Divrei Torah/Torah Talks

I'd like to talk with you this morning about two prophets. The first is the prophet Jonah, whose Biblical book is traditionally read on Yom Kippur afternoon. The story of Jonah is a strange one. Jonah is the only Biblical prophet who, when he gets the call from God, literally runs in the opposite direction. Jonah is supposed to bring a message of repentance to the kingdom of Nineveh, but instead gets on a boat going the other way. That doesn't work so well, and after an episode involving a very large fish, Jonah finally ends up in Nineveh. And then the next surprising thing happens: Jonah becomes the only Biblical prophet who actually succeeds! When he declares to all the people of this great but corrupt society that they must repent, they immediately do so. And despite this, Jonah is still grumpy. A strange prophet indeed. 

In a sermon that was delivered in 1936, Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel said this about Jonah*: 

"Among all of the male and female prophets who have arisen among the Jewish people, there is no prophet who is as completely baffling as Jonah the prophet." Rabbi Amiel goes on to ask, how is it possible to include the story of someone who runs away from God in the Bible at all? And why would we give it such a prominent place on Yom Kippur?

Amiel then goes on to tell this story: a few decades earlier, during World War I, he was traveling on a train in Poland. The train was filled with Polish soldiers — which, as you can imagine, was a deeply unsettling situation for a young Orthodox rabbi, in one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe. He was uncomfortable amidst all the soldiers and feared for his safety. Amiel and another Jewish man went to the end of the train, and found a car that was almost completely empty — it had just one soldier in it, a soldier who was lying down and profoundly wounded. Amiel felt great relief — this one could not hurt him! 

As he heard the soldier's groans, Rabbi Amiel writes:

At first I didn't pay any attention, and not only that, but a hidden joy nested in my heart, because only by this could I be sure that he wouldn't harm me. But little by little his sighs descended into the capillaries of my heart and disturbed me so much that I could no longer hold myself back from turning toward him. He was already dying and his moments were numbered, but his eyes were still wide open. I looked straight into them.

Amiel then recounts that he bolted out of the car, and finished the trip standing back among the crowd of soldiers. The rabbi then had this powerful insight:

While I was standing almost suspended in the air from the overcrowding, fleeing from the eyes of the dying man, my eyes opened wide to see myself, and…I began to take account of myself: why did I flee from the eyes of the dying man? Was it because of compassion and sharing in his pain? What benefit comes to him from my fleeing from him? Precisely the opposite! I should have sat by his side, and maybe I could have eased his pain. It is clear that it was not from the eyes of this soldier that I fled. Rather, it was from the eyes of God, which were reflected in the eyes of the soldier, who was also created in the image of God. It wasn't the suffering of this soldier that made me flee desperately from there, but the suffering of the Shekhinah, of God's Presence, who suffers with every person's suffering.

He went on to reflect, "Behold, I am risking my life by standing among these unruly soldiers, just so long as I do not see the dying soldier who reminds and awakens God within me, and my duty in the world."

Amiel goes on to observe that this seems to be the human condition: that even though the divine is within everything and everyone, we are constantly running away from God. And why? Because to see the divine in every human – especially in the eyes of those who suffer, even if they are our enemy – is to wake us up to our obligations towards one another. Rabbi Amiel realizes that Jonah was a prophet because he, unlike the rest of humanity, managed to run away only once. 

Rabbi Amiel concludes his sermon by saying, "The flight from God is the life of human beings on earth."

This is a rather sobering conclusion about the nature of humanity. 

Which brings me to another prophet — the one that we just read, the great prophet Isaiah. This portion of the Book of Isaiah was most likely written in the 6th century BCE, after the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish community to Babylonia. The prophet's words were directed to that exile community, and might have been spoken on Yom Kippur itself. 

The community that Isaiah is speaking to is one which has gone through great trauma. They have experienced war and the destruction of their city, the end of their self-rule and exile to a foreign land. The haftarah begins with words of comfort. The prophet speaks for God, promising that God's presence will return to the people, that they have been punished but will soon receive healing: "For thus says God…Exalted and holy I shall dwell among you! As for the downtrodden and destitute, I shall revive the spirit of the lowly, and the heart of the depressed I shall restore…My spirit shall drip like dew; I shall create the breath of life."

But then there is a shift in tone, and it becomes clear that not everyone in this community is "downtrodden and destitute" — that in fact, even here in exile, social stratification persists: there are still bosses and workers, the haves and the have-nots. And so in this second section, Isaiah addresses those who have the power to oppress others, and who have material abundance that should be shared with those in need. 

