There’s a story told in the Midrash about a group of people on a boat. As they sail along, one of the passengers takes a drill and starts boring a hole under his seat. The others panic: “What are you doing?! You’re going to sink the boat!” The driller looks up calmly and responds, “Why are you worried? I’m only drilling under my own seat.” They said to him, “But the water will rise and flood us all on this ship” (Vayikra Rabbah 4:6).
I think it’s safe to say that, since October 7th, many of us have felt adrift, sinking, even drowning. Hamas’ attacks on innocent Israelis were unimaginable in their cruelty and horror. The Jewish community, in Israel and around the world, remains shocked and traumatized, riven by internal discord and ruptured by a war that only seems to be widening, even as it has already claimed the lives of thousands of innocents and combatants on all sides.
For many of us, the silence of those we thought were our friends and allies has only compounded the pain of this past year. Some have even seemingly turned on us, crossing from criticism of Israeli policy to antipathy toward the Jewish people as a whole.
On the other end of the spectrum, prominent politicians and influential media personalities have tolerated and emboldened a surge of ethno-nationalism and outright antisemitism that has bled terrifyingly into the mainstream and has even led to violence.
Abandoned and isolated, targeted and vilified, many of us have responded by turning inward – focusing primarily, sometimes exclusively, on protecting and strengthening ourselves. The impulse is deeply human, and perfectly understandable.
This afternoon, we’ll read the story of Jonah, a Hebrew prophet called by God to go to a city called Nineveh to decry its wickedness.
Now, to us, the name Nineveh might not mean much, but to an ancient audience, it was as recognizable as New York or Paris — or, more fittingly, perhaps, Tehran. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, one of the most powerful and notoriously brutal empires of its time, and ancient Israel’s mortal enemy. After all, it was Assyria that utterly destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE.
So God is asking Jonah to do something that is literally without precedent in the rest of the Bible: to travel to a foreign nation and prophesy to them on their turf. To add insult to injury, the nation in question is one that poses an existential threat to Israel, one that Israelites both fear and despise; a violent, hostile empire; the embodiment of evil itself. And the icing on the cake? Jonah is specifically instructed to carry out his mission in Nineveh, the belly of the beast, a city described by another Hebrew prophet as “ir damim,” a city drenched in blood (Nahum 3:1).
Imagine being an unknown prophet from a small nation, bearing bad news in the heart of the infamously cruel capital city of your sworn enemy. Jonah must have been terrified.
Given this context, Jonah’s response is perfectly understandable: he runs away.
But, see, fear is not actually why Jonah runs. Later in the story, he reveals why he ran: “I fled…because I know that You are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment” (Jonah 4:2). In other words, Jonah ran because he knew that his mission wasn’t to proclaim Nineveh’s destruction, but rather to facilitate its salvation. He knew that, when push came to shove, God would spare Nineveh. And – spoiler alert – that’s exactly what happens.
But wait – if Assyria is Israel’s mortal enemy, and the Israelites are God’s chosen, then why would God send Jonah to save the people of Nineveh? God’s motivations here don’t make sense unless you recall that, according to our tradition, God created humanity in the divine image. To God, every person, whether they be Israelite or Assyrian, is equally and infinitely precious (Malachi 2:10; M. Sanhedrin 4:5). And God expects the Jewish people, as covenantal partners, to share this view – which is why God specifically tasks an Israelite prophet with the mission of saving Nineveh.
Jonah, however, doesn’t agree with the God who has called him to prophesy. Jonah wants Nineveh to be destroyed. Jonah would like nothing more than the sweet justice of seeing Israel’s enemies suffer for their sins. After all, if Nineveh were destroyed, it wouldn’t be just a karmic victory; he and his people would be better off. So instead of participating in God’s plan to save Nineveh, he boards a ship to Tarshish, exactly the opposite direction.
