Archive for category Holidays
Der Meistersingers of Athens
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture, Holidays, Philosophy on December 25, 2008
Moaz Tzur, the classic Chanukah poem, has been degraded not so much by the King Jamesian translation Rock of Ages but by the carol-like tune that has become as inescapable as shoppping mall Xmas music. It’s worse than you think… which is part of the problem.
The Candles and the Stars
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays, Philosophy on December 24, 2008
From this month’s Jewish Observer:
And HaShem said, “Let there be light!” and there was light (Bereishis 1:3).
Even as the first words of Creation set the stage for everything that will follow, they also set themselves apart from everything that will come. After every other stage in the genesis process, the Torah reports that HaShem spoke, vayehi chein – “and it was so.” But after the creation of light, instead of saying vayehi chein, the Torah reports vayehi ohr – “and there was light.”
The Malbim explains that vayehi chein implies permanence: every act sealed with this expression would endure forever. The heavens and the earth, the water and the land, the vegetation and the birds, fish, and mammals – all these would last until the end of days. But not the light.
The kabbalists tell us that the light of Creation was not the light of photons that illuminate our physical world. The light of the First Day was, rather, the ohr haMakif, the divine light of HaShem’s radiance projected into the spiritual void that preceded the existence of the physical universe. This was the “light” that enabled Adam to “see” from one end of the universe to the other, to perceive the true essence of the world and everything in it.1 It was the light of absolute knowledge and absolute power.
But HaShem foresaw that, after Adam’s sin, this divine light would threaten the very existence of the world. Used irresponsibly, such power could wreak incalculable destruction. HaShem therefore concealed the light, storing it away for the tzaddkim of future generations.2 Before the process of Creation had ended, the light of Creation had been hidden away.
On the fourth day, however, HaShem created the sun, moon, and stars – the luminaries whose physical light would substitute for the spiritual light of the first day. But how can mere physical light take the place of the light of kedusha? How can the lights of the sky replace the spiritual illumination of the soul? And precisely where did HaShem hide the original light of Creation?
HaShem hid His light in the Torah, preserving it there for the sages and scholars who, through diligent study, would one day reveal the brilliance of divine wisdom before all the world once again.3
Until then, the physical luminaries would have to suffice, with optic vision providing a barely adequate replacement for the spiritual insight of Torah wisdom. Through their familiar and uninterrupted passage above us, these heavenly bodies serve to reassure us that the light of Creation, temporarily removed, can be permanently restored by the luminaries of Torah, the bright lights of scholarship and wisdom who light the Jewish people’s way through the generations.
Thus Moshe says to his people: “HaShem, your G-d, has multiplied you and behold, you are today as the stars in the heavens” (Devarim 1:10).
Was this so? Standing at the boundary of Eretz Yisroel on the east side of the Jordan, the Jewish nation was still relatively small, the numbers by no account comparable to “the stars in the heavens.” Comes Rashi to explain that Moshe meant something else entirely. The Jews were not as numerous as the luminaries of the heavens; rather, Moshe declared that they were as permanent and as enduring as the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Rashi’s allegory seems to echo the narrative of Creation, in which we understand the sun, moon, and stars as an allegory for the Torah scholars who would bring back the light of kedusha to a world of spiritual darkness.
If so, perhaps the connection goes even further.
In addition to the idea that HaShem hid the light of Creation in the Torah, the B’nei Yisoschar suggests that HaShem hid the primordial light in the candles of Chanukah. The thirty six flames of the menorah correspond to the thirty six tzaddikim hidden in every generation, for it is through them that the light of kedusha is most prominently revealed.
This interpretation dovetails with the Midrash that finds within the narrative of Creation an allusion to the four kingdoms that would rule over the Jewish people in exile. In the opening description of Creation, the Torah records that “there was void and nothingness, with darkness upon the surface of the deep” (Bereishis 1:2). Void alludes to Babylon, nothingness to Persia, and the deep to Rome.
