Judaism and Aliens

Sources for class with rabbi Bitton at Shaare Rachamim, Monday October 11, 2021 / 5782

BENE ELOQIM , NEFILIM

MALAKHIM:

A problem of language:

THE BURNING BUSH:

ELIYAHU HANABI:

MAIMONIDES . MISHNE TORA: Yesode haTora 1: 2.

HOMEWORK

Get Familiar with

FLATLAND

GET FAMILIAR WITH JACQUES VALEE:

The Physics of information : You will need this to better understand Maimonides.

GENDER POLITICS, recommended material for parents

RAPID ONSET GENDER DYSPHORIA

ARE MEN AND WOMEN EQUAL?

CAMILLE PAGLIA

IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENDERS

BERESHIT: What was God’s last creation?

MATTER: “In the beginning God created heavens and earth”. That is, He created matter: (1) The microcosm, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, and (2) the macrocosm: 200 billion galaxies, with 200 billion stars each, with an inestimable number of planets around each star. Within this vast universe, there is a unique and singular celestial body: Earth, a planet located at an exquisitely fine-tuned distance from the sun: the precise distance required to have an average temperature of 14 degrees C, which allows for the existence of water in its liquid form.

LIFE: Then on the Fifth Day, after creating everything necessary to sustain life: Earth’s atmosphere, the oceans, the continents, the plants and fashioning the solar system, HaShem created animals. On that day HaShem created: reptiles, birds, arthropods, amphibians, and fish. What do they have in common, all these creatures? That they are oviparous (egg-laying creatures).

LANGUAGE: In the Sixth Day, HaShem created mammals. And in that same day, God created the first human being. A creature that shares many physical traits with other mammals, but it is distinguished from them by an element that makes it unique and categorically different from other living things: the neshama (soul). To understand what is the neshama, at its most basic level, I prefer to use the word “mind”. Which means: 1. The ability to think and to imagine. 2. Free will: the ability to obey or disobey God, the possibility to chose between good and bad, the ability to repent and ask forgiveness. 3. And one more very important element brought by Targum Onqelos: “ruah memalela“, human beings can “talk”, that is: think with words, enunciate sounds, or write signs, and combine those to create sentences and express ideas or emotions. Ruah memalela is the “linguistic intelligence” man was endowed with.

EMPATHY: The story of Creation follows a pattern a progressive (you could almost call it “evolutionary”) order, where each element that is created is greater than the previous, and inferior to the one that will follow. Now, the latest creation of HaShem was not man. The last thing HaShem created was “woman”. Within this scheme of “progressive Creation”, what is that characterizes women? What makes a woman different, in a sense, “superior” than man, in the context of the Creation narrative? Two thousand years ago, the rabbis of the Midrash gave a very compelling explanation. They said bina yetera nitena laisha, woman was given a “superior” intelligence (superior to man’s). What does it mean? Modern neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen, among many others, explains that the female brain is structured in a way that communication does not depend exclusively on language. Women are NOT limited to words (1) to express themselves and especially (2) to understand (decipher) what another human being expresses (this is what allows a mother to “understand” the needs of her baby, a being that for two years does not communicate through words). Women, says Baron Cohen, are able to “read” situations and understand what another person feels, wants or needs without the medium of words. More than emotional intelligence, I would call this capacity “communicative intelligence”. Or as Baron-Cohen says: “empathy” (superlative empathy!).Thus, reading between the lines of the story of Creation we can see that HaShem first creates matter, then life, then semantic intelligence and then empathic intelligence. We should realize that the more we understand the world around us, the better we appreciate the infinite wisdom of the Book of Books.

Preparing ourselves for Yom Kippur

We are just a few days away from Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and probably the most important day of the year for a Jew.

In Yom Kippur we can not improvise. We have to prepare ourselves in advance. Besides knowing the details of the day of fast (who must fast, and who should not, and how to proceed when one does not fast, etc.) if we want to experience a “Day of Atonement” we have to delve first into the concept of Teshuba.