The prophet talks about a people – perhaps a certain group of people – who seek out "knowledge of God's way." They are spiritual people, religious people, people who are trying to figure out why God isn't helping them. We have fasted, they say, we have afflicted ourselves, just as it says to do in the Torah — why have You, God, not seen this, why do you have no knowledge of this? We have kept your mitzvot, we have been faithful to You — why are we still banished from our land?

Isaiah begins his response by making the point that the flow of tzedek in the world – the flow of justice, of righteousness – is a two-way street. This community is asking God to act justly towards them, yet they refuse to uphold the godly laws of justice in which they have been instructed. Isaiah tells the exiles that they can't expect a change in their situation if the laws of tzedek and mishpat, of justice and righteousness, are not obeyed, and they certainly can't expect to experience a sense of God's presence and care if they continue to defy God's demands.

Isaiah goes on to say that God calls for a great liberation: "to open the bonds of evil, and untie the cords of the yoke; to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke." This is the great goal, the grand dream – that all oppression ends, that no one is "yoked" – an image of a work animal, an ox, yoked to the plow. Perhaps to "break every yoke" means that no one will work in drudgery or slavery, that no one will be chained to that which degrades them, that wears them down. 

And what is intriguing is that the prophet says that this is the fast that God calls for — not the ritual fast that the people have been engaged in. In the ancient world, public fasts were undertaken as acts of repentance when some kind of calamity needed to be addressed — for example, when there was a drought. And as many of us can attest from our experience today, fasting is not so easy. It demands something of us. It is a purifying practice, and an opportunity for reflection and re-dedication. So this, too, is a "fast," Isaiah teaches us: turning our attention and our dedication toward liberating all who suffer from oppression and degradation.

Isaiah then goes on to name specific acts of tzedek, painting a more detailed picture of what it means to "untie the cords of the yoke":

Is it not to break your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?

I am struck at how personal, how intimate, each of these actions is. If the error of the people's ways lies in "strife and quarrelling," in the alienation of one group of people from another, then the Godly path is just the opposite. Each of the actions described here is intended to bring us closer to the other: to share our bread, our sustenance; to bring those who are cast out into our own homes; to give our clothing to the one who has none; and, finally, mib'sarecha lo titalem. The machzor translates this as "not hiding from your kin in their need." This is an accurate translation, but the Hebrew is more direct and graphic: "do not hide yourself from your own flesh." "Your own flesh" may mean your own kin, your own community — but we are all flesh and blood. If I hide from the suffering of any person, I am ultimately hiding from myself.

And here is where I see the text of Isaiah speaking to Rabbi Amiel's observation that too much of the time, we are running away from God, from the divinity found within every living being. If I hide myself from you, I am hiding from God, and ultimately hiding from the divinity within myself.

In response, Isaiah is calling for an encounter of the most direct and intimate kind possible — the exact opposite of our own natural tendencies when confronted with suffering and despair. The prophet challenges us. Can we respond to the brokenness of the world with this kind of immediacy, on this intimate a level? Can we stop ourselves from running away?

And the truth is, when I think about this community, about the people in this room — the answer is yes. It is true that all of us, at times, run away from God. It is just too much, sometimes, to respond to all of the calamities happening on any given day, whether close by or across the globe. And yet — I also know how often the people in this room, and those Zooming in, respond to Isaiah's call, and do not turn away, do not hide themselves from the suffering of those in need. I know how so many of you offer yourselves, your resources, your time, your care, in the service of fixing some piece of this broken world.

And this, according to the prophet, is the fast that God desires. And in response, when we do not flee from God, we experience a sense of divine Presence. As we turn toward the divine, in the words of Isaiah, God will respond Hineni, Here I am. 

As we step into this new year, may we be inspired both by Jonah and by Isaiah. May we know that sometimes, given our human imperfection, we will run away from God. But may we, like Jonah, realize that ultimately there is nowhere to run to, because God is right here, in me, in you. And may we hear the call of Isaiah to be witnesses with our full selves: to not hide our eyes, and to create a society – indeed, a world – where no one lives under the yoke of oppression, where the hungry are fed, where the homeless are housed, where every soul can seek satisfaction. May we, through all of the acts of chesed, lovingkindess, and tzedek, justice, that we will do in this new year, may we come to merit the promise of the prophet Isaiah:

Then shall your light burst forth like the dawn, your healing flourish, your righteousness go before you, and God's presence gather you up…And you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters do not fail.

May it be so.

*The text from Rabbi Amiel translated by Rabbi Jill Jacobs

Rabbi Toba Spitzer
Yom Kippur 5785