Darkness alludes to Greece, whose secularist wisdom darkened the eyes of the Jewish people.4
It was the light of the menorah, restored by the Hasmoneans, that pierced through the darkness of Greece, just as the Torah of the sages returns the light of kedusha to the world.
As a commentary on the verse in question, however, Rashi’s allegory presents a problem. Since Moshe compared the Jewish people specifically to the stars, why did Rashi feel it necessary to include the sun and the moon? Indeed, HaShem Himself made reference only to the stars in His promise to Avrohom.5 Why did Rashi consider the allegory of both HaShem and Moshe insufficient?
In truth, we do find allegories similar to Rashi’s scattered through Chazal. Adam and Moshe are compared to the sun.6 Yehoshua and Dovid are compared to the moon.7 Although the Jewish nation as a whole is compared to the stars, individuals within it are compared to the sun and the moon.
Consequently, Rashi may have recognized something deeper within Moshe’s metaphor for eternity: an allusion to the unique influence of successive historical eras upon the fortunes of the Jewish people. If so, perhaps we can articulate a precise correlation between the celestial luminaries that dispel the darkness of night and the Torah luminaries that dispel the darkness of exile.
The quality shared by Adam and Moshe is their proximity to the Master of the World. Adam was the prototype for all mankind, the first and only human being created directly by divine decree. Moshe Rabbeinu was the only human being after the expulsion from Gan Eden to speak “face to face” with the Creator, the only individual entrusted to bring HaShem’s Torah to the world. These two alone occupied a spiritual level so exalted that they radiated their own intrinsic kedusha, like the sun.8
All other human beings aspire not to radiate, but to reflect. It was Yehoshua who replaced Moshe, leading the Jewish people not only into a new land but into a new kind of existence, one without open miracles, in which the glory of HaShem was recognized indirectly through the workings of nature and divine providence. In this new world, the kedusha of HaShem was no longer projected by leaders like the sun but reflected by leaders like the moon.
As with Yehoshua, Dovid HaMelech also is described as a disciple of Moshe.9 Not only does the moon reflect merely a fraction of the sun’s light, it also lacks the sun’s constancy, waxing and waning as it courses through its monthly cycle. HaShem placed Adam and Moshe at the pinnacle of human existence and charged them with preserving the perfection of Eden and Sinai respectively. In contrast, HaShem charged Yehoshua and Dovid with negotiating the peaks and valleys of human uncertainty. Rise and fall, victory and defeat, transgression and redemption – these describe the complex pattern of human life symbolized by the changing faces of the moon. As the radiance of kedusha dimmed, the universe became darker. But as the universe became darker, fainter lights could shine bright.
And indeed, the darkness intensified. Sancheriv drove the ten tribes into exile. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Beis HaMikdash. Prophecy disappeared from the world. And the spiritual darkness of Greece spread over the earth, disguising itself as a new aesthetic wisdom and seducing mankind with its self-serving, pleasure-seeking, and empty sophistry.
What had become of the luminaries? Without teachers like Moshe, without disciples like Yehoshua and Dovid, who would rally the Jewish people against their enemies? Without either sun or moon to guide them, how would the Jews ever find their way?
They found their way by the stars.
A single star offers little light. But a thousand, a million, a billion stars burning bright across the canopy of the heavens — here is light enough for all eternity. With each star shining like a single flame, adding its tiny pinprick of radiance to the light of a billion others, the darkness of night gives way before a soft, intangible glow of illumination. So too, a single Jewish neshoma, shining bright by resisting the seemingly irresistible descent of spiritual darkness, combines with other Jewish souls to prevent the light of kedusha from being extinguished. One neshoma added to another and another, like the individual flames of the Chanukah menorah, suddenly explodes into the silent darkness like a symphony of light.
In the depths of exile, we have no single leader to shine like the sun, nor even to reflect the sunlight like the moon. But the hidden tzaddikim, each revealing the primordial light of Creation concealed by HaShem in the Torah, each according to his own capacity and his own efforts, collectively shine forth with enough brilliance to drive away the darkness of corruption and impurity and superficiality.
