Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer Chapter 10, section 9

Job 40

Job 41

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TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.

What’s Your Fish Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. We’re recording on Thursday, September 12th, 2024. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

The Jewish month of Elul is supposed to be a month of reflection and of envisioning new beginnings. And yet, what I see all around me, both here in Israel and abroad, are people who are tired, who feel spent, who are overwhelmed by and anxious about what the future holds. These last few weeks have been exhausting in existential ways for the Jewish people. They’ve left us reeling and with questions about the future. In an environment like this, how can we think about new beginnings?

But perhaps we can be less pie in the sky about the concept of new beginnings. After all, the new beginnings I’ve experienced here in Israel have been pretty overwhelming. Learning so much that I didn’t know, sometimes at the eleventh hour, being willing to make mistakes and correct myself, and let’s be honest, there was even some crying in there at the end of long days, where the third or fourth time I tried something that I’ve never done before, just didn’t work.

So the place I want to go to think about new beginnings as we approach the High Holidays, the Yamim Noraim, is actually to the story of Yonah that we’re going to read on Yom Kippur, and specifically a profound midrash about Yonah in Pirkei De’Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 10, section 9. It’s about Yonah’s time in the whale, and to join me, I’ve brought my own Yonah, Yonah Hain.

Hi, Yonah.

Yonah: Thank you for having me, Elana.

Elana: You know, people may not know this, but Yonah and I are in different countries until after Yom Kippur. So, I guess I’ll start by asking, how’s our apartment in New York looking these days?

Yonah: Cleaner than the inside of a whale.

Elana: All right, all right, I hear you. You want to get into the actual conversation. Do you want to know what the apartment looks like in Jerusalem?

Yonah: Yeah.

Elana: I don’t think I could say the same as what you just said. But on a more serious note, as someone whose namesake is Yonah, where do you start with this character?

Yonah: I think the first question that we have to ask is, who is Yonah? If he were taking a contemporary personality test, how would he score? And I think what we’re going to encounter is a classic case where the biblical narrative has one Yonah and our rabbinic layer has another Yonah.

When we meet the biblical Yonah, he’s spoken to by various characters and responds with silence, running away, hiding, fleeing the scene. God speaks to Yonah, runs away, gets on a ship to try to avoid that conversation, and things don’t go well, he goes to the bottom deck. It has to be a lottery that lands on him before he is willing to speak. They say, who are you? Finally shares. He’s a real wallflower and an introvert and maybe has some avoidance.

Elana: Avoidance, yeah.

Yonah: And that’s why I think is an amazing backdrop to begin our midrash because either this is a transformed Yonah who’s inside the fish, or maybe this is a completely different version of Yonah. But I guess one thing, Elana, that I want to ask you that I think is important for your listeners is, this is a fantastical story. This is not exactly a grounded-in-reality, gritty version of Yonah and the fish. And I’m wondering, you, a deeply rationalist person and thinker, how does this legend, this folktale, speak so much depth and religious meaning to you when it seems so far-fetched?

Elana: I think it depends what your expectations are. Meaning, my expectation generally is that there are a lot of different kinds of genres that can offer meaning, right? You can have a legal code can offer you meaning, a philosophical tract can offer you meaning, and yes, a wild tale can offer you meaning. I mean, you know, I feel like I’m in the depths with him. I mean, like, wow.

Yonah: That’s beautiful. I love the way you put that.

Elana: Yeah, I appreciate the question. And I think sometimes that’s what Midrash is about, right? And here the book of Yonah itself, you have to reach for that, but the Midrash for sure.

All right, so let’s get started. I’m gonna break this midrash into three scenes because I think it helps us process each one. So I want to start with the beginning, which is Yonah finds himself inside this fish, this whale, but he has a problem at which this part is about to not be in the biblical text, the fish that he’s in.

