Yonah's Change of Heart

The following is my article from this week's Toronto Torah. It's a piece from a shiur I presented this week, in a series on Yonah; the shiur audio is available here.

Yonah flees from before G-d, seeking to evade his prophetic mission, and ultimately attempts to surrender his life rather than fulfill the responsibility assigned to him. This wayward prophet is swallowed by a fish, and - during the course of a three-day stay in the depths - experiences a change of heart. He composes a poetic prayer, and pleads for another opportunity to serve. Where before this man had sought escape, now he expressed a longing to draw close to his Creator. What inspired Yonah to alter his path?

One might suggest that Yonah was motivated by fear of impending death, or by the pain of life in the Piscine Hotel. However, this would ignore the passion of his prayer, in which Yonah spoke of remembering G-d and gazing upon His sacred sanctuary. Also, such an explanation would call into question Yonah’s sincerity, and therefore it would raise doubts as to why G-d granted the former prophet his wish. Why, then, did Yonah decide to serve G-d after all?

One possibility emerges from a dialogue between Moshe and HaShem on Har Sinai. As described in the gemara (Sanhedrin 111a), Moshe ascended to Heaven and found HaShem describing His patience in the Torah. Moshe contended that HaShem should be patient only with the righteous – to which HaShem replied that he would eventually come to see the worth of patience for the wicked. That day came with the sin of the Meraglim, when Moshe found himself pleading for Divine mercy for the rebellious Jewish nation.

As Yonah personally declared (Yonah 4:1-3), he had fled from before G-d because of a Moshe-like objection to Divine mercy. Commentators differ in their explanations for that objection, but all agree that Yonah contended that G-d should not apply mercy to the wicked of Nineveh. Perhaps this explains Yonah’s metamorphosis in the fish; like Moshe after the sin of the Meraglim, Yonah came to see the value of Divine mercy when he needed to plead for it himself.

Alternatively, Yonah’s own choice of words offers us another explanation. Yonah waxed rhapsodic (2:5), “I was exiled [נגרשתי] from before Your eyes.” This calls to mind two other exile experiences: “And He exiled [ויגרש] the man [Adam and Chavah, from Eden],” and Kayin’s charge to G-d, “You have exiled me [גרשת].” Adam and Chavah sinned, and then they hid and dissembled when G-d called for them and questioned them. Kayin sinned, and he attempted to hide the truth when G-d questioned him. Both were punished with exile, giving them the distance they had actually sought by hiding, and at that point they repented.

Perhaps the same is true for Yonah. Yonah sought to escape HaShem’s presence, and with his entry into the sea he was granted success. At this point, he was distant, and the flow of prophecy was cut off; Yonah 1, G-d 0. But at this moment the former prophet understood what his success truly meant – that he had erased his connection to the Divine. Like Adam and Chavah, like Kayin, he was now exiled. This frightened him, and he instantly repented his hard-won distance and sought his own return.

As the Vilna Gaon wrote (Aderet Eliyahu to Yonah 1:1), the story of Yonah is the story of every soul. We come to this world with a mission, and, at times, we wander from that mission and stray from the presence of the G-d who directs us. Yonah’s renewed appreciation of Divine mercy through his own experience of forgiveness can teach us to recognize and appreciate Divine kindness in our own lives. Yonah’s appreciation for the value of proximity to G-d can remind us to be similarly motivated to draw closer to our Creator. May we learn the lessons of the man who was swallowed by a fish, and so draw closer to the G-d who has charged us with missions of our own.

Gittin 19-23 - Innocent testimony, wounding an eved and the blind discussing the blind

As always, please read this with a gemara in front of you; it won't make much sense without it. Or you could skip to the less technical posts below, I suppose. There's a good post, just after this one, about shul dues and membership requirements.

Gittin 19b
The gemara records Rav Pappa’s practice of accepting non-Jewish Persian translators for Persian-language legal documents, meisiach l’fi tumo - speaking innocently, apparently without knowing their statements would have legal ramifications.
It is not entirely clear that these pseudo-witnesses need to be unaware of the legal ramifications. See, for example, Aruch haShulchan Yoreh Deah 69:58 on this. This has major ramifications for the credibility of a housekeeper in a kosher kitchen; see the Beit Yosef to Yoreh Deah 69 on this.
We may also require corroboration of his statements from outside sources (kishur devarim) - see an interesting analysis in Yad haMelech to Mishneh Torah Hilchot Geirushin 12:16.


Gittin 20a
The gemara here indicates that having letters traced (written over existing writing) in a Sefer Torah would be aesthetically unpleasing; it is not clear to me why this is so.

Rashi thinks that we accept the statement Levi cited because he worked so hard to get it accepted. That has interesting ramifications for styles of argumentation… (But see also Tosafot משמיה there.)

The gemara here uses the term ירך yerech to mean “back” or “outside.” This is reminscent of the term ירך המשכן, used, for example, in Bamidbar 3:29.


Gittin 20b
See Tosafot אשה on why a woman would not realize that she needs to give her husband the Get-materials.


Gittin 21b
Rashi at the top of the page (לא אפשר) is difficult for me to understand; why does the eved’s mitzvah obligation have anything to do with the prohibition against wounding him? First, we prohibit wounding anyone. Second, everyone has at least the mitzvot bnei Noach! I lump this together with Rashi from the bottom of 12a, as discussed here.


Gittin 22b
See Tosafot והא on the question of how one might use a person to write a Get even if he is not, personally, eligible to be one’s שליח proxy. The idea that וכתב is not an imperative for the husband to write it, but rather that it should be written by someone [and not necessarily the husband’s proxy], is interesting.


Gittin 23a
See Tosafot ממי on whether the Get-deliverer must be able to identify the husband and wife - and if so, why our problem is limited to blind delivery agents, specifically.