We allude to this every day of Chanukah in al haNissim, when we declare that HaShem delivered
the impure into the hands of the pure,
the wicked into the hands of the righteous,
and the wanton into the hands of those who diligently study Your Torah.
Rav Nachman Bulman zt”l suggested that the parallelism in this arrangement appears to be flawed. On the side of our enemies, the levels of evil are ascending: the merely impure are less evil than the wicked, and the wicked are less evil than the wanton – those motivated not by simple desire but by a philosophical commitment to do evil. On the other side, however, the levels of righteous seem to be descending, with the tahor – the servant of HaShem who has attained purity and perfection in his divine service – having more merit than the mere tzaddik, who nevertheless has greater merit than the simple Jew who struggles in his study and observance. Superficially, we would expect to find the pure paired off against the wanton and those who study Torah paired off against the impure.
But this, explained Rav Bulman, is precisely the point. Although darkness descends when we have neither sun nor moon to push back the night, in the absence of great luminaries the myriad tiny lights begin to shine, showering their radiance as one until, collectively, they have conquered the darkness.
The Torah testifies that Moshe Rabbeinu was “extremely humble, more than any man upon the earth” (BaMidbar 12:3). What made Moshe so humble? The Zohar tells us that he saw the last generation of galus before the coming of Moshiach.10 For Moshe Rabbeinu, who spoke to HaShem “face to face,” who lived amidst open miracles and the revelation of the Sh’chinah, who witnessed the redemption of his people from slavery after 210 years of crushing servitude, belief and trust in HaShem posed little challenge. For Moshe, even so exalted a quality as yiras Shomayim was easily acquired.11
But to live in the depths of galus, in an era of such spiritual blackness that HaShem’s presence seems not merely a distant memory but a flight of pure fancy, and to retain under such circumstances the slightest sensitivity to kedusha, much less the devotion to Torah and mitzvah observance – before this, even Moshe Rabbeinu found himself in awe. The knowledge that a generation would succeed in doing so left him profoundly humbled.
At once humble and exalted are, like the stars of the sky, the lights of Chanukah and the neshomos of the Jews prior to the end of days. Flame upon flame and light upon light, they ignite one by one in a common purpose, joined together by a common foundation, illuminating the darkness of galus with the sparks of HaShem’s mitzvos, and spreading the light of His wisdom by revealing the light of His Torah.
1. Chagigah 12a; Bereishis Rabbah 12:6
2. Rashi on Bereishis 1:4 from Chagigah 12a and Bereishis Rabbah 3:6
3. Tanchuma, Noach 3
4. Bereishis Rabbah 2:4
5. Bereishis 15:5
6. Zohar 1:142b and Baba Basra 75a
7. Baba Basra 75a and Rosh HaShonah (with Rashi ad loc)
8. Although Shimshon was also compared to the sun, we might suggest that this was not for what he accomplished but for the messianic potential he possessed to permanently restore HaShem’s light to the world. See Sotah 10a and Bereishis Rabbah 98:14.
9. Shocher Tov 14:6
10. Ki seitzei 3:282b
11. Berachos 33b
Princes in Exile
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture, Holidays, Philosophy on December 22, 2008
More than any other holiday, Chanukah addresses the Jewish experience in exile.
The Candles and the Tree
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture, Holidays, Philosophy on December 22, 2008
Reflections on having grown up under the modern shadow of the ancient Greeks. And, as was pointed out to me a year or two ago, the term I used for the Hellenistic agenda of blending Jewish culture with Greek culture should have be new syncretism.
May this year be a year of light and wisdom for all of us.
The Mystical Meaning of the Dreidel
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays, Philosophy on December 21, 2008
More than merely a child’s toy or a candle-side game, the dreidel conceals the secret of Jewish survival throughout the long darkness of exile.