So he’s inside the fish. But this fish is about to get eaten by a bigger fish, okay? It’s a cosmic fish that represents chaos and the eruption of evil in Jewish tradition. It’s the Leviathan, the Leviathan. And that’s where we open with this Pirkei De’Rabbi Eliezer, okay? It goes like this:

“Amar lo hadag l’Yonah.” This whale, this fish, says to Jonah, “Don’t you realize that today I’m supposed to get eaten by the Leviathan?” Meaning Yonah, you’re in danger. This is not like a safe place for you. And this is fascinating to think that this whale is actually afraid of getting eaten by something that is scarier than a whale, right? The mouth of the Leviathan again, represents chaos, represents evil.

Yonah: And again, I don’t think there’s anything in the biblical narrative that would indicate that Jonah should know the future of this fish.

Elana: Well, it gets better because Yonah says back to the fish. Oh, please. I’m not worried about the Leviathan. You let me, bring me to the Leviathan. I’m going to confront the Leviathan. And so Yonah says to the Leviathan, you know what, you know why I’m here? I came down here to see where you live, because I’m going to come back and I’m actually going to lasso you. I’m literally going to put a rope around your tongue, which is by the way, playing off of some verses in the book of Job, which we’ll put in the show notes. I’m going to basically trap you and I’m going to bring you up and slaughter you for the great feast for the pious at the end of times, right?

This is part of the lore of Leviathan is supposed to be some sort of challenge to God. It’s chaos, it’s evil, and it’s going to be tamed at the end of time. And when it’s tamed at the end of time, actually, it’s going to become the meal for the righteous, right? Symbolizing how righteousness has overcome evil, right?

So he says, I’m, I’m coming back here for you, Leviathan. And so what does he do? He shows him, literally it says, he shows him his seal of Abraham, meaning he shows him his circumcision. And he says, look at the covenant that I have with God. And the Leviathan runs away, two days worth, away from Jonah. Strange imagery.

Yonah: Normal stories.

Elana: Yeah, meaning, it’s so interesting, because when you when you look at the book of Job at chapters 40 and 41, again, we’ll put it in the show notes, the Leviathan is like the most scary thing in the universe. So if you’re telling me he’s avoiding things here, he is saying to the Leviathan. No, no, no, no, I am taking you down and you know how I’m doing it? I have a covenant with God. He just ran away from his covenant with God, but I’m gonna take you down.

Yonah: This is not your grandparent Jonah. This is not your biblical Jonah. This is not just a confident figure. This is like a superhero, right? Think about the response to the opening question. The fish that swallows Jonah says, don’t you know that I’m supposed to die? Yonah’s answer is basically, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I want to see the Leviathan. I have a message.

Elana: Right, which is the opposite of Jonah in the biblical story. Jonah in the biblical story is running away. Jonah in the whale, instead of looking at Jonah inside the whale as, here’s his punishment, that he’s inside a whale, and he’s gonna stay in his room, so to speak, until he realizes his problem, when he finally prays to God inside the whale, that’s when he’s allowed to come out.

This is a totally different view of that. It’s, he goes, he’s confrontational, and by the way, if the Leviathan is chaos and evil, he is saying, we can beat chaos and evil. I’m going to come back here and I’m going to beat chaos and evil. That is a very confident, I have confidence in my covenant with God. I have confidence in the future. That is a very confident Yonah and a very idealistic Yonah. That’s how it starts.

Yonah: Why do you consider that such an idealistic Yonah?

Elana: I think because the Leviathan is not just some big monster. The Leviathan represents something that I think we get very overwhelmed by in the world, which is why do bad things happen so much, so often? Why is there chaos in the world? Why isn’t the world the way it should be?

Yonah: And Yonah is seen here as saying, I can withstand that no matter what I can topple it.

Elana: I, it’s not just withstand. I can beat it. So if we thought Yonah was beaten by being in the whale, what this Midrash is offering us is a Yonah who is the opposite. He’s confident he’s gonna win, right? It’s not somebody who’s beaten down. It’s somebody who realizes the power and the possibility.

