Running Away
Yom Kippur evening 2012
I was not a highly evolved teenager. I may have been a good student, and I was involved in many afterschool activities. But as a human being, I had a long way to go. Here’s just one example. And for any teenagers who are here, please never do anything like this: when I was sixteen years old, I had my first serious girlfriend. She was smart, and pretty, and loving. I was lucky that she was willing to date me. After some months, for some teenage reason that I don’t really remember, I wanted to end the relationship. But I did not know how. So I just stopped talking to her. I didn’t feel good about it then and to this day I am still ashamed of how I handled it. I did not know how to break up in an ethical and responsible way, so whenever I saw her walking toward me, I just turned and walked quickly in the other direction. Pathetic, I know! Finally, one day she surprised me and demanded to know “can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
I honestly don’t remember what I said, but the truth was that I was running away.
That was forty years ago, and in the intervening decades there have been a few other people with whom communication completely broke down, and we just stopped talking to each other. Thirty years ago, I admired a fellow rabbinic student until he criticized me. So I stopped talking to him. Twenty-five years ago a community leader challenged me when I was still a young new Hillel Director, and I couldn’t figure out how to deal with him, so I just avoided him. Fifteen years ago, a close friend let me know that I had disappointed him in friendship. We met, we struggled, we tried to patch thing up, but finally being together became too difficult, and we stopped talking.
Each of these were tremendously upsetting conflicts, which consumed huge amounts of emotional energy. Eventually, if you’re interested, I did reach a reconciliation with each of the three; in each case it took a number of years. But in all three, I can now see that my fear of the risks of communication led me to run away. I know I am not alone. I think running away is a normal, although not very admirable, human response.
Yom Kippur is our day to stop running. That is the wisdom underlying Yom Kippur’s most famous teaching: that “For conflicts between a human being and God, Yom Kippur brings reconciliation. But for conflicts between one person and another, Yom Kippur accomplishes nothing until the two people come face to face with each other and communicate.” Apology and forgiveness only occur when we stop running away from each other.
Tomorrow afternoon, we will read the Book of Jonah, the story of the prophet who runs away….not from a human friend or enemy, but from God. We read Jonah on Yom Kippur because as the 18th century sage the Gaon of Vilna taught, “everyone flees from the presence of God; everyone is reluctant to stand in the presence of God.” Yom Kippur is our day to stop running.
Tonight I would like to explore together what it means to stop running. To courageously take a stand. That is the opposite of running away: to stand our ground.
First, a little more about human relationships. Those examples I mentioned earlier are the extreme cases, completely broken relationships in which a former friend or colleague and I actually stopped talking to each other. That’s extreme, and clearly begging for the reconciliation that Yom Kippur classically promotes.
But I have come to see that the running away from other people happens on a daily basis, on a deeper, quieter, more subconscious level, with the people I love most. My wife Marian, who knows me better than anyone else in the world, she scares me! She knows me better than anyone else: all my flaws, my terrible habits, my weaknesses. That’s scary! And my children, Rachel and Ari, ages 24 and 22, with whom I am so desperate to stay in touch as they get older and go out into the world. I have so little time to be with them. Why then do I find myself torn, when they come home to visit, between my intense desire to be with them, and an equally intense urge to flee? And likewise with my parents, who are aging and who live on the other side of the country. In our conversations on the phone or in person, we try to find our way to deep communication, but it’s difficult! It feels like we are running away from each other, at exactly the same time that we are trying to become closer.
With those we love the most, who know us inside out, can Yom Kippur be a day to stop running? To simply stop, and be with each other, to let down our guard and just be in each other’s presence?
What happens with Jonah?
The word of God came to Jonah, saying “go to the great city of Nineveh, and cry out against her.” But Jonah fled from the presence of God; he boarded a ship bound for Tarshish. Out at sea, a great storm came and threatened to destroy the ship. But Jonah went down into the hold of the ship, and there he fell asleep.
The captain of the ship came upon Jonah sleeping and shouted at him “how can you be sleeping?!” Get up and join the rest of us on deck. Call upon your god!!” Jonah answered that the storm has come because of him, and that to save themselves, they must throw him overboard. The captain and the crew refuse at first, but at last they throw Jonah overboard. Down he goes into the ocean, the sea becomes still, and Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish.
It is one of the most unforgettable fantasies in all of world literature. Utterly impossible in a literal sense, but symbolically profoundly true. Down into the boat, down into sleep, down into the sea, down into the belly of the fish. Jonah is the story of our running away….and of the deep, dark, quiet place to which our running leads us. As a great teacher once wrote: “There are two choices, to love or to die.” Jonah chooses to die. But this holy day summons us to life!
Does Jonah ever stop running? Yes, here and there.
In the belly of the fish, Jonah prays. And after three days the fish spits Jonah out on land. Jonah goes to Nineveh and declares that in 40 days God will destroy the city. The king and people of Nineveh declare a fast, they put on sackcloth and ashes, and they change their lives. They bring an end to their violence, and God stops and changes His mind. It would be great if the book ended there! We would declare it a happy ending. The people of Nineveh, God, and Jonah have all turned themselves around. A prophetic success story!
But the story does not end there. There are no happy endings in the Bible. I’m sorry to tell you that. In fact, there are really no endings at all. It turns out that Jonah is furious that God has forgiven and spared the city. Jonah says to God “I knew it! You’re too soft!” He sounds like a parent who feels that his or her spouse has caved in and failed to impose “the consequences.” Jonah is struggling—like the teenage me, he is not highly evolved. He complains: “Now take my life; I would rather die than go on living!” In Jonah, we read the story of an incomplete human being. Maybe when the fish spat him out he came out ready to engage with the world….but now, again, he says explicitly, “I want to die.” Something in Jonah still drives him away from people, away from God, away from life.
But for all his imperfections, Jonah does make progress. As the story continues, Jonah…of his own accord, with no instruction from God…does something new, something different than we have ever seen from him before. He builds a sukkah and he sits down beneath it, and waits to see “what will happen to the city.” He holds still. He builds something. He is curious, waiting to see what will happen. All this is new. He’s not running now. He’s building. He’s resting. He’s curious. And God makes a bean plant grow up and cover the sukkah and provide Jonah with shade. And then comes a wonderful new emotion, for the first time in the entire story: “Jonah experienced a simchah gedolah, a great happiness, because of the bean plant.”
For a short time, Jonah does stop running, and does experience the happiness of the sukkah, which is waiting for all of us just four days from now. But because like all Bible stories, this is a true story, and not a fairytale, he does not live “happily ever after.” A hot wind blows, the bean plant dies, and Jonah’s anger returns.
God asks: “Jonah, what’s with that anger? What have you learned about compassion?” The book ends with God’s question, and we never hear Jonah’s answer….we are left waiting for the sequel.
The sequel begins tonight. Tonight and tomorrow is Yom Kippur, twenty- four hours in the Jewish year. Our day to stop running….just for a little while. Maybe to stop running from a person whom we have been avoiding, out of fear, or punishing with our silence. Maybe to stop running from our spouse, or our parent, and to remember the truth, which is that they love us even though they know all about us. Maybe to stop running from God, who waits patiently…sometimes for our entire life….for the one moment when we will rise up, and close our eyes, and stand in the presence of God and pray.