HAFTARA: THE BOOK OF JONAH The reason we read the book of Jonah on the afternoon of Yom Kippur is because it “shows the power of repentance” (Rabbi Mordekhai Yaffe, Levush622:2), and so that the change of heart of the inhabitants of Nineveh should serve as an example to us (Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, Shela). The book of Jonah is unique. The other prophetic books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other “minor” prophets, consist mainly of the words they spoke in the name of God. Jonah proclaims only five words in the name of God while the book consists largely of narrative, part realistic, part miraculous or symbolic. The other prophets speak mainly to Israel, while Jonah speaks solely to gentiles. Jonah is not the only prophet to prophesy about other nations but he is the only one to travel to the place of which he speaks: Nineveh, capital of Assyria. These features in themselves would mark Jonah as an unusual work, but others are stranger still. Jonah is the only prophet who, while not doubting that God has called him, runs away. He is unique among prophets for his dramatic and immediate success. Having pronounced a single, short warning, the whole of Nineveh repents and is forgiven. Yet it is his success rather than failure that makes Jonah angry to the point of wanting to die. It was, he says, his conviction that God would forgive that made him run away in the first place. This is a strange, expectation-defying book. What does it mean, first in historical context, then in its setting here toward the end of Yom Kippur? The book of Jonah tells us nothing of the life of the prophet before his call. A prophet with the same name, Jonah ben Amitai, is, however, mentioned in II Kings 14. The sages assume that these are the same person. If so, Jonah is one of the few prophets who lived and served in the northern kingdom (“Israel,” as opposed to “Judah” in the south). The kingdom had split after the death of Solomon, the ten northern tribes following Jeroboam ben Nebat. Jonah lived in the days of his namesake, Jeroboam II, in the eighth century BCE. Described as an evil king, Jeroboam II was nonetheless a political and military success who “restored the boundaries of Israel from Levo Ḥamat to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through His servant Jonah son of Amitai, the prophet from Gat Ḥefer” (II Kings 14:25). Stephen Rosenberg (Esther, Ruth, Jonah Deciphered, Devorah: 2004, 157–201) has proposed an ingenious historical reconstruction of the book of Jonah as a political parable. Israel during the ninth century had been threatened by Syria (Aram) who had conquered a number of the northern cities. The second book of Kings (ch. 6–7) tells the story of the siege of Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom, by the Syrian army under Ben Hadad. The city was in dire straits. Its food was exhausted. People were dying of starvation. Yet the prophet Elisha told the king that the next day the siege would be lifted and food would be plentiful. So it happened. Four lepers who lived outside the city went to the Syrian camp in the hope of finding food. They found the camp deserted. God had caused the Syrian soldiers to hear a noise sounding like an approaching army. The soldiers, fearing that Israel had hired allies (Hittites and Egyptians) to attack them, fled (II Kings 7). The Syrians could be kept in check if they feared that another military power was coming to Israel’s aid. It is against this background, Rosenberg argues, that we should read the story of Jonah. Jonah, a young disciple of Elisha (see Yalkut Shimoni, I Kings 223), was told by God that Nineveh, home of the Assyrian army, would safeguard Israel by being a military threat to Syria’s eastern border. Syria would not attack Israel in the west if it feared possible attack on the east. Jonah was convinced that help lay nearer to hand in Tarshish (Tarsus, ruled by the Hittites). The “great fish” (dag gadol) that swallowed Jonah, preventing him from reaching his destination, represents the Philistines, the name of whose chief god, Dagon, may mean “great fish.” Eventually Jonah came to Nineveh, whose 120,000 inhabitants correspond to the 120,000 Assyrian troops stationed there, and persuaded them of the power and righteousness of the God of Israel. If this is so, then we can understand why Jonah was displeased. There is a precedent. God had told Elijah to anoint Ḥazael as king of Syria (I Kings 19:15). In fact it was Elisha, Elijah’s successor, who did so. While he was doing so he started crying. “Why is my lord weeping?” asked Ḥazael. “Because I know the harm you will do to the Israelites,” he answered (II Kings 8:12). Jonah too had an intuition of the harm the Assyrians would eventually do to Israel. In the shifting world of politics, today’s allies can become tomorrow’s enemies. That is one possible reading of Jonah as a political parable. It is as a spiritual text, however, that it has eternal significance, which is why we read it on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. It makes a series of profound points. The first is about the nature of prophecy itself. There is a difference between a prophecy and a