Shmini Azteres — on one foot
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays, Philosophy on October 19, 2008
The Talmud records a now-famous episode in which a prospective proselyte comes to Hillel the Elder and says he will convert on condition that the sage teach him “the whole Torah on one foot (al regel achas).”
Hillel responds by saying: “What is hateful in your eyes, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary; go learn it.”
Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin offers this tantalizing, novel interpretation. He explains that the proselyte was really posing a question of much greater sophistication. He understood the cycle of the Shalosh Regalim— the three Pilgrim Festivals of Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos — and how they fit together so that the Jewish people could reexperience annually the physical and spiritual redemption of their ancestors.
What he did not understand was the regel echad— the One Festival of Shimini Atzeres, which is attached to Sukkos but not really part of it. His play on words, asking for an understanding “on one foot (regel),” was really an inquiry into the nature of the one Festival (regel) that remains apart from the other three.
Hillel answered him this way. Each of the Festivals celebrates a specific event and is defined by specific practices. Pesach commemorates the exodus from Egypt through the commandment to eat matzah; Shavuos commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai through the custom of staying up through the night learning; Sukkos commemorates the miracles through which the Almighty sustained the Jews in the desert by commanding us to move out of our homes into little huts.
Once all that is done, once we have reawakened and, we hope, revitalized our relationship with our Creator, one essential step remains: to revitalize our relationship with our fellow Jews. And so the Torah added an extra regel — festival — not commemorative of any event nor defined by any specific practice. By extending the festival season for an extra day, we have the opportunity to remind ourselves that, no matter how much we may strive to perfect our relationship with the Master of the Universe, we accomplish nothing unless we strive equally to perfect our relationship with our neighbors and fellows.
If we aren’t cautious, religious fervor and passion can become a source of dissension and division in the Jewish community. We are allowed our differences in how we adhere to Torah law; we are required to make distinctions between authentic Torah practice and those interpretations that have strayed from legitimate tradition. But in our conduct toward our fellow Jews, and in our passion for promoting unity within the Jewish community, there is not justification for not fighting against divisiveness with the same zeal we may have for attaching ourselves to the One G-d who charged us all, together, in His service.
The Divine Harmony of the Simchas Beis HaSho’eiva
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays, Philosophy on October 15, 2008
LaMinatzayach, proclaims King David, introducing no less than 55 of his Psalms with the dedication, to the Conductor. And who is this Conductor to whom Dovid dedicates his songs of praise? Rashi identifies him as the Levi who serves in the Temple in Jerusalem. The sages identify the Conductor as the Almighty Himself (Pesachim 119a).
Yet we need not find these interpretations contradictory. For is it not the Master of the World who arranges and directs every movement in the great orchestra of Creation? And was it not the Leviim who sat upon the 15 steps leading into the courtyard of the Beis HaMikdash, composing and rendering melodies for the 15 Shir HaMa’alos of Dovid’s Tehillim? Indeed, it is these 15 very songs that symbolize the ascension of the Jewish people, who are compared to the moon, which waxes through the first 15 days of the month until it shines full in the sky.
Finally, who better to dedicate songs of praise to HaShem and to His master musicians than Dovid HaMelech, the “sweet singer of Israel”? (2 Shmuel 23:1)
Both Dovid and the Leviim shared the understanding that words of praise alone are inadequate unless accompanied by music. But what is this power of niggun – melody – which restored prophecy to Elisha at the moment of his anger and despair, which merited Serach bas Asher eternal life for singing words of comfort to her grandfather, Yaakov Avinu, and for which Navos HaYizr’eli merited death for withholding his incomparably beautiful voice from the Levitical choir?
I will solve my riddle with the harp, says Dovid (Tehillim 49:5). HaShem created the world with seven heavenly emanations, or sefiros, beginning with the three fundamental qualities of the patriarchs – chesed (kindness), gevurah (inner strength), and tiferes (splendor) – and culminating in malchus (kingship). This pattern asserts itself through the sights and sounds of Creation: visible light refracts into seven colors with three primary bands (red, blue, and yellow), while audible sound divides into the seven notes of the scale with three primaries forming the major musical triad (C, E, and G). And just as the integration of the colors of the spectrum produces pure white light, the successful integration of sound produces perfect harmony. The seventh sefirah, kingship, corresponds to Dovid, founder of the messianic dynasty and “sweet singer of Israel.”
