19 Sep YONAH: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STORY MEDITATIONS INSIDE A FISH

NO BRAINER
A freshman in college
started his first day of
classes. His Jewish
teacher was clearly an
atheist, and started the
day by saying the
following: “Students, is there anyone here
who can see G-d? If so, raise your hand. If
there is anyone here who can hear G-d, please
raise your hand. If there is anyone who can
smell G-d, raise your hand.” After a short
pause, with no response from the students,
the professor concluded, “Since no one can
see, smell or hear G-d, this proves
conclusivelythat there is no G-d.” A student
then raised his hand and asked to address the
class. The student approached the class and
asked, “Students, can anyone here see the
professor’s brain? Can anyone hear the
professor’s brain? Can anyone here smell the
professor’s brain?” After a short pause, he
concluded, “Since no one can see, hear or
smell the professor’s brain, this proves
conclusively that he has no brain.”
A PROPHET ESCAPES
The biblical book of Yonah, read during the
afternoon service of Yom Kippur, relates one
of the most moving and fantastic tales of the
Bible. It is the story of a prophet, Yonah,
living in the year 700 B.C.E. who was
determined to run from G-d. G-d called on
him to travel from Jerusalem to the Assyrian
capital of Nineveh, and influence its large
population to repent from its immoral and
corrupt ways. Instead, Yonah went to the old
port city Jaffa and boarded a ship voyaging to
Tunisia, Africa, where he thought he would
find respite from G-d. “Then G-d cast a
mighty wind toward the sea,” the Bible relates,
“and there was a great tempest in the sea, so
that the ship seemed likely to be wrecked. The
sailors became frightened, and they cried out,
each man to his G-d; they cast the wares that
were on the ship into the sea, to lighten it for
them. But Yonah had descended to the ship’s
holds and he lay down and fell fast asleep.
“The shipmaster approached him, and said to
him, ‘How can you sleep so soundly? Arise!
Call to your G-d! Perhaps G-d will think of us
that we perish not!’ “They said to one another,
‘Come, let us cast lots, that we may determine
because of whom this calamity fell upon us.’
So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Yonah.
They said to him, ‘Tell us…what is your
occupation? From where do you come? What
is your land? And of what people are you?”
TURNING AMPHIBIAN
Yonah accepted upon himself the blame for
the storm threatening their lives, since he had
attempted to run from G-d. Yonah suggested
to them to heave him into the sea, “and the

sea will calm down from upon you, for I
know that that it is because of me that this
great tempest is upon you.” “So they lifted
Yonah and heaved him into the sea, and the
sea stopped its raging.” While in the sea, a
large fish swallowed Yonah, where he
remained for three days. From the fish’s
innards, Yonah speaks to G-d. These are his
words: “I cried to G-d out of my distress, and
He heard me; From the belly of hell I cried
out — You heard my voice. You did cast me
into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and
the floods compassed me; all Your billows
and waves passed over me. “Then I said, ‘I
was driven from before Your eyes; yet I will
gaze again towards Your Holy Temple. The
waters encompassed me, to the point of
death; the depth encircled me, the reeds were
tangled about my head. “I descended to the
bottoms of the mountains, the earth with her
bars closed in on me forever; yet You have
brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my
G-d. “When my soul fainted within me, I
remembered G-d; and my prayer came to
You, to Your Holy Temple…”
YONAH RETURNS
“Then G-d commanded the fish,” the Bible
continues the tale, “and it spewed out Yonah
unto dry land.” Finally, Yonah takes on his
divine mission, traveling to the Assyrian
capital and causing a moral transformation in
the hearts of its people. An evil civilization
committed itself to redefining its life and
relationships. But when Yonah discovers that
G-d had indeed accepted the population’s
repentance and would not destroy the city, he
is grieved. He does not feel the city should be
exonerated from many years of immoral and
evil behavior and he asks G-d to kill him, “for
better is my death than my life.” As a good
educator, G-d now proceeds to demonstrate
to Yonah, in a rather creative way, his error.
As Yonah is resting under a booth at the
outskirts of Nineveh, a leafy plant rises up to
provide shade over his head, affording him
much comfort and serenity. When the next
morning brings a heat wave and a worm eats
the plant and it withers, Yonah expresses his
profound anguish over the loss. To which G-d
responds: “You took pity on the plant for
which you did not labor, nor did you make it
grow; it lived one night and perished after one
night. And I – shall I not take pity upon
Nineveh the great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty-thousand
persons… and many animals as well?” This
concludes the four short but incredibly rich
chapters of the book of Yonah. Why do we
read this story on Yom Kippur? And what is
the relevance of this episode to our lives?
TWO LAYERS OF TORAH
One of the most fascinating elements about
Torah is that all of its stories contain, in