Teshuba, the repentance process, consists as per Maimonides of three or four (usually four) steps

1. Hakarat haChet. Recognize that we have done wrong. We must free ourselves from excuses, blame transference (blaming everyone of my mistakes, except myself) and acknowledge that we were wrong. We possibly damaged friends, colleagues and loved ones. And we probably betrayed our pact with HaShem. Without this recognition, repentance (or forgiveness) is not possible.

2. Tiqun. Repair. If we have not caused injury or damage to any individual, we can proceed to step 3. But if we are more humans than angels, and as such, we have done wrong to others (and it does not matter now if it was unintentionally or intentionally, or if the other deserved or not deserved) we must make every effort to repair the damage we have caused. Examples: If we have taken what is not ours, money or other material goods, we must return it. If you have personal debts, unpaid donations, etc. we should pay it NOW. If we hurt someone with our words, offending, speaking ill or making fun of someone, etc. we must arm ourselves with courage and ask forgiveness. If we do not have the courage to apologize personally, we must do it even by phone. Or even by email or WhatsApp. The main thing is that our apologies should not be half apologies, half excuses: they need to be very sincere and delivered with humbleness. Our sages say that if we do not repair what we did wrong to others, or if we did not apologize to those we hurt and offended, we will not be forgiven by God in Yom Kippur.

3. Viduy. In the process of Teshuba, the most important Mitsva of Yom Kippur is the Viduy or confession. On the day of Kippur we must confess before God, quietly, all sins we have committed to Him or to other people. It is very important to keep in mind (or make a super-private list of) the faults we have committed. According to our sages, recognizing our wrongdoings mentally is the first step of Teshuba, which is what we should do when we hear the Shofar in Rosh Hashanah. But this recognition can only be effective when we verbalize it. Only then, when we have the courage to articulate what we did wrong, we can overcome what we did wrong. That is why the sages explained that all I need in order to obtain HaShem’s forgiveness for the offenses I did against Him (shabbat, kashrut, tefila, etc.) is to recognize and articulate my flaws and faults. BH we’ll talk a little more in the coming days about the Viduy.

4. ‘Azibat haChet. the final test of a sincere Teshuba is change. Changing our behavior, our habits, improving the negative elements of our character, this is the final challenge of Yom Kippur. Contemporary Rabbis say that if we can change or improve even a small area of our behavior or personality, and this change is firm and solid, then Yom Kippur and the process of Teshuba were a great success, although there is still a long way to go. Recommendation: when choosing an area to change or improve, we have to choose something that is meaningful but also realizable, and not unattainable. The successful strategy consist of finding an area of change that represents a balance between the transcendent and the attainable.

1. The prophet and its Mission

יהי דבר ה ‘אל יונה בן אמיתי לאמר

The book of Yona is read on the day of Kippur, in the afternoon, at Mincha prayer. It was chosen by our Sages for that occasion because the story of Yona is intimately related to Teshuba, repentance.

Yona lived around the year 800-780 before the common era, in the time of King Yerob’am ben Yoash. He resided in the Kingdom of Israel (also known as “the 10 tribes”, which separated a century earlier from the Kingdom of Yehuda). The capital of the Kingdom of Israel was the city of Shomron. The situation in Shomron was not very good from the religious point of view. The kings of Israel, in their eagerness for commercial and military success made alliances with neighboring peoples, such as the Phoenicians in Sidon (today’s Lebanon). These alliances had a cultural and religious negative impact . King Achab, for example, married the Phoenician princess Izebel, who imported to Israel and popularized the cult to the idol Ba’al. HaShem sent many prophets to warn Israel of their wrongdoings, such as Eliyahu haNabi or his disciple, Elisha. Yona belongs to this”school” of prophets. However, when God spoke to Yona did not ask him to speak to his own people.

קום לך אל נינוה העיר הגדולה

HaShem asked Yona to go to Nineveh — a non-Jewish metropolis — and communicate His word to the inhabitants of that city.

Nineveh was located on the banks of the Tigris river, today’s Mosul, in Iraq. Nineveh was not a common city. It was the capital of the first empire in history, Assyria, which at the time of the Prophet Yona was at its highest moment.

