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What Now?: Navigating the End of Days – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
One of the most famous stories in Tanach is the story of Yonah and the great fish. How many times in history has a prophet been swallowed by a large fish, survived in its belly, and then spit out on shore to pick up his mission where he shouldn’t have left off?
That’s why some commentators have concluded that the story is only a mashal, a parable, a deeper message about how to live in life. But they are in the minority, and Sha’ar HaGilgulim even tells who Yonah was and how he came to be who he was: Moshiach Ben Yosef in his time:
It seems to me, in my humble opinion, that the two of them [completely] reincarnated into Eliyahu of Binyomin, and the level called the drop of Yosef, Eliyahu gave to Yonah ben Amitai of Tzarephas when he revived him. This is the sod of what is written in the Zohar in Parashas Vayakhel 197a: It was taught that Yonah was from the “strength” of Eliyahu, which is [why he is called] “ben Amitai,” as it says [regarding Eliyahu], “and that the word of God in your mouth is emes—truth!” (I Melachim 17:24), (Vayakhel 197a). This is also the sod of what our rabbis, z”l, have written: It was taught in the school of Eliyahu: The boy that I revived was Moshiach Ben Yosef… (Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Introduction 32)
Sefer Yonah is fascinating from start to finish. However, there is one very troubling part that gets largely overlooked because of everything else going on around it. Even Yonah’s fellow sailors ask about it:
The captain approached him and asked, “Why do you sleep? Get up and call out to your God! Perhaps God will think about us, and we will not perish!” (Yonah 1:6)
That’s what the captain of the ship asked Yonah. But the real question we have to ask him is, “How can you sleep?” The ship was caught in a hurricane and was being tossed from side to side while going high up and then way down. Who could sleep amidst that much violent motion?
Yonah, for one. The Jewish people, for two.
The fact that the story of Yonah really happened doesn’t stop it from also being a mashal. Messages can be taught analogously as well. For example, the whole episode can allude to how the Jewish People can “sleep” through disasters panicking the rest of the world…disasters that actually were meant for them, as the Gemora says:
All punishment comes to the world for the sake of the Jewish People. (Yevamos 63a)
And let’s not forget why Yonah was on the ship in the first place. He had been running away from his God-assigned mission, and it turns out that the Jewish People have one of those as well—
I am God; I called you for righteousness and I will strengthen your hand; and I formed you, and I made you for a people’s covenant, for a light unto nations. (Yeshayahu 42:6)
—from which we too have been fleeing.
There are certainly other comparisons to be made between Yonah and the Jewish nation as a whole, and several other messages that can be learned from the story as well. But the fact that Yonah was also Moshiach Ben Yosef in his time doesn’t seem to come up anywhere in the book, or history for that matter. Is that point incidental, or a segue to the rest of history?
And the fact that Yonah almost died at birth, only to be miraculously revived by Eliyahu HaNavi, z”l, the designated heralder of the final redemption, is another interesting point for consideration.
Therefore, let’s consider it.
