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National Student Essay Contest
Coming Together Through Jonah
by Avi S. Olitzky While there are many passages in the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) that have great significance for both Jews and Christians, it is those passages that both Christians and Jews read for similar reasons that are most impor-tant to reaching a mutual understanding of each other's faiths.
On the Christian Lectionary Calendar (the Church's litur-gical calendar), the reading from the book of Jonah is designated for the Wednesday of the first week of Lent. However, the entire book is not read. Rather, the Chris-tian scriptural selection contains only the conversion of the Ninevites (Jonah 3:1-10). The Church calendar of-fers the Jonah story as a paradigm to emulate early in the Pre-Easter penitential season.
The Luach (the Jewish Scriptural and Ritual Calendar) assigns the book of Jonah as the prophetic reading (haf-tarah) for the afternoon of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). In the JPS Bible Commentary on the book of Jonah, Uriel Simon writes: "The designation of Jonah as the haftarah for the Afternoon Service of the Day of Atonement (B. Megillah 31a) reflects the view that this book depicts the concept of repentance so starkly and completely that it can stir hearers to repent their ways and even modify their conduct."1
Yom Kippur and Lent are religious holy periods that are well known among Jews and Christians alike. Moreover, Lent for Christians and Yom Kippur for Jews are both periods of time that houses of worship are brimming to capacity. Because of this, one of the more obscure texts of the Tanakh, the book of Jonah, is actually seen by many Jews and Christians. Thus, Lent and Yom Kippur are surprisingly linked via the book of Jonah. This could be the foundation we need to engender under-standing between the faith communities. But is this connection alone enough to forge a shared appreciation for each other's views? What exactly does the text convey about repentance? And subsequently, do Jews and Christians agree over for what a person can repent or even how one must repent?
The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah, which means "return" or, literally, "a turn in step." While the term teshuvah is post-biblical, the word is derived from the biblical vocabulary associated with repentance. For example, "Let the wicked give up his ways, The sinful man his plans; Let him turn back (v'yashov) to the Lord; And He will pardon him; To our God, for He freely for-gives" (Isaiah 55:7).2
To understand in what way one must "return," it is necessary to be familiar with Judaism's perspective on relationships. In Judaism, there are three distinct cate-gories of relationships: between a person and him/ herself, between a person and his/her fellow human being, and between a person and God. Before one can work significantly on his/her relationship with God, the rabbis taught that s/he must work on the other two categories. Through the path of repentance, the indi-vidual is able to re-establish his/her relationship with God on Yom Kippur.
To focus on the process of repentance, Jews fast on Yom Kippur. Similarly, Lent is a period of prayer, fasting and limitation. Because forty days is a traditional number for discipline, devotion, and preparation in the Bible, Lent, too, is forty days. Most significant are the for-mulaic numbers that Nineveh was given forty days to repent (Jonah 3:4), and prior to undertaking his journey, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness fasting and praying (Matthew 4:2). Since Jesus used a forty-day period of prayer and fasting to prepare for his ministry, which concluded with his death and resurrection, Chris-tians try to replicate this with a forty-day period of prayer and fasting. This period of prayer and fasting is to prepare for the celebration of Jesus' ministry's climax: Good Friday (the day of the crucifixion) and Easter Sun-day (the day of the resurrection).
As mentioned above, both periods of time and their respective faiths have a strong sense of repentance. Christianity's penitential period is a time of preparation to become closer with Jesus, which culminates in Easter. The period leading up to Yom Kippur is similar, but Yom Kippur itself is the opportunity to become closer with God. In order for us to understand the relationship be-tween the two faiths and their views of repentance in Jonah, we have to review the book of Jonah.
The book of Jonah in Nevi'im (Prophets) is shorter than most other books in the Hebrew Scriptures. A mere four chapters in length, the book ends with Jonah's silence -- and the reader is waiting for him to respond.