Yonah: Scene two.

Elana: Scene two. I call this the sightseeing tour because now Yonah wants something from the fish in return. He wants to see things, okay? Again, he’s not trapped in the fish. He has access to see things that he doesn’t usually see. So this is what happens. Jonah says to the fish, I saved you from the mouth of Leviathan.

Now you have to show me everything that’s in the sea and in its depths. And maybe by the way, It’s because now the Leviathan is not stalking the depths, so you can take me on that sightseeing tour. But the Midrash, what it’s about to do when it describes where the fish, excuse me, where the whale took him, is it’s going to take the prayer that Yonah makes from the inside of the whale, chapter 2, the first several verses, and instead of interpreting it the way it reads, which is, I’ve been trapped in the depths, and seaweed is all over my head, and I want to come out, and I want to go in and live, it’s going to read it as, wow, look at everything that I was able to see in the depths, right? Like you said.

Yonah: Again, Jonah is not an introverted wallflower,

Elana: Yeah, he’s exploring. He wants to explore. So I want us to hear what the fish shows him. Because I think in some ways, when I first read this Midrash, that’s when I started thinking like, what’s my fish? Right? When I want to run away from things, and especially in a time like now, where there’s so much that I feel like sometimes I want to run away from, where do I go to see things that are going to help me kind of re-set myself? Which is kind of the way that this midrash is reading it.

Yonah: Just a reminder, running away? You’re solo parenting right now.

Elana: I’m running right towards the problems.

Yonah: Yeah, the answer of where you go when you want to run away is one of our kids bedrooms.

Elana: Fair, fair point, fair point. So this is what it shows him. It showed him the great river of the waters of the ocean. As it is said, and it cites part of Yonah’s prayer, which is supposed to be desperate, and it cites it as, Wow, the deep was round about me. Like, wow. It showed him the paths through the Red Sea, through which Israel passed. As it is said, wreaths were wrapped around my head. Right? Wreaths were wrapped, right? And it’s, instead of being what the verse is really, that the water closed in over me and the deep engulfed me and wreaths twined around my head, it’s, I got to see the ocean. Wow, I got to see the ocean where the Jewish people cross the Red Sea, right? That’s very different. It’s not very desperate.

We move to a few other verses that are desperate and get the, they get reinterpreted also. So how about this? It showed him the place from where the waves of the sea and its billows flow, right? You ever stand at the beach and you’re looking out and you’re like, wow, I wonder where those waves begin, right? Showed him where the waves begin, as it is said from his prayer, all of your waves and your billows passed over me, which is supposed to be,

Yonah: Life threatening.

Elana: And then it shows him the pillars of the earth and its foundations. As it is said, the earth with its bars for the world were around me. I was imprisoned. Nope. Nope.

So what’s he seeing here? Let’s talk about what he’s seeing here. It’s, this is not all that he sees, but the beginning of what he sees. It’s the full breadth of the world, right? It’s the personal story and miracles of the Jewish people and ultimately the foundations of the earth, right? The place where the waves come from, where the pillars are holding things up, right? He’s going down to the foundation.

So when I read this, I sort of look at this and I say, oh wow. He goes into the fish. Is the fish a place where he’s like reconnecting to what’s important to him? He sees where they cross the sea. He sees the foundations of the earth. Or is the fish an opportunity for him to see things that he hasn’t been connected with in the past? And I say that because I’m thinking about my own experience. Like, when I go into the fish to get away and to rethink, are those places where I’m going to be just reconnecting with things that help ground me? Or is it a place where I can safely see? You know, learn new things and think in a new way, as opposed to the reactive experience that I might be having on the outside.

Yonah: See, for me, reading this midrash, as someone who works on a university campus, I can’t help but think that the fish here operates almost like a time machine. The biblical Yonah has lived a little, he’s been cut once or twice. He’s seen things and he knows the uphill battles. He enters the fish and now he has the bravado of youth.

