A Yom Kippur Reflection on the Death Penalty
by Daniel Sokatch, Executive Director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance
Why, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, does our tradition hit us with the one-two punch of the unlikely prophetic combination of Isaiah and Jonah?
Isaiah fits perfectly with the feel of the day. Weighing in at 66 chapters, Isaiah is the heavyweight of the Major Prophets; everybody’s favorite. He describes the world as it could be, the world we want to see. His exhortations to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and free the oppressed are, for many of us, at the very core of what it means to be a Jew. His vision of a justice-pursuing Israel reborn in compassion and righteousness, shining like a beacon for the world is the very essence of the Prophetic Tradition that inspires us with a sense of Jewish mission and obligation.
And then there’s Jonah. In many ways, he is the anti-Isaiah. He is a lightweight of a Minor Prophet. He is fearful, reluctant and vain. Where Isaiah burns with the fire of his prophesy, Jonah runs away from his. His Book is four chapters long. So why is Jonah paired with Isaiah on Yom Kippur? If Isaiah is telling us that pursuing justice is what it really means to be a Jew, what is Jonah telling us? What are we meant to take away from this Haftorah?
Taken together, Isaiah and Jonah remind us of the essential core of Jewish obligation. If Isaiah is about the centrality of tzedek, justice, in Judaism, then Jonah is about two other central concepts: the first is the universalism inherent in Jewish tradition and thought, and the second is the notion of tshuvah: the idea that every human being, no matter how bad their behavior, is capable of change.
Univeralism. Jonah stands for the proposition that all peoples are equally loved and valued by God. God does not require that the Ninevites accept God or convert to Judaism: just that they repent and change their ways. Jonah’s disregard for the fate of Ninevites results in his rebuke by God: how dare you care so much about a plant and not value the lives of thousands of human beings. This rebuke was sometimes cited by Christian theologians as evidence of Jewish self-interest, clannishness and narrow-mindedness. But historical, theological anti-Semitism ought not to obscure the point of the story for us now: We are obligated to feel a sense of responsibility for everybody. Even people we don’t know. Even people we don’t like.
The Jewish ethical system is predicated on the idea that every human life is unique and inestimably precious. Each person is created b’tselem elohim- in the image of God. In every individual resides the spark of the divine. As Jews then, and in fact as human beings, we are responsible for other human beings. The people around us, yes, but also the people in Darfur, in Kashmir in Jerusalem, and in South Central LA.
This is, of course, easier said than done, and Jonah is a good example of this. He could care less about what happens to the 120,000 non-Jews of Nineveh. He doesn’t feel responsible for them, and he doesn’t want to do what God asks him to do for them. But God sends Jonah to Nineveh city, and when Jonah complains that God has spared the city, God responds that the inhabitants of Nineveh are God’s children, and that they are precious. The Book of Jonah is, in fact, radically ecumenical; God cares not only about the people of Nineveh, but about the animals there, too.
Of course, we’re all Jonah sometimes. We’re all tempted to circumscribe the circles of our compassion: family, community, the Jewish people, the country, the world. How can we feel a sense of obligation for all of this? It is overwhelming. Impossible. And yet, Judaism says we must. Yes, we should and must look out for ourselves and our own– but this is not enough. We have to find the balance Hillel describes when he says Im ein ani li, mi li? Uch sh’ani latsmi, ma ani? “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” We have to find a way to live on that knife’s edge: Every human life is precious. All of us are equal.
In an outline for a sermon on Jonah, MLK describes the universalism of the Book of Jonah like this: “There is no class system. Aunt Jane is just as significant as the PhD. The person who lives in the ally is just as worthful to God as the richest person in the community”
Tshuvah. The other great lesson of Jonah is t’shuvah. Scholars write that the power of Nineveh’s repentance so impressed the rabbis that this is the reason that they chose the Book of Jonah to be read in shul during one of the central moments of the Jewish calendarical cycle. The wicked city repents, and God accepts their t’shuvah. It is the difference between life and death.
This is, of course, the promise of the High Holidays, and of humanity: like the people of Nineveh, we can change, we can be better than we are. Even the most wicked cannot be defined solely by their worst acts. Even they are created b’tselem elohim. The divine spark always contains within it the potential for change.
Jonah refuses to accept that the people of Nineveh are his brothers and sisters; he dismisses their humanity and thus their capacity for t’shuvah. Jonah is so stuck on the letter of the law – in this case, his prophesy – that he cannot accept that the letter of the law is just a vehicle for its spirit. The point of the prophesy is not that Nineveh should be overthrown in 40 days; it is that Nineveh must repent. But blind adherence to procedure at the expense of substance is not, as we shall see, unique to Jonah.