The story of Jonah is often broken down into a seven-segment structure. Uriel Simon delineates the structure explicitly: the injunction and its violation (1:1-3); in the storm-tossed ship: the sailors' obedience and Jonah's rebellion (1:4-16); in the belly of the fish: submission (2:1-11); the repeated injunction and its fulfillment (3:1-3a); in Nineveh, the doomed: the sinners' repen-tance (3:3b-10); in Nineveh, the forgiven: Jonah's second rebellion (4:1-5); East of Nineveh: acquiescence (4:6-11).3
The book starts with God's command to go to Nineveh and rebuke the people. Jonah runs away instead. Jonah flees from God and tries to hide from the Divine com-mand. Jonah's defiance endangers those who allow him to board the ship. Jonah succumbs and offers himself to God via the ocean. Preventing Jonah's death, God brings a great fish to swallow Jonah, which is our opportunity to hear Jonah's greatest prayer: Jonah's repentance. God gives Jonah a second chance, and commands him once again to go to Nineveh and rebuke the people. Jonah travels to Nineveh and proclaims its destruction in the coming forty days. Everyone fasts and covers him- or herself in sackcloth. God sees this, changes the decree, and does not destroy them. Jonah is not happy with this! He again calls to God and demands that God smite him there. God questions Jonah's anger, and Jonah flees from the city.
East of Nineveh, Jonah constructs a sukkah (booth) and sits in its shade, awaiting God's wrath or deliverance of Nineveh. As Jonah waits, God causes a gourd to grow and gives Jonah shade over his head and prevents his distress. Jonah was happy about the plant, but the next day, God sends a worm to destroy the plant. Later that morning, God sends an east wind to bring discomfort on Jonah and causes him to faint. Again Jonah implores God to bring his death. Taking an alternative route, God asks, "Are you so deeply angry about the plant?" (as opposed to the previous "Are you so deeply angry?"). Jonah affirms this and God scolds him: "You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished over-night. And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than twelve myriad persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!" And the story ends. Jonah is si-lent. If both traditions are using the book as a vehicle for repentance, we would expect Jonah to have repent-ed. However, his silence would lead us to believe that he did not repent.
Christianity and Judaism had a hard time accepting Jonah's silence for this reason. Repentance provides a person with a second chance to mend his/her ways after committing erroneous acts. Both Judaism and Christianity believe in the forgiving power of God. In order to receive God's forgiveness, a man or woman must repent. Ency-clopaedia Judaica elaborates the Jewish view, stating, "Repentance is a prerequisite for divine forgiveness: God will not pardon man unconditionally but waits for him to repent."4 It is possible to interpret Jonah's silence as repentance; he seems to have accepted God's challenge and admonishment. As stated above, Simon describes the silence as Jonah's acquiescence.5 If Jonah's silence is in fact acquiescence, then there would be no reason
for Christianity and Judaism to take issue with it.As mentioned previously, Christians read the selection about the Ninevites' repentance. This reading therefore does not include Jonah's silence. Since the rabbis de-cided to read the entire book on Yom Kippur, the Jewish reading includes Jonah's silence. Even though the rabbis include Jonah's silence as part of the Yom Kippur read-ing, the rabbis appended Micah 7:18-20 to the end of Jonah: "Who is like you, forgiving iniquity and pardoning the transgression of the remnant of Your people? You do not maintain anger forever, but You delight in lovingkind-ness. You will again have compassion upon us, subduing our sins, casting all of our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and enduring love to Abraham as You promised our fathers from days of old." By appending this Micah text, the rabbis made it appear as if Jonah is no longer silent.