I think about Yom Kippur and so many of the students during their prayers are fortunate enough to not have been struck with loss and tragedy yet in their life. And they view the prayers through the prism of this Midrash. How wondrous are God’s seas. And those of us who are a little bit older, those of us who have been around the block a few times, those of us who have lost loved ones, those of us who have experienced tragedy, we see the dangers and the perils of, you know, those waves and the depths of the ocean.

Elana: It’s so interesting. So you’re basically saying when you look at this midrash, you see wonder meaning it might be that Yonah’s life on the outside of this whale is kind of a mess. But in here, he’s able to experience wonder.

I think that’s fascinating and I think it leads me to a different kind of question, which is like, I’m thinking about where do I get refuge, right? Is there a place where I can get refuge to think clearly and see clearly and not just be reacting to tweets and not just reacting to things that I see and posters and ripping down and all the things, right? But I can like, hold, like, sit back and think. And what you’re really saying is. How do we actually rekindle wonder in a world that actually sometimes feels like the waves are just crashing over us, and crashing over us, and crashing over us?

Yonah: And think about praying on Yom Kippur, the first time that you felt inspired. You know, you’re a little kid and, you know, maybe you have to sit in shul with a parent. So you’re flipping through the pages, counting down how many are left. 123. Then you get a little older and you realize that, you know, well, one side’s Hebrew, one side’s English. So maybe 123 is really only 60.

Elana: Oh my gosh. You are so you.

Yonah: And then at some point, maybe you embrace the responsibility of Yom Kippur and the meaning of the day. There’s no way on your 30th Yom Kippur, it’s the same as the first, and it shouldn’t be, but that to me is the, is the fish. Yonah seeing things anew for the first time.

Elana: Okay, so let’s go on though of what he’s seeing, right? Cause what he’s seen so far, it’s been very positive, right? But guess what he’s going to see next? He’s going to see some less positive dimensions that are not understanding the created world. They’re actually about understanding good and evil. He is going to be taken to hell. He’s going to check out hell.

So the Midrash continues, Gehenom. The fish showed him Gehenom. The fish showed him. A level of hell, based on a verse where, you know, he’s praying and saying, you’ve brought my life up from destruction, God. I’ve gone down to hell. But here he’s going as a tourist, right? And he goes to another level of hell, the lowest level of hell.

Again, basing on the verse that he said, so he, this is a very different, this is different, I think.

Yonah: I don’t see it as different.

Elana: Really?

Yonah: Yeah, he’s a conqueror. He’s able to even see the depth Sha’ol and Gehenom as something of a sightseeing tour. It’s not a personal, tragic, place of fear. He says, oh, that’s cool to see. I think he’s unfazed by it.

Elana: But I think it’s more than that’s cool to see. I think part of what’s going on here. I think part of what’s going on here is navigating the fact that God said to him, I want you to go tell a people to stop being bad and he refused to do it and he ran away for whatever reason. And now he’s being confronted like, oh, this is where evil lives. I’ve met the Leviathan who’s a representation of evil. And I have now seen what hell looks like. And actually, I want to get out of here. I would like you to take me out of here, God. I don’t want to be here.

And I think that that, I think that that’s sort of like a clear eyed confrontation. Now I know he hasn’t said yet, I want to get out of here, but the verses that are cited are, God, you brought me up from shahad, from destruction. God, you take me out of the belly of Sheol, a word for hell. You’ve heard my voice, right? It makes it sound like not, oh, I saw these things, but you took me out of these things. Thank you for taking me out of these things. Right, it almost is like a touring of what could be. And then from the place of evil, he’s next taken to the place that represents the ultimate good. What happens next is he’s showed what is beneath the temple of God, right? And what, what, what. How did we get here?

Yonah: I think it makes perfect sense.

Elana: But wait, the Midrash says from here we learned that Jerusalem must stand upon seven hills, cause this is the seventh place he’s going. Right? He’s gone down, down, down. It’s not just a sightseeing tour. He’s, it’s an archeological dig. And there he sees the foundation stone fixed in the depths, the foundation stone of the world beneath God’s temple. And he sees the sons of Korach standing and praying over it.