There is something else about Nineveh: the text calls Nineveh “hair hagedola”, “the big city”. We know that Nineveh was a big town (‘ir gedola) since it took 3 days go on foot form one end to the other. But what does the emphasis “the” big city mean? Today, thanks to modern archaeological discoveries —which again and again confirm everything that our Tora affirms — we can better understand the meaning of this expression. Matt Rosenberg, in a book called “Largest cities through history” indicates that until the year 612 BCE, Nineveh was “the largest city in the world”. It had an area of more than 7 square km. The Old City of Jerusalem, for example, had an area of 0.9 square kilometers, and Shomron, which was larger than Jerusalem, was about 1.5 square kilometers. In addition, Nineveh was a megacity in terms of its population, as it is mentioned at the end of the book. The Hebrew expression hair hagedola therefore does not mean just “a big city” but “the” largest and most important city” in the world. HaShem did not send Yona to deliver His message to a small town. HaShem sent him to the New York City of that time.

וקרא עליה כי עלתה רעתם לפני

In that intimidating metropolis, the Jewish prophet had to denounce loudly their deeds and warn them that God was not willing to ignore and tolerate their wrongdoing anymore.

What were the inhabitants of Nineveh doing wrong? As we will see later in chapter 3, the text talks about chamas. The word hamas in Hebrew means “corruption”: robbery, bribery, abuse, promiscuity, etc. The Tora uses this word to describe the crime committed by the generation of the flood. Our rabbis also observed that other expressions used both here and in chapter 3 regarding the iniquity of Nineveh (‘aleta ra’atam, nehepekhet, etc.) mirror the expressions used by the Tora in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

These subtle references leave no doubt about the Divine intention: Nineveh, like the human civilization at the time of the flood, or Sodom and Gomorrah in the time of Abraham, deserved to be destroyed and erased.

Now we can understand better why God sent Yona to Nineveh. The prophet of Israel had to go to the largest city in the world —which was also the most corrupt city—to publicly denounce in the name of God the general state of corruption and convince them to believe that if they would not repent the city will be destroyed. Was this a mission impossible?

2. Escaping from God

God ordered Yona to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and the largest city in the world at that time (eighth century BCE).

‘ויקם יונה לברח תרשישה מלפני ה

But Yona [did not obey the Divine order] and tried to escape to Tarshish, fleeing from the presence of God.

Surprisingly, the prophet disobeys God’s direct command and tries to run away! Before addressing the main question of this extraordinary book–why would a prophet, the epitome of a fearful Jew, refuse to fulfill God’s direct order — let us reflect for a moment on Yona’s act of disobedience.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Yona is not the only Prophet who does rejects to become God’s agent and bring the people His message of warning– what is called in Hebrew nebua or prophecy. Yirmiyahu and even Moses tried to avoid a similar mission. But without doubt, the fact that Yona tries to flee “physically” from God, represents the most extreme form of refusal to carry out the Divine mission. At the same time, the actions of Yona show us once again the extension of the Jewish principle of “freedom of choice”. Humans have the option to obey or even disobey HaShem. God, on the other hand, manifests His will, but He does not intervene in our minds to make us His robots. He does not hijack Yona’s mind and willpower. Human intelligence, unlike artificial intelligence, allows us to think, evaluate and freely choose our actions and behaviors. What happened with Yona , in certain sense, happens every day to us if we disobey or ignore the Tora. We behave like Yona if we exercise our freedom of choice and reject God’s commands. In Yom Kippur we should reflect on this as we dedicate ourselves to recognize that when we ignore HaShem’s commandments we distance ourselves from Him. And we have to determine, exercising our free will again, to return to God and reconcile with Him.