Perhaps Jonah was silent because he was internally full of rage and refused to understand! Christianity and Judaism could not offer as a paradigm a Prophet whose words end disagreeing with God and rejecting God's omniscience. Reviewing the arrangement of the readings, one can see that Christianity and Judaism handle their uneasiness in different ways. The goal of reading Jonah, for both Christianity and Judaism, is to bring repentance to the forefront of their devotees' minds. The Christian and Jewish views of repentance are very similar. Chris-tianity's position on repentance relies on penitence. A person has a sad and humble realization of and regret for his or her wrongdoings. To Christians, the Ninevites are the only characters in the tale that resemble this posture for penitence, specifically because of Jonah's ultimate silence. Christianity therefore excludes the silence and reads only this section. In Jewish Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Teluskin explains that the Jewish view of repentance is broken down into several steps: "The sinner must recognize his sin, feel sincere remorse, undo any damage he has done and pacify the victim of his offense, and resolve never to commit the sin again."6 By including Micah as if his words came from the mouth of Jonah, the rabbis stage the Jewish reading as a reflec-tion of these steps.
Reading the book of Jonah alone is not enough of a con-nection to forge a shared appreciation for Christians and Jews. The key to the mutual understanding of each other's faiths is repentance, and crucial to this under-standing is the book of Jonah. Judaism does not read the Hebrew Scriptures without the Talmud, and Christianity does not read the Hebrew Scriptures without the New Testament. Reading the text this way yields a different understanding for each faith. When reading the text, in either community, we have to see beyond this differ-ence. It is imperative that we begin this endeavor by referring to the similarities in the seasonal reading of the book of Jonah in Judaism and Christianity, as well as their respective beliefs about sin and repentance.
Both Judaism and Christianity believe that human beings have the potential to sin. However, their views on what constitutes sin differ. Christianity believes that human beings have an inclination to sin that emerges from the Original Sin doctrine: Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden and their sin was transmitted intrinsically to everyone born thereafter. Judaism believes a person is free of sin at birth, but still must overcome the inclina-tion to sin throughout life. (This is what the rabbis call the evil inclination, or the Yetzer HaRa.) Even though Christianity and Judaism have a different perspective on sin, both allow for the forgiveness of sin. Nevertheless, Christianity's and Judaism's views on repentance are connected because both recognize death as a form of ultimate release.
Christianity teaches that Jesus died for the sins of hu-manity. Judaism teaches that in death is the ultimate teshuvah; one can die for his own sins, but not on be-half of the sins of another. This connection of death is also why Jews and Christians both do their own versions of a final confession on the deathbed. Death as a form of closure for both Judaism and Christianity provides both religions with a new way to read and interpret the story of Jonah. This allows the two faiths to come to understand each other better.
Even though both Christianity and Judaism are uncom-fortable with Jonah's silence at the end of the book, the faiths handle the dilemma in different ways. Perhaps Jonah is silent because he has died. This is, of course, an interpretation, but such a midrash would unite the faiths while maintaining their distinctions. Jonah already plays a symbolic role as a parallel to Jesus (as well as prophecy for Christianity: three days in the fish equals three days between crucifixion and resurrection -- Mat-thew 12:39-40). The explanation that Jonah died would cogently plug into this formula and give more support for the argument. For Judaism, if Jonah died at the end of the text, this would be his ultimate acceptance of God's greater scheme, as well as the quintessential teshuvah. The appended text from Micah could then be read as a sub-text, a eulogy, or even the Scriptural epitaph for Jonah. Reinterpreting the silence in the text as Jonah's death mitigates the tension between both religions and the text. This allows Christianity and Judaism to fully embrace the dilemma instead of evading confrontation. No longer would Judaism and Christianity approach the shared problem with two separate solutions, but the two would come together with the same solution, for differ-ent reasons.
By rereading the book of Jonah cooperatively as Jews and Christians, we learn more about the text and each other. We come together in our struggle to overcome moral and spiritual challenges. The study of the book of Jonah and the actions of repentance that emerge from it, lead us on the path to one another, creating new opportunities for understanding, tolerance and cooper-ation, moving us forward each step along the way.
Endnotes
1Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (Phila-delphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999), vii.
2All translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are taken from the pocket edition of the new JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003).
3Simon, xxv.
4Jacob Milgrom, "Repentance," Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1971), 73.
5Simon, xxv.
6Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy, (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), 542.
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