Now, I, I think what he sees here is he is, he’s seeing the symbolism of people being able to make choices in life. You can choose to go the hell route, you can choose to go the temple route, and who represents that better than the children of Korach, whose father chose the hell route, and they famously, in Rabbinic Midrash, chose to be sinners. We’re gonna pray on our way down and not ever get, get all the way down to hell. So it, I mean geographically doesn’t quite work because here it makes it sound like this is lower. I’m not sure how to work this, right? But the point is,

Yonah: I don’t have a map.

Elana: Yeah, I don’t have a map. But the point is here, I think there’s, this isn’t just, you’re gonna find out the mysteries of the world. This isn’t just, you’re gonna have wonder again. I think it’s, you have to make a choice. Where do you want to be? What do you want to be? Who do you want to be? And what do you want to shape? And that’s the moment where in scene three he decides to pray.

Yonah: That’s a really good read

Elana: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

Yonah: I didn’t see as much of a journey in it, but you’ve convinced me.

Elana: You know what? I really, can you say that again into the mic a little louder?

Yonah: I was right all along.

Elana: Oh, interesting, interesting, interesting, but I, you know, he’s taking this journey, right? He starts off, he’s confident. I’m going to beat this Leviathan. Get out of my way. Right. And then I actually think he’s a little bit humbled by being able to see a full picture of whoa, where do the waves come from? Whoa? Where do the, where did we cross the Red Sea? That’s not something I would be able to do. Wow. Hell or temple, right? Wow, the children of Korach who decided in the middle of a really tragic situation that they were a part of that they were gonna make a different choice, right? I actually think some of his confidence may be a little bit chipped away at, not in a bad way, but to say, hey, you’ve got to earn that. You’ve got to earn that. You’ve got to do something, right?

So, let’s move ourselves to scene three, where so far what we’ve seen is a very confident Yonah, saying, I’m gonna be back the Leviathan, and I have a covenant, and I can do everything, to a Yonah who’s been, I think, exposed to big forces beyond his control and may be impressed by them in some way,

Yonah: Changed by it.

Elana: And so I think scene three is going to show us how he’s been changed. So we have, the whale says to Yonah, you know, you’re standing right now under the temple. Like you’re in the depths that are right under the temple. And if you pray here, you’re going to be answered. Right. And so Yonah says to the whale, okay, wait here. I definitely want to pray. Right. Which I think is very interesting because we hadn’t seen him pray until now, even when he was confronted by the Leviathan, we hadn’t seen him pray until now. So the fish, the whale stops and Yonah starts to pray.

But the Midrash doesn’t end there, because I want us to actually think about what his prayers were, right? You can imagine, he sees the sons of Korach and realizes like, oh, I have things that I have to pray for, right? Like, I have things that I have to ask for. And so he says, Ribono Shel Olam, sovereign of the universe, nikreita moridu ma’ale, you’ve been called the one who can send people down and bring them up. I’ve now gone down. Ooh, he’s admitting I’ve gone down. I want you to lift me up, meaning I, I need you to get me out of here. Nikreita mimitu mechaya. You’ve been called the one who puts to death and also revives. I’m very much, I’m close to death, I’m on the door of death. Please revive me.

Right, so that’s a little bit chastened, that’s a, that’s a chastened Yonah. And by the way, that chastened Yonah is in the Biblical text also. Right, like, that’s the chastened Yonah that we’re used to in the Biblical text. We hadn’t seen that Yonah in this Midrash, right?

Yonah: That’s the evolution.

Elana: Right, but here’s the kicker. He wasn’t answered, until, the Midrash says, until the following came from his mouth, which I love, the Leviathan’s mouth moves to his mouth, right?

Yonah: So Jonah’s deeper understanding of God is not enough to have the prayer answered?