TARSHISH
In order to run away from God, Yona tries to escape to Tarshish. Where is Tarshish, and why does Yona specifically want to flee to Tarshish? According to one opinion, Tarshish is Tarsus, a city in Turkey 15 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. Other commentators say that it could be Tyre, on the coast of Lebanon. According to the Roman historian Rufus Festo Avienus (4th century) Tarshish is “Cadiz”, a famous port city in Spain! In ancient times, the Greeks called the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (Cádiz, Seville, etc.) Tartasus: a region famous for an abundance of minerals and metals. The prophet Ezekiel (27:12) mentions the tar, silver, iron, lead and tin that people imported from Tarshish. Now, if Tarshish is in Spain, fleeing to Tarshish in the days of Yona would be like fleeing literally “to the end of the world”. Why? Because we know that for the Greeks, or even for the Phoenicians, the Hercules Pillars, what we call today as the Strait of Gibraltar, was considered geographically the end of the world, just before the endless Atlantic Ocean. Yona tried to escape as far as possible from God (see below), to the farthest place that he could conceive.

GOD’S PERMANENT RESIDENCE
But how is it possible that Yona thought that he can flee from God? We Jews believe that God is Omnipresent: He is and exists everywhere (מלוא כל הארץ כבודו). Our rabbis addressed this question and formulated a beautiful response (a little shameful for those of us who are not yet where we should be): nebua or prophecy, the direct communication between God and a human being, is only possible in the land of Israel. That is why Yona does not flee on foot or on horseback, to the north or the south, but goes literally “overseas”. In his mind the most effective way to stop hearing God’s voice is to leave the land of Israel! God “dwells” in Israel. Israel is where His voice can be heard. Running away from Israel means running away from God.

3. Why Did Yona Run Away?

וַיֵּ֨רֶד יָפ֜וֹ וַיִּמְצָ֥א אָנִיָּ֣ה ׀ בָּאָ֣ה תַרְשִׁ֗ישׁ וַיִּתֵּ֨ן שְׂכָרָ֜הּ וַיֵּ֤רֶד בָּהּ֙ לָב֤וֹא עִמָּהֶם֙ תַּרְשִׁ֔ישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵ֖י ה‘

And Yona went down [to the port of] Jaffa; and found [there] a ship going to Tarshish. He paid for the ship and descended to it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of God

YONA IN TEL-AVIV

Yona rejected the Divine mission to announce the destruction of Nineveh, and planned to escape to Tarshish, a port-city on the Iberian peninsula, probably the farthest destination he could find. Yona arrived to the port of Yafó (in modern Hebrew “Yafo”, in English Jaffa, today within the municipality of Tel-Aviv). Yafo was for centuries the most important port in Israel. All maritime trade went through this port. King Solomon , for example, brought via Yafo the wood from Lebanon that was used for the construction of the Bet haMiqdash (Dibre Hayamim II, 2:15). In the modern Jaffa there are some things that remind us of Yona’s journey. For example, a street (see illustration above), which descends towards the port and is called “Yonah haNabí”, “the prophet Jonah”.

Once at the port, the prophet Yona found a boat that was going to Tarshish, probably a Phoenician ship, since they were the great navigators of the time. The text tells us that Yona paid for “the ship”, instead of saying that he paid for his own “ticket” (sekharo). The Sages observed that in his haste to escape, Yona disbursed an exorbitant sum of money and hired the boat privately.

This detail invites us to ask ourselves one more time why Yona wanted so much to escape from his Divine mission? The biblical text does NOT reveal the reason for the behavior of its protagonists. The text leaves that topic for us to explore on our own, and learn the corresponding lessons.

FOUR ANSWERS

I know four possible answers to this question. All have something in common: that Yona is acting wrongly by trying to escape from God, and in the end, God teaches him a lesson. The first three answers, each present one possible reason why Yona escaped. But I think these responses do not answer, for example, why Yona’s book is read on Yom Kippur, that is: why our Sages chose the story of Yona as the text that should inspire us to repentance on the Day of Forgiveness. Answer number 4 in my opinion, which looks at the dynamic between Teshuba, repentance, and impunity, fully solves this question and settles perfectly with the story. But this answer, to which I adhere, will have to be on a waiting list, because we have to know a little more the story of Yona to gradually discover the prophet’s ways of thinking.

Let’s see now the first three possible answers, all based on the Sages, presented briefly and with my own words.