But God doesn’t let Jonah off the hook that easily. God sends a powerful storm that threatens to sink the Tarshish-bound ship. And when Jonah tells the crew to save themselves by throwing him overboard, God sends a giant fish to spare him from drowning in the depths of the sea. After the fish spits him out onto dry land, Jonah, seemingly out of other options, begrudgingly heads to Nineveh.
But it quickly becomes clear that Jonah still doesn’t want to help the Ninevites. He walks to the center of the city and proclaims: “Od arba’im yom v’Nineveh nehepahat / Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
Careful readers will note that these are not God’s words from the beginning of the book. Jonah goes rogue and delivers his own prophecy – a portent of judgment and ruin; no salvation, no forgiveness, no mercy.
The Ninevites, however, react by engaging in heartfelt, sincere repentance for their misdeeds: acknowledging their wrongdoing, admitting their guilt, pleading for forgiveness, and pledging to change their ways. God responds by sparing the city.
Jonah, unsurprisingly, is furious. He wanted Nineveh destroyed, not redeemed. He leaves the city in a rage and sets up camp at a distance, refusing to watch the salvation of his enemies.
God, sensing an opportunity to get Jonah to see things from God’s point of view, causes a small tree to grow over Jonah, providing him protection from the sun and heat. Jonah is pleased. But the next day, God sends a worm to destroy the plant, and the scorching sun beats down on Jonah’s head. He’s devastated by the loss of the plant and begs for death.
God’s response is piercing: “You cared about this plant, which you did not tend to or grow. Should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, with more than a hundred and twenty thousand people?”
Abruptly, the story ends there. We don’t know if Jonah finally learned his lesson. But that’s not really the point. The point is whether we’ve learned it. God’s question is left unanswered at the end of the book of Jonah because it’s a question posed to each of us, right here, right now, on this day of all days: Just as each of our own children are infinitely precious to us, can we understand that each and every human being is infinitely precious to God, since they are all God’s children? And if we fully embraced the belief that every person, no matter how distant or different, even those we may think of as enemies, is equally a child of God, how might we act toward one another?
But viewing all people from God’s perspective as infinitely and equally worthy of our compassion is not mere ethical altruism. Caring for and helping others is not only a moral imperative. It’s also essential to our own well-being.
Consider the fact that the book of Jonah was most likely written long after the Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. If so, then perhaps its purpose was to present its audience with an alternate history: what if, sometime before 722 BCE, Israel’s sworn enemy had repented of its evil ways, transforming itself into a model of beneficence, justice, and peace? If that had happened, then perhaps one of Jewish history’s greatest and most traumatic cataclysms, one whose shadow lingers over the Bible and subsequent Jewish tradition, whose shockwaves continue to reverberate, could have been avoided altogether. The whole trajectory of Jewish history, perhaps world history, would have been altered for the better. Perhaps Assyria’s redemption would have been a giant leap toward the redemption of the whole world.
Jonah’s reluctance to redeem Nineveh is totally relatable. When we feel hurt or threatened, the impulse to turn inward, to insulate ourselves from the outside world, can feel not only justified but wise. Yet the book of Jonah reminds us that God regards such solipsistic insularity to be morally problematic; and, perhaps more importantly, that retreating into ourselves can also be seriously self-defeating. The implication of the book of Jonah is that if we are to survive, let alone thrive, we must expand our sphere of concern.
Though we may convince ourselves that people would be better off if everyone just minded their own business, the truth is that the choices we make, even the small ones, always have impacts far beyond ourselves. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Our fate, as individuals and as a society, depends on us recognizing that our welfare is bound up in one another’s.
Unlike his colleague Jonah, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, whose words we read in this morning’s haftarah, knew this well. The prophecies we read today were composed as the Jewish people were returning to Judea from their exile in Babylon, a long period of displacement, suffering, and oppression. As they returned home, they were understandably focused on their own community’s restoration and well-being. They focused their efforts on rebuilding the Temple; dutifully, even daily, attending services, “eager,” Isaiah observes, “for the nearness of God” (58:2), believing that God will respond to their demonstrations of personal piety by blessing their restorative labors.