What is harmony? If every musician in the orchestra were to play continuously at full volume, the resulting cacophony would offer no more esthetic pleasure than the horn-blowing of rush-hour traffic. Inspired musical arrangement, however, with some instruments contributing more and some less, some loud and some restrained, produces a symphonic masterpiece that touches the soul in a way beyond words, beyond pictures, beyond thought.
Just as the foul odor of the chelbanah, the galbanum, contributed to the transcendent fragrance of the incense offering when mixed together with other spices, an otherwise uninspiring note may produce the most exquisite harmony when it completes a perfect chord. Both are allegories for HaShem’s multifaceted world, in which seemingly purposeless or corrosive elements play an indispensable role in the workings of nature and society. More than any other medium, music enables us recognize the hand of the Creator in the unfathomable intricacies of creation and teaches us to relinquish the primacy of our own desires for a more subtle contribution to the spiritual harmony of the universe.
Set to music, words of praise acquire a power far beyond their simple verbal meaning. And so we see that, as they passed through the sea to escape Pharaoh’s chariots, the Jewish people found no greater expression of praise and thanksgiving than singing to HaShem. In the same way, Devorah sang her praises for the victory over Sisera, Chanah sang her gratitude for the birth of her son, Shmuel, and Dovid sang his appreciation for the establishment of his kingdom. Tragically, because Chizkyahu merely recited the verses of Hallel rather than arranging them into notes of Shira, he merited only salvation from the army of the Assyrian king Sancheriv but failed to fulfill his destiny of becoming Moshiach.
Such was the musical exultation of Sukkos in the Beis HaMikdash that one who has not witnessed the celebration of the Beis HaSho’eivah (the water-drawing ceremony) has never seen true joy. The Talmud describes the drawing of water from the spring of Shiloach in preparation for the nisuch haMayim, the water libation of the Sukkos Festival: the people would dance and sing in the courtyard, holding torches in their hands, while the Leviim would stand below on the 15 steps leading from the ezras Yisroel to the ezras nashim … playing their harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets, and other instruments, singing songs of praise throughout the night (Sukkos 51a).
Elyahu Kitov explains that, over the course of the year, the evil inclination blinds us with pride and desire, separating us from HaShem and from one another, sowing discord and disharmony among the Jewish people. But with our collective repentance on Yom Kippur, we acquire the opportunity to recover our national unity and return to spiritual purity. Having thus freed ourselves from the dominion of the yeitzer hara, we come under the wings of the Divine Presence as we enter the sukkah, demonstrate our renewed commitment to Klal Yisroel by taking the arba minim (the Four Species), and pour water upon the altar to symbolize our untarnished return to the service of HaShem.
As we celebrate our spiritual renewal, the sweet harmonies of the Leviim echo the harmony between each Jew and his fellow, between each Jew and his Creator. Awake, my glory! declares Dovid. Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn (Tehillim 57:9). The instrumental harmony of the Leviim inspires the inner harmony of the soul and the cosmic harmony of the heavens in a joyous celebration unparalleled in human experience.
In recent generations, musical expression has become associated with the niggunim of the Chassidic masters of Europe. And indeed, it was the early Chassidic movement that resurrected both musical harmony and the joy of divine service from a painful dormancy.
Ivdu es HaShem b’simcha, boyu l’fonov bir’nonoh, proclaimed Dovid in his Tehillim, Serve HaShem with gladness, come before Him with joyous song (ibid. 100:2). In the days following the depression and disillusionment of the false messiah Shabbtai Tzvi, the rabbinic leaders of Europe suppressed expressions of emotion, fearing that unbridled enthusiasm might give rise to similar charlatans who would again shatter the hopes of the Jewish people. Instead, they admonished their communities to seek HaShem through Torah study and meticulous halachic observance.