#1 . YONA FEARED FOR HIS OWN LIFE

The prophets in general were in a catch-22 situation. They had to warn the people, usually the Jewish people, that a tragedy was going to happen if people persist in their behavior. But if God decided to forgive the people, the prophet would be regarded as an impostor! The rabbis explained that this had already happened to Yona when he prophesied in the Kingdom of Israel. Now, Yona knows that something similar will happen in Nineveh (Tanchuma Vayqra 8) with one difference: in Nineveh he will be a stranger, and his bold warning would probably cost him his life. According to this opinion, HaShem teaches Yona that saving the lives of the inhabitants of Nineveh should be more important for him than preserving his own life.

#2. YONA DID NOT WANT TO SAVE THE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL

Don Ytshaq Abarbanel (1437-1508) explains that Yona did not want to save the Assyrians, who eventually ended up destroying the city of Shomron, killing thousands of Jews, destroying the Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE) and exiling the 10 tribes. It is as if a Jew today would try to help preserving the Iranian regime, which has publicly declared its intention to erase the State of Israel from the map.

#3. YONA CARED FOR THE REPUTATION OF HIS PEOPLE

The Jerusalem Talmud (Sanh 11: 5) explains that Yona knew that idolatrous peoples are easy to convince, influenceable (קרובי תשובה) and that they would surely rectify their evil deeds immediately. This easiness to change their behavior from one day to another may be the result of the nature of pagan culture: Idolatrous people were used to following the arbitrary dictates of their priests, who would use random “bad omens” to intimidate the people and manipulate the masses with ease. A society —or an individual— that is driven by “superstitions” is ready to do anything out of fear. Yona was convinced that in Nineveh, his announcement about the destruction of the city would be processed via superstition and would be accepted immediately. Which is what ended happening. Yona thought that the imminent repentance of the inhabitants of Nineveh would be a terrible precedent for the Jews of the Kingdom of Israel. At that time the Yehudim were in a very low spiritual state. They practiced idolatry, transgressed the Tora, and ignored the warnings of the Prophets. It was very difficult to convince them to listen! Jews were not superstitious like other peoples, and might have processed “prophecy” as “bad omens” and seeing prophets as charlatans, therefore, they did not listen. The Sages said, thus, that this might have been why Yona tried to escape the Divine call: so that the repentance of Nineveh will not incriminate the Jews, exposing their rejection to listen to the prophets and to change their bad habits.

4. Hitting Rock Bottom

וה‘ הֵטִ֤יל רֽוּחַ־גְּדוֹלָה֙ אֶל־הַיָּ֔ם וַיְהִ֥י סַֽעַר־גָּד֖וֹל בַּיָּ֑ם וְהָ֣אֳנִיָּ֔ה חִשְּׁבָ֖ה לְהִשָּׁבֵֽר׃

Verse 4: And God sent a mighty wind into the sea, and it became a great storm, and the ship was about to collapse.

Yona tried to escape from the Divine word (prophecy), fleeing from the land of Israel, the only place where God communicates with His prophets. Yona goes to the sea. And although He is no longer communicating with Yona through words, God does not let Yona to getting away from his mission. The Sages noted that one of the most common instruments that God uses to intervene in nature is the wind. The wind served as an instrument of God in the Creation of the world; in the plagues, and in the opening of the Sea of Reeds. As King David said: רוח סערה עושה דברו “The stormy wind, which obeys the word of God.” And we recognize this in the Amida when we praise HaShem “who blows the wind to produce rain”. In our case, HaShem sends a powerful wind, which becomes a storm that hits the vessel. The question now is: will Yona react this time and accept the imperative Divine call? Will he resume his mission? Will Yona find any other way to escape?