addition to their literal
concrete interpretation, a
psychological and spiritual
interpretation. Every detail
of every tale recorded in
Torah contains an allegorical
and metaphorical
interpretation, symbolizing
an event that transpires
continually within the
human heart. The sages and
rabbis have, over the course
of 3,000 years, decoded the
inner metaphysical meaning
of most of the Torah’s
stories. The same is true, of
course, regarding the story of Yonah and the
fish. In addition to the simple, literal meaning
of this moving episode, taking place in a
particular milieu at a specific location, this
tale should also be viewed as a metaphor for a
mental and spiritual story transpiring in
October 2003. Indeed, the Zohar states, that
the story of Yonah is really a story about “the
entire life span of human beings in this
world.” It is this inner story of Yonah that I
wish to explore in the continuation of this
essay.
JOURNEY OF A SOUL
The name Yonah in Hebrew — Yonah —
means a dove, representing the inner soul of
man, that fragment of truth, that little piece of
G-d that constitutes the core of human
identity. The dove is one of the only animals
that once it encounters its mate, remains
forever loyal, never exchanging it for anybody
else. Similarly, the soul embodies that part of
the human animal that may run and hide, but
ultimately never replaces the truth of G-d for
the pleasures of the material world. Nineveh,
the large and powerful and corrupt city, is a
metaphor for the planet we inhabit, filled
with petty politics, vanity and corruption.
Yonah, the human soul, is dispatched by G-d
on a mission to revolutionize the earthly
landscape; to introduce the light of G-dliness
and holiness into every aspect of terrestrial
life. Man is a messenger who carries a
message; man is a witness to the presence of
the living G-d.
DENYING YOUR REALITY
But very often, we choose to run from our
life’s mission, rejecting our identity as
witnesses. We embark on a ship, represented
by the body containing the human soul, just
as a ship contains its passengers], and attempt
to escape, physically and emotionally, to a
place where we can more easily embrace the
illusion that we are bereft of mission and
message, that we are no more than creatures
seeking satiation and self-gratification. We
sail blithely through the waters of life,
ignoring the inner voice of G-d, all the while

trying to convince ourselves that we are
happy.
TURBULENCE
Everything seems fine and dandy, until
turbulence begins to shake up our lives and
palm pilots. The turbulence of the sea in the
Yonah story is a metaphor for the tumultuous
circumstances that life presents, threatening
the very survival of our “ship” — our body and
existence. At this point, many people awake
from their illusion. Yet there are those who,
precisely at such moments, become even
more detached from their authentic reality.
“The sailors became frightened, and they
cried out, each man to his G-d… But Yonah
went down to the ship’s holds; he lay down,
and fell asleep.” Yonah, according to this
interpretation, represents the human being
who may see the world turn over, but he
continues to sleep, making believe that all is
normal, that his life is a success story. And the
greater the turmoil, the deeper the chaos, the
more this person sinks into the muck of his
slumber, oblivious to the disintegration of his
reality.
A TICKLE
At this point, man usually experiences a tickle
from his divine consciousness. “The
shipmaster approached him, and said to him,
‘How can you sleep so soundly? Arise! Call to
your G-d! The other sailors, too, speak to
Yonah and say: ‘Tell us… what is your trade?
where do you come? What is your land? And
of what people are you?” The shipmaster, the
captain of the body, represents the Yetzer
Tov11, the little spark of G-d residing within
the human soul. This spark calls out to the
soul, asking, “How can you sleep so soundly?”
How long can you be in denial of your
universe gone mad? How much longer will
you believe that you don’t get it? “Remember
from where your soul came,” the inner voice

speaks to Yonah who
eagerly craves to return
to his sleep. “Remember
your authentic
occupation and from
what people you are,” it
says to him. Stop denying
who you are; run not from your destiny as a
witness to the voice at Sinai charging you
with the mission of paving a road through the
jungle of history. Escape not your calling to
dig and uncover the divine art in every aspect
of life.
RESIGNATION AND SURRENDER
A strange and melancholy honesty takes over
Yonah. His moral instinct finds perverse
expression in his suggestion to the sailors to
throw him into the sea to rid themselves of
the burden imposed by his existence. This
represents the profound existential anxiety
that takes over many a soul upon discovering
that it can never truly convince itself that G-d
is nonexistent. Caught in a limbo state, afraid
to embrace G-d fully and unable to run from
G-d, the soul resigns itself to death. “Just get
rid of me,” Yonah cries to the voices within.
“Bury my soul.” At this devastating moment,
the human being surrenders his last vestige of