Such a formula may have proven successful for the few who were scholars. But for the average Jew of modest education, Jewish life devolved into a monotony of uninspired routine. True, Jews might be protected from false hope, but they found little genuine hope in their joyless lives.
It was the radiant light of chassidus that dispelled their spiritual darkness. Teaching that even the most poorly educated Jew can attain divine intimacy through prayer and song, the Ba’al Shem Tov founded the Chassidic movement and reawakened the soul of the Jewish people, restoring spiritual harmony through the harmonies of Lecha Dodi, Keil Adon, the plunging, soaring niggunim of the rebbe’s tisch, and the quiet intensity of the kumsitz.
And so, as we greet each new day, as we enter into each new season, let us sing with the same passion as the Leviim in the Temple: Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
Is Nothing Rotten in Denmark?
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture, Holidays on October 12, 2008
The Happiness Quotient – Psychologists’ research would have us believe Danes are the happiest people on earth. A lesson from Sukkos suggests otherwise.
The Audacity of Irrational Hope
Posted by Yonason Goldson in History, Holidays, Politics on October 11, 2008
When idealists cry from the soapbox that they have the solutions to all the country’s problems, it’s hard not to give them a hearing. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we can fix our education system, our health care system, our political system, and our economy. But when they insist that we can solve all the problems of the world through diplomacy — that all our differences with hostile nations and cultures stem from misunderstanding and can be reconciled through sensitivity and a meeting of minds — then we have to wonder whether their other solutions have any more grounding in reality than the Philosopher’s Stone or the Fountain of Youth.
As evidence of the superiority of diplomacy over aggression, they point to the failures in Iraq. True, the US adventure there foundered badly. But this was because of mismanagement and not because the plan was fundamentally unsound. It’s easy to claim that, since results were not what we had hoped, we never should have gotten involved in the first place. But we never know what might have been, and there is good reason to believe that inaction would have produced even worse results.
The late Alistair Cook, who witnessed the folly and tragedy of Neville Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement with Adolph Hitler, saw the parallel even before American troops went into Iraq. His observations should be required reading for every advocate of appeasement.
One can only imagine how the pacifists seventy years ago would have wailed and wrung their hands over every casualty and setback had the allies struck preemptively against the Third Reich. But with the wisdom of hindsight, who would dispute how much human suffering might have been prevented?
It is not the threat from fanatics that poses the greatest danger to the world today. A far greater danger comes from the Pollyanna fantasies of “visionaries” who believe we can make peace with the merchants of violence who seek our destruction. The only possible approach to a culture of terrorism was addressed in Jewish philosophy 3300 years ago with the Torah’s response to the attack by the nation of Amoleik: there can be no peace with radical extremists who eagerly die in the cause of sowing death.
During the autumnal Festival of Sukkos, traditional synagogues around the world read publicly the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a vast army called Gog and Magog, assembled from among all the nations of the earth to march forth against the people of Israel in the ultimate battle of mankind, the great war of the messianic era.
Over a century ago, the brilliant 19th century thinker Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch explained that the essence of this confrontation is not an engagement of military powers but a cultural battle of ideas. In Hebrew, the word “gog” means “roof.” In the context of Ezekiel’s prediction, it represents the philosophy of secular progressivism, the ideology that man defines his own standards of right and wrong, of good and evil, of virtue and corruption. It believes in the supremacy of human reason and human accomplishment, in an autocracy of intellectual elitism. Above all, it rejects any concept of a higher authority, the sanctity of life, or personal responsibility. It deifies convenience without commitment, moral equivalence without moral judgment, and personal autonomy without accountability. It is, plain and simple, the philosophy of moral anarchy.
It is this ideology that the prophet tells us will rise up in the End of Days in an attempt to conquer the world. Opposing it will be a very different ideology — the philosophy of Sukkah.