Yet, for some reason they can’t understand, the project of rebuilding Jewish life in Jerusalem is not going according to plan; their situation remains precarious and desperate. They wonder, “Why, when we fast, does [God] not see? When we starve our bodies, why does God pay no heed?” (58:3).
Isaiah’s diagnosis is swift and direct: “Hen b’yom tzom’khem timtz’u hefetz v’khol atzveikhem tin’goshu, because on your fast day you look after your own desires while you forsake the poor.” The people, naturally, understandably, believe that the way to secure their own wellbeing is by focusing exclusively on their own needs. Isaiah responds not by telling them that it’s wrong to care about themselves per se, but rather that it’s insufficient.
Isaiah instructs his people to turn their attention outward, “to open the shackles of selfishness, loose the bonds of oppression, to set the downtrodden free, and to remove every burden…to distribute your bread to the hungry, and to bring the unhoused poor home” (58:6-7a). The prophet then drives his point home: “only when you see a naked person and clothe them, and do not forsake your fellow, then will your light burst through like the dawn, and your healing spring up quickly” (58:7b-8a). You won’t truly thrive unless all are able to thrive. You won’t be fully free unless all are free. Your wellbeing is bound up in your fellow’s. We’re all in the same boat.
That our own welfare as Jews is bound up with the health of our broader society is evident when we consider the uniqueness of the Jewish experience in America. For most of our history, the Jewish people lived, effectively, as guests in every land, and under every government, in which we established communities. Sometimes, thanks to a particularly beneficent ruler or more tolerant social mores, we were afforded special rights and privileges, able to more or less fully participate in society without having to abandon our faith or our traditions. More often, we were marginalized or persecuted, even marked for death.
Yet the Jewish experience in America has always been different, enabling us to flourish here in ways without parallel in our people’s roughly two thousand years of Diaspora.
But this flourishing is not inevitable or incontrovertible. It is directly tied to the health of our democracy. As democracy recedes, Jews become increasingly imperiled. The resurgence of antisemitism in America – especially insofar as it is emboldened by, and even emanates directly from, the highest echelons of our public life – is therefore unsurprising, even as it is horrifying. It’s a direct result of the increasingly precarious state of our democratic norms and institutions.
It’s also important to bear in mind that rising antisemitism is not just a result of weakened democratic norms and institutions, but also a cause of it. When antisemitism is allowed to flourish, and all the more so as it becomes normalized, the foundations of democracy crumble. It is in part for this reason that every freedom-loving person ought to be standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the struggle against antisemitism.
Yet we must also bear in mind that the proliferation of any prejudice corrodes the democratic structures that protect all of us, including those groups who are not directly targeted. Just as antisemitism is ultimately not only a danger to Jews, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of bigotry are not just threats to marginalized groups like African Americans, immigrants, Muslims, and the LGBTQ+ community — they are a threat to all of us who rely on the freedoms guaranteed by democratic societies, Jews included, perhaps especially.
From the perspective of our tradition, we are called to stand against bigotry and persecution in all their forms, to pursue justice for all people, and to secure and strengthen democracy because all human beings are infinitely and equally worthy of our care and concern. However, we are also called to do so because it is in our own self interest.
Yes, we must confront this emboldened authoritarianism and resurgent antisemitism wherever it manifests — whether on the political right or on the political left, whether it emanates from leaders with whom we typically disagree or with whom we are generally aligned. And yes, we must be vigilant in defending ourselves against acts of violence too often inspired by words of hate. And yes, we must wholeheartedly embrace our Judaism lest we, and not our enemies, be the ones who are responsible for the disappearance of our beautiful tradition.