Of particular interest: The two Amoraim (sages of the later Talmudic era) who debate the issue of a blind delivery agent are Rav Yosef and Rav Sheshet - who were both blind, themselves.

Gittin 10-14 - The company we keep, Divine mercy, and more

I'm away from my home computer – in Philadelphia while my wife, the eponymous Rebbetzin, takes an exam here – and so I can't type in Hebrew for this post.

For whatever it's worth, Philadelphia strikes me as odd; having walked the streets a bit today, I found fewer smiles than I expected (I've seen many more on the streets of Manhattan), and more cigarettes than I expected.

In any case: On to the Daf. As usual, please read with a gemara in front of you, for maximum clarity.

10a
Tosafot b'Shlichut appears to have a good approach to the “b'shlichut b'al korchah” line, with Rabbeinu Chananel's explanation. However, as Tosafot notes at the end, the language doesn't really match.

The company we keep - The gemara here discusses signing a document along with a Kuti witness, where one knows that this Kuti is careful about mitzvot. The Kuti witness is accepted, because we assume the righteous witness would not have signed without checking the legitimacy of the Kuti witness.
This is interesting, in light of Sanhedrin 23a and Shevuot 30b in which we discuss the idea that one should not sign a document along with a problematic witness (or sit on a beit din with a problematic judge). The Sanhedrin source is stricter than Shevuot; Shevuot indicates that I could sign with another party if I didn't know that person's status (which would ruin our gemara's assumption regarding the Kuti, unless we would say that default Kuti status is that of a rasha), but Sanhedrin requires that I actually know he is righteous.
See also the difference between Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sanhedrin 2:14 and 22:10.
For more on this issue, see Meiri on that gemara in Shevuot, Perishah to Choshen Mishpat 7, and Yabia Omer 2:Choshen Mishpat 1.


10b
Note that, once again, Abayye presents an explanation which does not match our gemara's edition, and Rava calls him on it. However, Rava explicitly alters the edition, with a 'chisurei mechsira' argument.


12a
Note that the gemara's interpretation of “lo telaket le'ani” is explicitly against the te'amim of the trop.

Divine mercy - The last Rashi on the page is extremely interesting; Rashi says that Gd will have mercy upon an eved because the eved is obligated in some mitzvot. This is problematic in light of Tehillim 145:9, a sentence cited as law in gemara and Rambam, which says, “Gd's mercy is upon all of His creations!”


14a
See Tosafot Chada


14b
On the third line – it should say 'nihalayhu'

Note that both Rav Natan and “Yesh omrim” appear in the same machloket here, although the gemara elsewhere (end of Horiyyot) identifies them as one and the same. Tosafot somewhere (I am without my library, but it may be the Bava Batra reference in the margin on this page) suggests that statements made by R' Natan early in his career, before he received this moniker, are cited with his given name.

See Tosafot “vaChachamim Omrim” on the interesting question of how money is handled in civil cases, where the verdict is “Teiku.”

Rashi and Tosafot have a fascinating debate here, and in Ketuvot 85b, on what the gemara is recommending when it authorizes a judge to do “shuda” - to use his discretion.

Praised is the one who will grab and smash… (Psalms 137:8-9)

בת בבל השדודה אשרי שישלם לך את גמולך שגמלת לנו
אשרי שיאחז ונפץ את עולליך אל הסלע

I have reached a nadir moment I would have hoped never to reach. I finally feel I can understand some element of Tehillim 137:8-9, “Looted daughter of Bavel, praised is the one who will pay you your just desserts, as you did to us. Praised is the one who will grab and smash your infants against the stone.”

What a horrible wish!

I have taught this line in various adult contexts over the years, and, invariably, it has inspired in me, as well as in my classes, appropriate revulsion. How could anyone ever hope for such a thing, for the death of children, for the violent death of children?! What in the world is this doing in Tanach?

And every time, I have tried to provide context for the class:
I explain that this is supposed to be Dovid haMelech’s nevuah, his prophecy.
He sees his son succeed in constructing a Beis haMikdash, a home for Gd.
He sees succeeding generations bring korbanot and celebrate together and build a thriving society.
Then he witnesses the decline of that society, his realm split in two, worship of Baal and Asherah, intramural violence, false prophets, the deterioriaton and decay of everything he loved.
He sees prophets like Eliyahu and Elisha and Yeshayah and Yirmiyah cry out to no avail.
His hopes swell with the Yoshiyahus and Chizkiyahs, and sink with the Achavs and Menashehs.
And, painfully, he watches helplessly as the Assyrians invade and exile the northern tribes, as the Egyptian Paroh Nechoh invades and brutally kills Yoshiyahu, and then as the Babylonians conduct their multiple invasions and sweep off the remaining population.

To watch your life’s work and the nation you love demolished and reduced to ash, to witness the bloody death of thousands of your descendants, all while you – a warrior and king – are forced to sit on your hands, helpless… yes, I believe that would be sufficient to goad King David to this sanguinary extreme.

And, still, I never really understood it. I can’t say I really understand it now. But I had a taste of it watching the ugly Lebanese celebration of Samir Kuntar, who smashed a four-year old girl’s head in against a rock. Yes, I know the facile “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” sentiment. But to glorify that brutality? To honor one who would do that? No. Absolutely not.

And I found myself, as I watched that scene, repeating Dovid haMelech’s words.

I wish they would not know the return of a murderer who has been coddled and offered a healthy diet, conjugal visits, university courses and a warm bed for all of these years. I wish, instead, that they would know what it means to be one of his victims.

See also:
Treppenwitz here.
Jack's Shack here and here.
Shira bat Sarah here.
Soccer Dad's roundup here.