These little huts — sukkas — usually constructed of thin wooden panels and covered with branches of palm or bamboo, become home to the entire community of Torah observant Jews for seven days after the conclusion of the High Holidays. With only the most insubstantial shelther, the Jew is forced to recall that even the most solid structures of human design cannot guarantee security or protection. Every force of nature hastens to perform the Divine Will, and there is no place secure enough to hide from its power … as the victims of hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes would testify. Only by living lives of virtue according to the absolute standards of good and evil can we reasonably hope to merit safety and redemption — at least in the next world, if not always here on earth.
The danger of well-intentioned irrationalism flourishes, ironically, in proportion not only to the imminent danger from extremist movements, but also in proportion to economic and social chaos. The collapse of financial institutions ruined by their own irrational exuberance and the decay of inner city communities pulled down by their own abandonment of basic family structure would seem to cry out for measured responses and the wisdom of experience. Instead, powered by unshakable faith in a brave new world of hope and change, rhetoric conquers qualification, charisma conquers character, and form conquers substance as grand schemes of breathtaking impracticality gain traction day by day. The foundations of civilized society are increasingly eroded by fanciful notions of utopian universalism.
Sadly, the outcome of unfounded hope is usually prolonged and exacerbated hopelessness.
The respect for life, charity tempered by accountability, social consience that sprouts forth from traditional values — these are the characteristics that will come increasingly under attack as human beings allow themselves to be seduced by their own cleverness and their own moral judgment. We needn’t look too far to conclude that the signposts of the messianic era have already appeared before us. And we needn’t look too far or think too deeply to recognize which qualities of leadership are necessary to prepare us for the approaching storm.
Jonah’s Flight
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on October 7, 2008
Commanded to proceed to the great Assyrian capital of Nineveh, the prophet Jonah chose instead to flee across the ocean. Why did he seek to escape the word of G-d?
Jonah had two reasons for his flight. First, he feared for his own reputation and safety. If he prophesied the destruction of the city, and the people responded with repentance and thereby averted their fate, they might indict him as a false prophet and perhaps even seek his death.
Second, Jonah feared for his Jewish brothers. If the Gentiles responded to the words of the prophet with repentance, how poorly would this reflect upon the Jews, who had ignored generations of warnings from their own prophets and persisted in their corrupt ways?
The narrative of Jonah’s flight records a series of divine decrees: the Almighty designated a storm to turn back Jonah’s ship, a great fish to swallow him when he was cast into the sea, a large tree to grow miraculously over his head to give him shade, a worm to attack the roots of the tree so that it should die the day after it came into being, and finally an east wind to wither the foliage over Jonah’s hut and expose him to the unrelenting rays of the sun.
Each of these communicated a lesson to Jonah. The storm taught him that he could not escape the word of G-d. His incarceration in the belly of the fish taught him to reflect upon his errors and to repent. The tree taught him that G-d’s mercy arrives in the blink of an eye, and the worm taught him not to take G-d’s mercy for granted. Finally, the east wind taught him that all human effort comes to nothing if not by the grace of G-d.
Together, this series of events taught Jonah the value of every creature under the sun. Jonah’s attempt to leave the inhabitants of Nineveh to their fate, even with the intention of protecting the Jews from divine wrath, came from his failure to recognize that every human being is created in the image of G-d, and that even the beasts of the field serve the Almighty by following their natural inclinations. G-d does not grade on a curve, but judges every individual according to his own merit.
The message of Jonah on Yom Kippur is that each and every one of us has a mission designated by the Almighty, and that no matter how we may try to chart a course in some other direction, the winds of Divine Providence will steer us back again and again to confront the purpose for which we were created. The word tshuva, usually translated as “repentance,” literally means return. With infinite patience, G-d will direct us back however many times it may take, until we willingly return to that path He has laid before us.
We may resist. If so, like Jonah, we will find no shortage of obstacles blocking us at every turn, and urging us to return to travel the road we were created to follow.
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