From the Senior Rabbi

A High Holy Day Message from Rabbi Elaine Zecher: The Jonah Story Prevails

“Out of my distress, I called to the Eternal.” (Jonah 2:3)

The Biblical reluctant prophet uttered these words in the great fish that caught him in its

Rabbi Elaine Zecher mouth. For three days and nights, Jonah fell silent in his fear. Who could blame him? In that Senior Rabbi moment, he was caught between life and death, trapped inside a very dark place. God had called him to Nineveh and instead Jonah ran the other way and ended in the depths of despair. What a fabulous tale the Bible offers us. Why canonize a story that seems impossible to be true? Thomas Paine called it a “tale of unrestrained imagination.” Commentators twisted themselves into knots to authenticate such a bizarre narrative with explanations of the whale as a ship or even an inn! The author, Erica Brown, cautions us not to be confined to the literal meaning but instead to view the story as a “fear inducing tool of self-confrontation…representing the in between, liminal space that trapped Jonah for three days and nights.”1 But, what if it really could happen? This summer, we delighted in the successful outcome of the lobster fisherman, Michael Packard, who found himself in the jaws of a whale off the coast of Provincetown, though far from Nineveh. “I got down to about 45 feet of water and all of a sudden I just felt this huge bump and everything went dark,” he said. “I could sense that I was moving and I was like, ‘Oh my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’ and then I felt around and I realized there was no teeth, and I had felt really no great pain and then I realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth. I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.’”2 In that moment, he, too, confronted his mortality and immediately felt the pang of what mattered to him: his wife and two sons. In that place of darkness, he had to figure out his own path toward his salvation as he tried to move and dislodge himself. Like the Biblical story, the whale breached to the surface and spewed out its mistaken prey. Phew! Though it was called a rare accident by the experts, it happened nonetheless. The message of the event prevails as well. The Jonah story is part of what we share on Yom Kippur. His whale of a tale transports us to a place of “unrestrained imagination” to confront our own experience of life. Though we might not see ourselves held by the tongue of a monstrous fish or deep in its belly, these holidays challenge us to consider our lives and the path to our redemption. We are vulnerable.

Will we allow ourselves to be swallowed up by it or insist it release us back to life? Can we use these moments to transform us and to consider the way we can live a full life of kindness and righteousness? We enter this holiday season bruised by some of the experiences of this past year and yet, we can emerge into the loving embrace of the prayerful encounter offered by these days. On behalf of Cantor Alicia Stillman, Rabbis Suzie Jacobson, Dan Slipakoff, Andrew Oberstein, as well as Rabbis Ronne Friedman, Bernard Mehlman, and Cantor Roy Einhorn, I wish you a healthy, blessed, and sweet new year.

1 Page 58, The Reluctant Prophet, Erica Brown 2017

2 The Boston Globe, "A Lobster Diver Says He was Caught in the Mouth of a Humpback Whale," June 11, 2021