the Talmud that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, in the second century of the common era, would have nothing to do with Roman civilization. He could not stand the praises of the other Rabbis. For him, Rome was materialistic, hedonistic and corrupt. He and his son Eleazar rushed into a cave. For twelve years they buried themselves in sand up to their necks, prayed, studied, fasted and had no contact with the world of profane and ordinary people. Finally they were told to leave the cave, they came upon men plowing and sowing a field. They were angry at the sight and exclaimed, “People forsake life eternal for the business of temporal life.” They looked at the prosaic ordinariness of life and whatever their eyes fell upon was immediately consumed by fire. Whereupon a heavenly voice cried out, “Have you come to destroy My world? Get back to the cave.” God rejects the spiritual isolationism that escapes the real world. Get back to your world. Shimon Bar Yochai fled from Rome to the cave. Jonah fled from Ninveh into the bowels of the ship and the womb of the whale. What has a Jew to do with Rome? What has a Jew to do with Ninveh?

Jonah forgot his ancestry. Abraham, the father of Jewish prophecy, argued against God's decree at Sodom. Abraham in a non-Jewish world stood alone even in opposition to God's decision to destroy the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. What has a Jew to do with Sodom and Gomorrah? The citizens of Sodom, like those of Ninveh, were not Jews. They were pagans. Abraham at Sodom appealed to God's conscience. “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do righteously?” Was Abraham's plea bargaining not condemned by God? The first Jew, Abraham, defended the pagan denizens of Sodom. Because he was called by God and told “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Not cursed but blessed. The book of Jonah reclaims the heroic vision of Jewish universalism. It warns us against the narrowness of parochialism.

Jonah was a prophet but Jonah is not regarded by the tradition as an ideal Jewish prophet. For the ideal prophet, we are told in the great rabbinic commentary on Exodus, the book of Mechilta, must defend the honor of the father as well as the honor of the son. The Jewish prophet must defend both God and Israel, never one at the expense of the other. Jonah, says the Mechilta, thought to himself “I will go outside the land where the divine presence does not reveal itself.” Erroneously, he thought that moral conscience has a geography. He thought that prophecy is restricted to Jewish soil.

He thought erroneously that he could defend Israel and the honor of Israel at the expense of diminishing God's universal moral love. But when Jewish universal conscience is constricted, it belittles God. Jonah shriveled the God of the cosmos into a provincial idol. He forgot the formula that expresses the grandeur of the traditional Jewish blessing: Baruch ata Adonai, Elohenu melech ha-olam –  God of the cosmos.

This is Jewish largesse, the comprehensiveness of the God of Israel. This Jewish vision of God enlarges us, elevates us, exalts us. To believe in God the Creator of the universe means that nothing in this world, that no people in this world is foreign to our concerns. Because of our belief in God, the whole world is relevant to us: Israel, of course, Israel is the apple of our eye. Israel is the chief of our joys and concerns but also Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, China. Is it too much to place on our Jewish agenda? Then it is we who are too small for the God of creation.

I hear Jonah from within the marrow of my bones. Out of my innards I recognize him. There are moments in my life when I hear the unambiguous still, small voice of conscience. There are moments when I know in the depths of my being what is right, what God requires of me, what I should do. There are moments when I subtly, quietly repress the imperatives of my conscience, hide, and pretend that I hear nothing, I see nothing, I feel nothing. There is nothing I can do. Cleverly I douse the spark of prophecy in me.

There are two kinds of false prophets: one prophesies what he has not heard. The other suppresses the prophecy he has heard.

I listen to the Jonah text: “The ship was sinking, Jonah went down to the inner part of the vessel and he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.” I know that sleep. It did not come from exhaustion. That sleep was a flight from reality, from responsibility, from life. Jonah was playing possum with his conscience. That sleep was the sleep that simulated death, the moral fatigue that drains our sense of purpose.

Then the captain of the ship drew near to the slumbering Jonah and cried out “Why are you sleeping? Why are you sleeping so soundly? Jonah arise and call out to your God.” Pay attention to the God who addresses your conscience. Don't drown yourself in desensitizing addictions designed to dull your conscience. Don't allow the drugs of narcissism to mute you, to paralyze you, to immobilize you.

Do not pretend that you can't change your environment or yourself. Do not pretend that it is all determined, that it is all “bashert,” that it is all “schicksal,” that fate, destiny, is beyond you. Do not rationalize your moral somnolence.

Jonah's resistance to the divine conscience turned to rationalization. “Dear God, I am silent out of loyalty to you. Dear God, they will make fun of You. They will say that You are not an all-wise, all-knowing God. Here You predicted that Ninveh would be destroyed and now look, Ninveh is saved.”

God cannot be fooled. “Jonah, don't you worry about My reputation. I, the omniscient God change. That is My strength and My wisdom. The people of Ninveh changed and therefore I changed. I am not a stubborn, obdurate, impassive power. I am not a Greek god bound by moira – by fate as are the other gods.” My power is not in immutability, the conceit of My word. My power is in the love that encourages repentance.

Too bad it is read so late in the afternoon, on an empty stomach and aching head. The book of Jonah lies at the heart of the moral revolution of Judaism. Change is the soul of repentance, T’shuvah. The Jewish religious principle of change breaks with the pagan ideas of fatalism. In Greek mythology, in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Faith is in Fate. The pagan oracle is absolute, categorical. Even the gods are governed by fate.

The Jewish tradition repudiates that fatalism and introduces a radical term of two letters: in Hebrew “im,” in English “if.”  Prognostication, Prediction, never have the last word. Every prophecy depends upon “if.” The prophet predicts only that which should be, not what will be. Prophecy is not prediction. Prophecy is a declaration of what ought to be and ought depends upon faith, not fate.

The idea of repentance is new. It took a long time to introduce the radical concept of T’shuvah. When Adam sinned and Eve sinned they were punished and thrown out of the Garden of Eden. But there was no mention of repentance.

When Cain killed Abel he was punished, but nowhere did it occur to Cain to repent.

When the people in the time of Noah sinned there was deluge and destruction, but there was no cry from Noah, “Change.” 

When Sodom and Gomorrah sinned there was punishment. But there was no voice that cried out, “Change.” 

Jonah is a different book. Jonah is about change. If pagans can change, if Ninveh can change and if even God can change, I can change. No more excuses to remain tomorrow as I was yesterday, no more excuses to stand still status quo ante, no more excuses: “It is too late,” “I am too old,” “I am determined by my inherited genes and chromosomes.” I can transcend, I can transform, I can alter, I can change myself to the point that I can look into the mirror of my soul and say “ani acher” - I am another. In the tradition of Jonah I can pray not simply, “Thy will be done” - but with courage “Thy will be changed.”

The Jewish mystic believed this. The Jewish prophets rose to awake the fugitive conscience in us.

Of course, there are things that cannot be changed but not all things are unmovable. On the Day of Atonement we focus on the mutable, on the areas where we can transform ourselves. We are not perfect, we are not entirely a product of biological, cultural conditions, or economic conditions. Before we surrender to determinism we must read our sacred texts. We are not entirely helpless and impotent. We need not deny ourselves the regenerating power, that turning, that ends in the grand crescendo: repentance, righteousness and the practice of good deeds can avert the evil decree. It is with faith in power of moral change that we enter the New Year and this world. We will not run away from our responsibilities. We will not bury ourselves in a cave.
 
May we have the strength, the moral courage to change that which has crippled us and kept us down. For a year of newness and change. L'shana tova.
 
 

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