But we will always be waiting around for the next assault on our community if we don’t also stand with anyone and everyone, whether near or far, who is threatened by bigotry, oppressed by tyranny, or imperiled by inequity –
With the huddled masses yearning to breathe free at our border,
With the multitudinous homeless sojourning in makeshift encampments on the margins of our increasingly unaffordable cities,
With Black and Brown communities crushed under the weight of systemic racism,
With the women and LGBTQ+ people who have seen their rights eviscerated,
With immigrant families who are being targeted and threatened by encroaching blood-and-soil white nationalism,
With all those who are suffering from violence in our own country and around the world.
And hear this, perhaps our most challenging call is to to stand with them even if they do not stand with us – not just because it’s the right thing to do, not just because our tradition calls upon us to do for others what we would have them do for us, but because our own future actually depends on it.
The fortunes of our Jewish community, and our congregation, rise or fall with the fortunes of the wider society in which we are embedded. We’re all in the same boat; caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. We must care for one another – not only broadly, but also deeply.
Caring for one another deeply demands not just charity, but justice as well. Charity is about meeting immediate needs of individuals. Justice, on the other hand, is about addressing the root causes that create those needs. As King put it, “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
If we look closely at Isaiah’s words in this morning’s haftarah, we’ll find that he makes precisely this point, challenging us not only to give to charity or offer occasional acts of kindness but, moreover to engage in the more difficult and complicated but necessary work of pursuing systemic change — “to remove every burden.”
He challenges us to address the structures of oppression that keep people in bondage:
Not only to feed the hungry person we encounter, but to ensure that everyone has enough to eat;
Not only to help an unhoused person find shelter, but to ensure that everyone has affordable and adequate housing;
Not only to lift up one downtrodden person, but to loose the bonds of persecution and poverty that prevent countless millions of our fellow human beings from flourishing.
And it is precisely on this day – as we focus on sealing ourselves in the book of blessing and prosperity, liberty and life – that our tradition confronts us with the complementary lessons of Jonah and Isaiah. From Jonah we learn that in order to secure the goodness we seek for ourselves, we must help others; and Isaiah reminds us that charity alone is not enough – we are called not just to help those in need, but to work to eradicate need altogether.
Indeed, on Rosh Hashanah, I shared the Jewish tradition’s image of heaven: a banquet table overflowing with food, where the people, unable to feed themselves, nourish one another instead. And I encouraged us, in the year to come, to strive to make our congregation a pocket of heaven on earth.
Yet today we are reminded that we must not, that we cannot, be satisfied with solely securing a scintilla of heaven. No, today we pray for nothing short of a total transformation of our world, “l’takein olam b’malkhut Shadai,” to repair the world through the dominion of the One, in which all people recognize and live out their relationship to and interconnectedness with one another, to advance a wholly new, perfectly peaceful order that is rooted in equality and sustained through justice (Is. 2:4, Mic. 4:3).
Today we are called to something greater than to simply care for our own, not only because it is right, but because it is vital; for in our interconnected world, we cannot care for our own unless we care for others, just as others cannot flourish unless they also help ensure that we too are thriving.
In the grandest and most audacious possible sense, we are charged with the sacred responsibility of making heaven on earth – not just within our walls, but in the wider world; not just by caring for our fellow Jews, but by caring for all of God’s children.
This is the unique purpose and possibility of being Jewish, of belonging to our congregation and our people, even and especially as we feel embittered and embattled in the midst of a world of hostility and strife, inequity and bloodshed – what we are called to be and to build at Temple Beth El, in Stamford, CT, and in our world, in the year 5785.
So as we move into this new year, let us continue striving to be such a community: one that cares within as well as without; one that ensures all have what they need, wherever and whomever they are; one that knows Heaven can be brought to earth – and all it takes is for us to feed each other.
Then will our light burst through like the dawn, and our healing spring up quickly;
Then will our Vindicator march before us, and the glorious power of Oneness protect us from all harm (Is. 58:8);
And then – speedily, and in our days – nation will not lift up sword against nation, and all of God’s children will together share in an enduring, and perfect, peace (Is. 2:4). So may it be God’s will. Amen.
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