וַיִּֽירְא֣וּ הַמַּלָּחִ֗ים וַֽיִּזְעֲקוּ֮ אִ֣ישׁ אֶל-אֱלֹהָיו֒ וַיָּטִ֨לוּ אֶת-הַכֵּלִ֜ים אֲשֶׁ֤ר בָּֽאֳנִיָּה֙ אֶל-הַיָּ֔ם לְהָקֵ֖ל מֵֽעֲלֵיהֶ֑ם וְיוֹנָ֗ה יָרַד֙ אֶל-יַרְכְּתֵ֣י הַסְּפִינָ֔ה וַיִּשְׁכַּ֖ב וַיֵּרָדַֽם:

Verse 5: The sailors feared [for their lives]. Each begged their gods and threw the load into the sea to relieve the weight of the ship. Yona, however, descended to the bottom of the ship, he laid down and fell into a deep sleep.

The sailors recognized the Divine intervention, and acted accordingly: they prayed. And threw the valuable cargo into the sea, something the crew would only do when there was no other option left. Because when sailing, the greatest danger to a boat, is sinking because of the weight of water –rainwater and seawater coming from the high waves — and the cargo.
And what did Yona do while everyone was praying?
Incredibly, and while everyone else was in panic, “Yona descended to the bottom” of the ship —now empty of merchandise— laid down and fell asleep!

To fully explore all the psychological aspects of Yona’s reaction would require to write an entire book. But, briefly, Yona is not reacting with indifference towards the storm. “Sleeping” or going to sleep, deactivating his active mind, is part of his escape from God. He knows HaShem is looking for him. The Sages observed that the biblical text uses three times the word vayered, which means “and he descended.” This descent is not only physical: it is a mental descent. It is not a descent that leads to a deeper thought. It is a descent that leads to “stop thinking”, putting your mind to sleep, anesthesia. A perfect mental escape.

In a brilliant and very beautiful way, because of the play on words, the Biblical text describes the progressive descent of Yona into a self induce mental blockage : וירד וירד וירד וירדם “And Yona descended, … and descended … and descended … and he fell deeply asleep”. This last Hebrew word vayradem describes a deep state of sleep (delta brain waves) In modern Hebrew the word “hardama” is used to mean anesthesia) in which we “lose” consciousness. Unlike the Hebrew word “vayshan” a more superficial state of sleep.
For Yona, in the middle of the storm, the only way to get away from God is by stop thinking about Him and about His call. Deactivating the mind; surrendering to sleep.

I think that we all act sometimes in a similar way. For numberless reasons, many times we want (we need!) to escape from our Divine mission. We don’t think about the meaning of our life. Going to sleep is the most innocent way to escape reality, responsibility — or God’s call. There are deeper or more modern ways to escape our existential questions: getting drunk, getting high … or, more commonly, wasting our time with entertainment and distractions to keep our mind blank and escape the existential question. Deliberately ignoring God’s call to us, i.e., His Tora. When we do that we repeat, in a certain way, the behavioral pattern of Yona.

When reaching the bottom of the ship, Yona also arrives at the end of his escape. Seemingly, he cannot get any lower. Or can he?

5. Who loaded the dice?

Yonah’s ship is caught in a terrible storm and about to collapse. The whole crew is trying to get the water out and praying. But Yona fell asleep. The captain of the ship finds Yona and rebukes him:

וַיִּקְרַ֤ב אֵלָיו֙ רַ֣ב הַחֹבֵ֔ל וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ל֖וֹ מַה-לְּךָ֣ נִרְדָּ֑ם ק֚וּם קְרָ֣א אֶל-אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ אוּלַ֞י יִתְעַשֵּׁ֧ת הָאֱלֹהִ֛ים לָ֖נוּ וְלֹ֥א נֹאבֵֽד:

VERSE 6: “What are you doing asleep?” He says. “Get up and cry out to your God. Maybe God will pay attention to us and will help us to escape death. “

Yona is deeply immersed in his own denial. But he does not know it. Many times we need someone from the outside to awaken us, to save us from ourselves. The Gemara describes this type of situation with the following words: אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים “An individual can not free himself from prison, on his own”. The Sages use this expression metaphorically. This is what Ribbi Yochanan said when he explained why he asked for the physical and emotional help of Ribbi Chanina Bar Chama to restore him from the serious deterioration of his health. To understand the beauty and precision of this expression, remember that in ancient times “jails” were not like modern prisons. In the case of Yosef, for example, we see that prisons were “pits” (בית הבור) and you can only get out of a pit with the help of someone outside the pit. Imagine a person who suffers, for example, drug-related addiction. For him or her is like falling into a pit, and hitting rock bottom. Even if that person now decides to restore his life, it will be very difficult for him –if not impossible– to free himself on his own. He needs someone else to pull him from the outside of the pit, to free him from his “prison” (addiction, depression, escapism, etc.).

