Yonah

Yonah, The Story You Never Knew:

I just finished reading Rav Brevda's Sefer on the Peirush of the Gra on Sefer Yonah. The sefer was by far the most informative sefer I have ever read. Usually when the Gra writes a perush on a sefer in Tanach he writes two, one is the peshat (simple understanding) and the other is the remez (hint). But for sefer Yonah the Gra only writes a perush remez (this is not to say that the Gra thought that the story was fake, rather he believed that it did happen and in addition the story is used to hint to a deeper message). I highly recommend that everyone go and find Rav Brevda or go to his apartment either in Yerushaliam or Brooklyn and purchase this sefer (not that he needs my haskama). This sefer literally changed my outlook on Judaism for the better and any dvar torah I would write would not give this amazing work justice. That being said there are certain things that are in this sefer that I hope will really help us all this Yom Kippur and even after that.

The very basic storyline for the remez is as follows. Perek 1: Yonah is a neshama. Hashem places the neshama into a guf, the boat into this world, the sea. Hashem gives the neshama mission to go to Ninveh, either representing the world and to get the people there to do teshuva. The problem is that the moment the neshama gets into the guf the person immediately heads for Tarshish, representing the pleasures in this world. In response to this rebellion Hashem sends pain to the person which is the storm. The people on the ship which are really the kochot (strengths) try to save the person but it does not work. They are forced to throw the neshama out of the body but right before the body dies it wants to do teshuva but it did not have enough time.

Perek 2: The neshama gets eaten by a fish, representing Gehinom where the neshama must experience pain for its sins in this world. After praying to Hashem he is sent back to try again.

Perek 3: Hashem sends the neshama again with the same mission, to get the people of the world, who have been spending their time enjoying the pleasures of this world, to repent for their sins. Due to the fact that Yonah at the end of his last life wanted to be a tzaddik he was born a tzaddik and quickly ran to complete his mission. He told the people that in 40 days (representing the number of days from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur) the city would be overturned. Meaning if they repent then now they would go from bad to good but if they did not then they would be punished, much like for us on these days. Quickly all of the repented and Hashem forgave them for their sins.

Perek 4: Yonah has completed his mission but know he is jealous of the fact that while he will enjoy his olam haba for having been a righteous person he is living as a poor person all because his last gilgul was a rasha. He is jealous because he just watched as the people of Ninveh, the Jews enjoyed great pleasures in this world and will also get a portion of olam haba for having repented. Yonah is so sad that he davens that Hashem should make it that he is rich. This desire to enjoy the pleasures of this world came from the fact that he had sinned in his previous gilgul in this area. Hashem wants to show Yonah that really enjoyment in this world is pointless. To do this Hashem takes a portion of Yonah's Olam Haba, the leaves of the Kikayon and gives them to him in this world to get pleasure from it. When Yonah receives this he is overwhelmed with joy. But the whole point of Hashem giving Yonah the riches was to show him that it is all really nothing so Hashem took them away. Immediately, Yonah is so sad from losing his wealth that he prefers death then poverty. Hashem tells him that he missed the whole point. Even though he was born a tzaddik he was put in this world to do only two things. One, to complete the mission he had left incomplete until now and two to fight the desire for pleasure in this world, a matter that he failed in last time. So even though Yonah was a tzaddik his whole life it was all for nothing because he still had not completed his mission in this world.

This is a very basic outline of the story. To get a much better picture get your hands on a copy of the book.

Rav Brevda points out many important lessons from the words of the Gra. The most important is possibly the biggest secret in Judaism that may change your life forever!

The Gra says that many people in this world are simply of gilgul of previous person who has already failed at his mission. The whole purpose of your lives is to be metaken (fix) the faults we made in your past life. The Gra says that there are two signs to know what sins you need to fix. These two signs are: 1) The mitzvah that for some reason you continually transgress. As much as you try to avoid it for some reason you just keep on doing the sin. 2) The sin that you desire with all of your heart to do that if you had the chance at any given moment you would do that sin. For Yonah his rebellion against Hashem by not telling the people to repent was his first sin. While his incredible desire for the pleasure of this world was his second sin. While he had completed one he still desired the pleasures of this world and he failed to be metaken his soul.

This is why we read Yonah on Yom Kippur. Because it is the day that we reflect on your mistakes and make a move to fix everything that needs fixing. It is a new slate, another chance to finally rid ourselves of the all of the sins that we have constantly been transgressing for what could be several gilgulim. Let us make a stand today to be different this time and finally complete our tikun in this world and with that bring the Mashiach!

Bringing It Down to Earth:

With this idea I believe there is a much bigger idea here. In the introduction to his sefer, the Chofetz Chiam writes how the sin of lashon hara has been a major cause of our destruction. From the meraglim to the destruction of the second beit hamikdash almost every single event was caused by this sin. We also know that chazal tell us that every generation that does not rebuilt the beit hamikdash is as if they caused it's destruction. If we understand the idea of gilgulim then we can finally understand this chazal. The ramchal explains that our neshamot are really just "branches" of the earlier Jews who were the "roots". So now we can finally understand what is going on. Ever since the Jews sinned in the area of lashon hara all those years ago their neshamot have come back to be metaken for that sin. The problem is that every time they just went back into the same routine. The chazal that says that we are like the generation that caused the destruction is telling us that as long as we do not fix this sin we are just doing the sin because that is what was routine for our neshama to do. Until we defeat the yetzer hara for loshan hara, a sin that is very common, we cannot bring the tikkun necessary to bring about the building of the beit hamikdash. For this coming Yom Kippur let us all try, bli neder, to work as hard as we can to stop the sin of lashon hara and with this tikkun may we be zoche to be the generation that finally builds the beit hamikdash.

Gamar Chtima Tova and have a great Shabbat!