spiritual dignity, allowing his soul to be swept
away by the raging waters of lust and
addiction. What is even worse, he allows his
human identity to become swallowed and
converted into an amphibian creature.
Ceasing to see himself as different from an
animal, he is “free” at last to truly ignore the
presence of G-d. The Talmud teaches that in
biblical language fish serve as a metaphor for
uninhibited sexuality, since fish multiply
excessively. Yonah being swallowed by a fish
is therefore to be understood as a metaphor
for a soul being swallowed by sexual addiction
and promiscuity. The Hebrew term used in
the story for a fish, dagah, can also be
translated as anxiety. This represents an
alternative emotional response to the turmoil
of life. The person throws himself into
materialistic pursuits, so that the
extraordinary anxiety and stress involved in
climbing the financial ladder eclipse the
deeper anxiety of his soul. He allows himself
to become swallowed up completely in his
career until he forgets that he is a human
being.
REBIRTH
And yet, paradoxically, at this very moment,
the soul, for the first time, encounters G-d.

“From the belly of hell I cried
out,” declares Yonah. Until the
soul reached the belly of hell, it
was busy running from G-d and
from itself. Only when man
reaches his nadir can he suddenly
discover the presence of a living
and caring G-d. Why? Because a
soul, by its very nature, can never
remain in one place. It must
always be in a state of movement.
The only question is in which
direction it moves: Is it running
to G-d or from Him? Therefore,
once the soul hits rock bottom
and can no longer move
downward, it must begin to move upward.
THE NEW CHALLENGE
Man’s rediscovery of the truth — that he is
here on a mission — causes the fish to spit out
the soul. Man abandons his addictions and
promiscuity. He embarks now on his journey
to make a difference in people’s lives, to bring
holiness and G-dliness into his own life as
well as into the life of a mundane and
egocentric society. Yet, soon the soul becomes
distressed over G-d’s loyalty to our world. The
soul, once discovering the truth of G-dliness,
craves to remain in a sacred environment,
removed from the filth of many human
environments. “Why must I deal with so
much profane ugliness?” cries the soul.
“Am I supposed to dedicate the remainder
of my life to understand the pettiness and
politics of small human beings”? For this
is the predictable pattern: After the soul
discovers G-d’s living presence, it craves
to become ascetic, to escape the
confinements of a lowly universe and
melt away in His infinite light. At this
stage, G-d reveals to Yonah, to the soul,
that by infusing the unholy with the holy
the ultimate plan of G-d is fulfilled. Only
in the muck of planet Earth does the glory
of the Divine-human partnership shine
forth. The soul, despite its natural
resistance, must learn to emulate G-d and
embrace the world, not escape it.
TWO TYPES OF SLEEPERS
So why do we read this story on Yom
Kippur? For there are two types of human
sleepers. There are those who find
themselves in a lighter sleep, who with a
gush of inspiration or turbulence will
awake; and those who are so submerG-d
in their slumber that even the most
powerful explosion will not budge them.
The first category of people wake up via
the sound of the Rosh Hashanah shofar.
The primitive, piercing sounds of the
ram’s horn, stemming from the simple
primitive depth of the human core,
inspire the soul to return to who it really

is. But there are those people who sleep
through everything, even the mighty sound
of the shofar. The ship is about to break, but
they are asleep. The Titanic is about to go
under and they are stretched out on their
first-class deck chair smoking cigars,
oblivious and numb to reality. Tremendous
Anti-Semitism, a President of a sovereign
country denying the Holocaust, enemies
scheming each day to destroy a country and
its people, deep moral and emotional
confusion among society, deep depression
and alienation among so many youths — but
they are asleep. A world caught in the grip of
fear and confusion, yet they are busy playing
the game of vanity. We continue making
believe that life is, more or less, normal.
A PROFILE OF PHARAOH
One of the Chassidic masters once described
the lowliness of the Egyptian emperor
Pharaoh. The Bible describes the night when
Pharaoh dreamed a mysterious dream and
awoke. “Then,” the Bible continues, “He fell
asleep, and dreamed a second dream.” It turns
out that these two dreams contained the
secrets of survival for the entire Fertile
Crescent. “Nu, I can understand the fact that
go to sleep,” remarked the Rebbe of Kutzk.
“But once you experience such a powerful
dream filled with secrets of the world’s future
destiny, how can you go back to sleep?! For
this you must be a Pharaoh!” This is the
profile of a person who can hear 100 blasts of
a shofar, but he just puts the alarm clock on
snooze and turns over in bed.
THE DAY THAT TOLERATES NO
COVER-UPS
Then comes Yom Kippur. This is the one day
a year that does not tolerate any facades. On
this holiest day of the calendar, all the veils
are lifted! The sheer truth of the living G-d
breaks through all the walls, reaching even
those who have tucked themselves away
under a myriad of blankets. On Yom Kippur,
even those who have sunk into the deepest of
slumbers can hear the voice of the captain,
“How can you sleep so soundly? Arise! Call to
your G-d!”.