Returning to Yona, the ship’s captain awakens Yona literally and psychologically. He awakens him from his sleep and makes him aware of the danger that he and the entire crew are in. It is also ironic that the captain of a ship — a gentile –is the one that “wakes up” and encourages the prophet of Israel, “a professional awakener”, and encourages him to pray to God. is it possible that at this point, Yona begins to change his negative opinion about the gentiles of Nineveh, whose lives he refused to save? Perhaps Yona sees now that not everyone is evil in the “Sin City” of the 8th century BCE.

And what does Yona do once he wakes up?

We still do not hear any word from Yona. The prophet is no longer in the bottom of the ship, he is on the surface with the other crew members. But mysteriously (or not), the text remains silent regarding Yona’s reaction. Does this mean that Yona was still not praying? He keeps escaping the Divine call, and now ignoring God’s calls for his attention (the storm)?

וַיֹּאמְר֞וּ אִ֣ישׁ אֶל-רֵעֵ֗הוּ לְכוּ֙ וְנַפִּ֣ילָה גֽוֹרָל֔וֹת וְנֵ֣דְעָ֔ה בְּשֶׁלְּמִ֛י הָרָעָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָ֑נוּ וַיַּפִּ֙לוּ֙
גּֽוֹרָל֔וֹת וַיִּפֹּ֥ל הַגּוֹרָ֖ל עַל-יוֹנָֽה:

VERSE 7: “Then the sailors said to each other, come, let us cast lots to know for whose sake this calamity has come to us. And they cast lots, and the lot fell on Yonah. “

The sailors somehow understand that the storm is not fortuitous, and they decide to cast the lots (goral) in order to find by the omens who is responsible for this tragedy. This type of practice, divination through oracles, was very common among pagan peoples. The Tora, however, forbids it.

Why? Let’s think about throwing a coin or casting lots.

1. When the intention of the person tossing the coin is “to reveal the Divine will” through the coin, the Tora considers it as a form of Aboda Zara, called in Hebrew nichush, “divination”. One might think, for example, that if God is Almighty and Omnipresent, chance does not exist. And if chance does not exist, it is God who decides on which side the coin will fall. And if God intervenes in the way the coin falls, I can reveal His will with the coin. “Heads, means that God wants me to do X; and tails, means that God wants me to do Y.” This is essentially an idolatrous reasoning (לנסות את ה, or cleromancy): the mechanism through which pagan peoples “forced the gods to express their will”. (For more see Maimonides, MT Aboda Zara, chapter 11) and therefore is strictly forbidden.

2. Now, casting a lot is allowed as a way to resolve, and especially “avoid”, conflicts. For example, when flipping a coin is agreed by the parties as an objective way of assigning something, such as when they flip a coin in a football game to decide who starts the game, etc. In this case, the parties previously agreed to settle the matter surrendering themselves to equal statistical probabilities, with no intention of cleromancy, i.e., to force the revelation of the Divine will. This type of resolution is common in Jewish tradition (division of lands, allocation of the functions of the Kohanim, etc.) and King Solomon mentioned it positively in Mishle 18:18 “מִדְיָנִים יַשְׁבִּית הַגּוֹרָל, וּבֵין עֲצוּמִים יַפְרִיד”. “The goral, [= flipping a coin, etc.] solves conflicts and separates [peacefully] the contenders.”

But unexpectedly in the case of Yona, HaShem, “changes the rules of the game” and loads the sailor’s dices to assign the blame into Yona

6. ¿Jew or Hebrew?