prediction. If a prediction comes true it has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true it has failed. A prophet does not predict: he warns. He tells of something that will happen unless people turn away from evil. He describes a future in order to avert it. Jonah complains to God that he has been made to look a fool. He told the people that in forty days Nineveh would be destroyed, but it was not destroyed. His words have not come true. God has to teach him that a prophecy is not a prediction. God’s verdict is not final. He always leaves room for human repentance and divine forgiveness. That is a vital message on Yom Kippur. The second is about justice and mercy. The sages said, “In the beginning God created the world through the attribute of justice, but then saw it could not survive. What did He do? He joined to it the attribute of mercy” (Bereshit Raba 12:15). Jonah is scandalized by the fact that the people of Nineveh were not punished for their wickedness. Justice demands no less. Yet God forgave them, as Jonah knew He would, since the God of Israel is a God of mercy. God has to teach Jonah a moral lesson. As humans we are inconsistent. We pray for mercy for ourselves but for strict justice for our enemies. But God is the creator of all: “He has compassion on all He has made” (Ps. 145:9). He shows mercy to all who repent, and mercy is something other and gentler than justice. There cannot be perfect justice in a world of imperfect humans. The world survives through divine forgiveness, and while we seek it for ourselves we cannot deny it to our enemies. The third and most challenging feature of the book is the extraordinarily positive light in which it paints gentiles – who in Jonah’s time were pagans and polytheists. We see this twice: not only in the alacrity in which the people of Nineveh repent, but also in the way the first chapter describes the sailors in Jonah’s ship threatened by the storm. While Jonah is sleeping, they are praying. When they realize that the storm is because of Jonah, Jonah tells them to throw him in the sea, but they are reluctant to do so. They do not want to be responsible for his death if there is any other chance of reaching safety. Eventually they have no other choice, but the text tells us that they prayed to the Lord, feared Him, and made an offering and vows to Him. The sailors and the people of Nineveh are two of several instances in which the Tanakh goes out of its way to emphasize the goodness of those who stand outside the Abrahamic covenant. Malkitzedek, Abraham’s contemporary, is one. Pharaoh’s daughter who saves the life of Moses is another. At the heart of Judaism is a duality between the covenant God makes with all humanity (the Noahide covenant) and the one He makes first with Abraham, then with Moses and the Israelites. Universality and particularity are at the center of Judaism. No other great faith has this structure. There is a relationship with God we share with others, and there is a relationship with God unique to the Jewish people. At times Jews have tended to forget one or other of these truths but they are both true. At this sacred moment the book of Jonah delivers an awesome challenge to us. It is as if God Himself were whispering to us: Shall others fear God while we forsake Him? Is it conceivable that Jews, the people who predicated their very survival on faith, should lose their faith and become a secular people, a mere ethnic group among others? Shall our enemies believe and we not believe? Israel’s strength, its greatness, its incomparable record of survival, has always come from its dedication to God. Where then is ours? That is the question Jonah poses to us on Yom Kippur, and its answer lies in the passion in which we say Ne’ila’s closing words, the most ringing affirmation of faith in the entire prayerbook.

מִי־אֵל כָּמֽוֹךָ Who, God, is like You. The custom is to end with three verses from Micah, usually also said on Rosh HaShana at Tashlikh, the “casting” ceremony. In the present context there is a fine play of intertextuality between Jonah and the later prophet. Jonah is cast into the sea; Micah says, in effect, it will not be us but our sins that will be cast into the sea. The casting of Jonah into the water ended the storm and calmed the waves. The casting of our sins ends the storm of guilt and calms the waves of self-doubt. And just as Jonah was saved from death, so, we pray, will we.

BLESSINGS AFTER THE HAFTARA Some halakhic authorities held that the usual four blessings said after a Haftara on Sabbaths and festivals are said here. Our custom, however, is to say three. The issue at stake is the dual character of Yom Kippur. On the one hand it is a festival, listed as such throughout the Torah. On the other hand it is also a penitential fast. Is the afternoon Haftara a consequence of the first or the second? Most held it was because of the fast-character rather than the festival-character of the day. That is evident in the subject of the Haftara. It has nothing to do with the Torah reading that precedes it, and everything to do with fasting and repentance. Therefore the fourth blessing of the Haftara, which has to do with the day as festival, is not said.