Elana: Yes, and it’s not just that, it’s, his deeper understanding of his own humility. Right, his own smallness in the cosmic universe or his own, even these deeper understanding of the world. Now it doesn’t, that’s not enough, until the midrash says what came out of his mouth is the following: “That which I vowed, I will perform.” Okay. Meaning. I vowed to bring the Leviathan up and to slaughter it before you, and I will do that on the day of redemption. And that’s when God gives a sign to the whale, and the whale spits out Yonah, right?

Now, what is it about his promise of I’m gonna do what I said? Well, first of all, the tone is so different, right? It was like, Leviathan, I’m gonna come get you. No, no, no. Now the tone is, God, I really need help, and if you get me out of here, I’m actually going to try to fight the Leviathan and all that it represents. I’m going to try to change things. I’m going to try to partner with you to do something. I’ve seen that your world is deeper and bigger than I am. And yet I see that there’s something that I have to do.

Yonah: Yeah, it’s a call to action, but an action that understands, the risks, the challenges and the task ahead.

Elana: Correct. It’s not a, pie in the sky, new beginnings.

Yonah: Or bravado of youth.

Elana: Right. It’s not the bravado. It’s a realistic sense of, well, the Leviathan, that’s something that I really have to get to. It’s something I really have to confront. And the truth is, like the way we could say it is, I feel like I’m in the Leviathan’s mouth, right? That’s the beginning. The Leviathan is about to eat that fish and eat Yonah. And how it ends is what am I going to do with my mouth? Right, what am I going to do with my mouth, in order to ultimately be victorious, if possible, over the Leviathan and all that it represents?

Yonah: It’s beautiful and it also has that layered Yom Kippur notion of a vow, you know, asher nadarti, that which I, that which I vowed.

Elana: Right, like Kol Nidrei, except there, we’re letting ourselves out of a vow, but sure.

Yonah: Yeah, but it’s about the significance of that which we speak.

So here’s the final question, Elana. What’s your fish? Where do you go to recalibrate the way you look at your role in the world?

Elana: I think that a very important place for me is a place where other people are grappling with the same issues and can, we can think about just how big the issues are together. Like I wouldn’t do well in the whale by myself. I need other people.

Yonah: You’re a little claustrophobic also.

Elana: I am a little claustrophobic, so it’s actually not great to have those other people with me either. But the point is, I wouldn’t do well by myself. I think the whale in some way is something that will help me say, hey, but did you consider this? Hey, did you think of that? Hey, can we think about this together?

And I also think, to be honest, like, I think George Orwell, he wrote this, he wrote this essay called Inside the Fish, no, Inside the Whale actually, it’s called. He wrote it, I think, in 1940. And in the essay he basically says, sometimes being inside the whale is a very narcissistic act. Because you don’t have to actually do anything. And you can’t hear anything, don’t stay in the whale too long, right? So it’s like, you know, I’m gonna sin, I’m gonna theorize, and I’m gonna do it.

Bottom line, I wanna know what, what are we doing? What’s our action? What’s our way of fighting the Leviathan? And by the way, it’s not like, Yonah’s like, in the Leviathan, I’ll get him tomorrow. It’s not. It’s, and eventually I’ll do this.

Yonah: And the story ends with just being spit out and the task is at hand.

Elana: Right. Now, now you gotta go do. And I think that if we’re all willing to do it together, there’s power in that.

Yonah: Well, I’m on your team.

Elana: Thanks from 6,000 miles away, huh?

Yonah: Thanks for having me, Elana.
Elana: Thanks for listening to our show. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Yonah Hain. Texting is produced by Tessa Zitter with production assistance from Sarina Shohet. Our senior producer is M. Louis Gordon, and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was mixed by Ben Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio, with music provided by Luke Allen.

We’re always looking for ideas of what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or if you have comments about the episode, please write to us at texting at shalomhartman.org. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time. Wishing you a Shana Tova. Thanks for listening.