There are a few things I am certain about in my life. I am certain of the love and of the gratitude I feel for my family, for my friends, for my students, and for my fellow travelers in this Jilli’s journey. I am certain of my capacity to be creative and to be awed by this amazing world I live in. I give most everything and everyone the benefit of the doubt, initially. I am always hopeful that human beings will change, that I will be pleasantly surprised by people doing the right thing.
I am prompted to say this because of the way that I read the Book of Jonah this year. The Book of Jonah, which we will read later in the afternoon, always surprises me with new understandings, with new insights. No matter how many times I read it, there’s always a surprise, something that deepens the book and ends up teaching something new. This year, as I looked at this story again, I saw in the speech of different characters a message about the certainty, strict justice, and what God expects of us.
The Book of Jonah starts with God’s call to Jonah, the son of Amittai. Re-thinking the story, I see that the prophet’s name gives us a hint about his personality, and about his job performance. His first name, Jonah, means “dove” in Hebrew. The dove was the bird sent by Noah that came back bringing the olive branch, telling Noah that the waters of the flood had receded. The dove is a messenger, telling the remaining humans that it is time to transform and rebuild, bringing peace to the family stranded in a boat. Jonah is also known as the son of Amittai, a name that shares the root of the word truth. Jonah’s name can be understood as a messenger of peace and the son of truth. Yet the first thing this prophet does is to refuse to bring a message to Nineveh. His first reaction in this story is to run away from his job. He went aboard a ship and was asleep while a storm raged, a storm sent by God to bring him back to his mission. The captain woke him and asked him to pray to his God. The captain’s words to Jonah are the key to understanding the role of certainty in making judgments, a central concern of this book. At the end of his words the captain says: “Perhaps, the god will be kind to us and we will not perish.” Perhaps—Ulai.
In contrast, when the lots are cast and they fell upon Jonah, the messenger of peace and the son of truth, the sailors wanted to know who he was and what he had done. He responded: “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Eternal, the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land.” Jonah’s certainty about who he is and who he worships is surprising, since this messenger of peace was fleeing from the job that God had assigned him. The contrast between Jonah’s proclamation and the captain’s words sheds light onto our understanding of the story’s function. For the captain, being open to and hopeful of what can happen is a welcomed result of his prayers. Ulai—perhaps, we can be saved, perhaps, there is something we can do.
Jonah, on the other hand, thinks he knows exactly who he is, and what he needs to do. There’s no room for change, for conversation with God, for exploration of possibilities. While the sailors refuse to throw Jonah overboard, trying mightily to get back to port, Jonah tells them to throw him overboard, to do to him what he should have done himself. As the sea calms down these sailors, who the Biblical commentator Rashi explains represented all the other nations in the world, offer sacrifices to the Eternal. Jonah flees his mission, filled with certainty; the sailors transform themselves, uncertain of outcomes and hopeful, and at the end are open to accepting God’s rule.
After being swallowed by the big fish, and spewed back on earth, Jonah goes to Nineveh and utters the shortest prophecy ever: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Jonah’s prophecy, five words total in Hebrew, is the shortest and most effective prophecy ever uttered. This prophecy can be read in two different ways. One way to read it is how I believe Jonah intended this prophecy: “In 40 days Nineveh is, without a doubt, undone, destroyed.”
Jonah uses the same word that was used about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet this word at the center of this prophecy, ne’epachat, can be understood in another way. I believe that this is how the people of Nineveh and its king understood this prophecy: “In 40 days Nineveh turns over, in 40 days Nineveh can change its destiny.”
In the minds of the people of Nineveh there is a chance to transform, to change. The king of Nineveh’s speech ends with: Who knows—mi yodeah? Perhaps God will turn back from God’s wrath and we will not perish. Mi yodeah? Who knows? Says the king of Nineveh. Ulai…perhaps…says the ship’s captain.
What a contrast! The people of Nineveh and its king, the sailors and the captain, are hopeful, uncertain of what the future will bring, and are open to change.
Jonah acts as though he knows exactly who he is, and as it turns out, believes he knows exactly who God is. When God embraced the actions of the people of Nineveh and refrained from destruction, Jonah was distressed and upset. His words to God are very telling: “Why did you have me come to Nineveh to utter this prophecy? For I know (Ki yode’ah ani) that you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment.”
Something is missing from these words of Jonah. In quoting this part of the thirteen attributes of God, Jonah stops short. He swallows the word ve’emet—truthful. Jonah, the only character in this story who believes he knows, with certainty, who he is and who God is, challenges God with his very name. He is the son of truth, telling God that God is not truthful. Jonah’s unshakeable certainty and the judgments he makes based on that certainty are nothing less than blasphemy. He has complete conviction that he knows what is true, what is right and what is just, a conviction that smacks of zealotry. God, in the end of the book, reminds Jonah that he does not know everything, and that the gates of change are also open for him. The book ends with Jonah’s silence and with a question to all of us: are human beings capable of change and of transformation? Are we ready to be hopeful and open, as God wishes us to do?
In this Yom Kippur, are we going to be like Jonah, immutable in our certainties, implacable in our judgments, or are we going to be like the captain and the sailors, like Nineveh and its king, open to changing our behavior and our ways?
Martin Buber, in his book On The Bible, explains that people can transform themselves, but only if they believe that they can. Buber wrote about the power of opening oneself to change:
“…we are surprised by secret openings and insertions; room must be made for such surprises; planning as though they were impossible renders them impossible. Inner transformation simply means surpassing one’s present factual constitution; it means that the person one is intended to be penetrates what has appeared up until now, that the customary soul enlarges and transfigures itself into the surprise soul.”
I love this idea that the only barrier to our transformation is the certainty that things are immutable. We all have the potential for the surprise soul, the people we can and were meant to be, to make space in our present souls so we can flourish. Inner transformation can happen when we abandon the fallacy of ki iode’ah ‘ani, because I know, the voice of Jonah that thinks we know everything about ourselves, about others, and about God. We have this potential, we have this spark of something else that’s called the surprise soul, and if we believe it’s in there, and we make space for it, it will surprise us and allow us to fully be who we were meant to be, free from certitudes, changed, transformed into the full being that will act with compassion and less strict judgment, able to make significant contributions to the world.
Reading the Book of Jonah at the end of Yom Kippur is a reminder that this day is about the possibility of human transformation. This day is about moving ourselves away from believing that we know with all certainty what is right and what is just and that God should mete out punishment with strict justice based on our understanding of other’s behaviors. This day is about finding compassion for us and for others, and being hopeful and open to change for ourselves, for others, and for God. Jonah wants strict justice to happen because he is certain he knows what is right, true and fair—but the wish for strict justice is a death wish. It’s a wish for his own destruction. Jonah fails to see that with God’s compassion and with human uncertainties there is a possibility for human transformation. We can muse about the future, we can say: mi yodeah, who knows, ulai, perhaps—there are other ways to behave. Our surprise soul will come out if we allow it, through questioning, through uncertainty, with our hearts filled with compassion.
In this Yom Kippur, on this day of transformation, I wish that we all learn from Jonah’s unshakeable certainties, and open ourselves to our surprise souls. May we be blessed to stand embraced by God’s and our community’s openness to the possibility of change. May the only certainty we have is that the gate to transformation is open, and it is filled with compassion, love, gratitude, awe, and our ability to change.