עברי אנוכי ואת ה’ אלקי השמים אני ירא

Jewish law rejects the notion of invoking divine intervention in chance, with the purpose of divination. This practice, technically known as “cleromancy” is considered a form of idolatry. In Yona’s story, however, God “changes the laws of the game”; intervenes in the casting of the lots, or “dices”, that the sailors threw to find the culprit, and assigns the blame to Yona. The prophet now has no escape. His has been dis-covered by HaShem. Now he realizes once agian that the mission he has to carry out, saving Nineveh, is time sensitive.

Verse 8: The [sailors] said to Yona: – Tell us why this tragedy is happening to us. What is your occupation? Where you come from? What is your country? What land are you from?

The sailors overwhelmed Yona with questions. And now, for the first time in the book, we listen directly to the prophet’s voice.

Verse 9: Yona said to them, “I am a Hebrew. And I worship (lit. fear) HaShem, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.

I AM A HEBREW, OR AN ISRAELITE

Some biblical commentators explain that Yona’s response, “I am a Hebrew,” answers all the questions at once. Let’s see.

In those times, we Jews dedicated ourselves to work the land (the great international traders were the Phoenicians!). A Jew would usually dedicated himself to farming and spend a large part of the rest of his day to serving God (praying, studying Tora, doing acts of kindness). We could reread this verse, with the additional implied answer, in this way: “Who are you? What’s your occupation? “- the sailors asked Yona- “I am a Hebrew, and my main occupation is to worship HaShem… “.

“I am Hebrew” also answers the questions “where do you come from”, “what is your land” and “where are you from”. The answer to these the questions is one single word: “Israel”, which is also implicit in “I am Hebrew”, since up to 722 a.e.c. all Jews of the world lived exclusively in Israel.

Now: Why does Yona say: “I am a Hebrew” and does not say “I am a Jew”?

At that time, 8th century before the common era, the Jewish people were divided into the Kingdom of Israel (the 10 tribes) and the Kingdom of Yehuda (Judea), which included Jerusalem, the Bet haMiqdash, etc. The inhabitants of Yehuda (or Judea) were later known as Yehudim, or Jews, as seen in the book of Esther. But Yona belongs to the Kingdom of Israel.

Some commentators explain that “Hebrew” was the word (the patronymic) that non-Jews used to refer to Jews, as opposed to “Israelite”, bene Israel, bene berit, etc. which is how “we” refer to ourselves. Now, the Tora mentions the word “Hebrew” several times, mainly when the Egyptians refer to some member of the children of Israel (Yosef, Moshe, the midwives, etc.). It is fascinating to notice in this context that in the Amarna documents, the letters from Amenhotep IV (1350-1330 BCE) which is, so far, the oldest non-biblical reference to Am Israel, the Egyptians refer to us as “Hebrews” (habiru or habriu).

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM

Fast-forward, one of the first symptoms of the final separation between the first Christians and the people of Israel is when the former begin to refer to the Jews as “Hebrews” (as “Epistle to the Hebrews). Although later and for 17-18 centuries the church deliberately referred to us as “Jews”, because of the similarity between “Jew” an “Juda”, the greatest ‘traitor’ who betrayed Yeshu (also a Jew!), and the word “judío”=Jew. The association in unmissable: “Judios” like “Juda” are trairors. And this is why in some parts of Spain–like Melilla, the birthplace of my wife– Jews called themselves “Hebrews.” But I think that, unlike Yona, Melilla’s Jews did that to protect themselves and try to minimize the allergic and demonizing connotation that the term “Judio” inspired (inspires?) in the minds of Spanish-speakers who were exposed for 15 uninterrupted centuries of systemic anti-Semitism. In this context it is worth remembering that Spanish dictionaries for centuries defined the word “Jew” as “stingy” and “usurer”, and “judiada” (acting Jewish) as an act of “betrayal”. Althouhght in modern times the Royal Spanish Academy still has it, with a slight “euphemization” (see here): “judiada” Mala pasada o acción que perjudica a alguien. (judiada–acting Jewish– Bad acting or action that harms someone).

After this long digression, let’s go back to Yona.

The prophet of Israel introduces himself to the sailors using the patronymic that non-Jews used to identify the Israelites: “I am a Hebrew!”