Daily Prophets
Day 210
“And when the men learned that he was fleeing from serving God, for he told them, they said to him:”What must we do to calm the sea?” He answered, throw me overboard and the sea will calm down for you for I know this terrible storm is on my account. Then they cried out, Please God do not hold us guilty for this man’s life, for You, God have brought this about. And they threw Jonah overboard and the sea stopped raging.”
I am in awe of the sailors. They did not get crazy with Jonah for fleeing the service of God, they did not want to kill him for causing the storm, they just wanted to be in the solution. They are the Anti-Jonah, people who do not need to recriminate the guilty party, at least until they have a solution to the challenge. The Anti-Jonah are the people who ask “what do we need to do to calm the sea”, what do we need to do to bring resolution, harmony, respect, dignity, connection, service, justice, love, truth back into our world, our situation, our lives. The Anti-Jonah are the sailors who kept trying to row the boat back to shore rather than sacrifice Jonah, the trouble-maker.
We can learn so much from the sailors! They are in fear of their lives and they show dignity, humanity and kindness to the source of their problems. We, today, are into the blame game so heavily and so intently that the actions of these sailors seems foolish to many. In fact, I am not sure how many people see them as the heroes of the story at all. Yet, they are. They are the people who go to work everyday in the hospitals and doctors’ offices to treat the unvaccinated people who have Covid-19. They are the people who stand on line to vote in spite of, or maybe because of, the asinine restrictions that fear-based authoritarians have imposed on us. They are the everyday people who show up for work in the retail stores, the restaurants, the airports, etc. Knowing the lack of care that some people have, knowing how some people run away from God’s service and God’s gifts to us these heroes, these Anti-Jonahs, show up to serve anyway. They are the real leaders, not the charlatans who go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to spread lies about themselves and another(s) through innuendo as well as blatant lying. The Anti-Jonahs send us the truth while the Jonahs/charlatans preach the gospel of self-centeredness and mendacity. The sailors, the Anti-Jonahs take their responsibility and seek to prolong everyone’s life, not just their own.
Jonah takes responsibility for what is happening and this seems like a good action. Yet even this seemingly responsible and introspective action is suspect. Jonah was afraid to kill himself, he still did not want to serve God, so he puts it on the sailors to kill him by throwing him overboard so he still doesn’t do God’s bidding. Jonah is so self-center that he is willing to force the sailors to send him to his death rather than serve God or kill himself. We see this today with the people who are unwilling to acknowledge their part in any interaction that goes bad, the ones that go good these people take most of the credit-deserved or not. The descendants of Jonah blame everyone else for the whole negative experience, never seeing their part, and wrap themselves in their ‘poor me’, victimhood and get others to try and save them, give them money they haven’t earned nor deserve and heap guilt and shame upon their ‘enemies’. Jonah and his descendants are always looking for someone else to do their bidding, to help them escape the service God has created them to do and, in this case, even get them to commit murder to satisfy himself/themselves. How sick is this??!
The last two verses above impact me so much. They realize they are going to have to go along with Jonah’s solution and throw him overboard. They realize that they are committing murder and they know it is the only way to save themselves. These brave Godly men are so distraught that they cry out to God to forgive them and to hold God accountable. They are aware that the choices are terrible and they want God and the rest of us to know there are times when the choices we face are the ‘lessor of two evils’ and, as Judaism teaches, save your life first then the life of another. These brave souls are deeply troubled and they are unafraid to call God to task in this case. Many times in life, we are faced with this type of choice, many times in life we have to confront the lies and the evil another human being perpetrates upon us. The sailors give us the path forward, cry out to God, realize what we are doing and save our own lives first as they say on the plane; put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping another.
In recovery, we are all about being the Anti-Jonahs! We move from self-centered to God-centered living. We move for serving ourselves to serving another(s). We move from blame to accepting responsibility for our part of every interaction, positive and negative. In recovery, we know we are imperfect, we know we make the same mistakes in different ways, we also know we are seeking to serve God and serve humanity more and more each day.
I am so aware of the ways I have been Jonah and how, for the most part, in my recovery I have not asked anyone else to help me escape responsibility for my service nor my part in our dealings. I am in awe of the sailors and believe I have been an Anti-Jonah more often, following their lead of rowing against the current to save lives more often than I have been Jonah. As we enter 5782, I hope you look at this past year and say the same for yourself! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark