Jonah and Teshuvah

Rambam's 5 stages of Teshuvah

1. Recognition of one’s sin as a sin (hakarat ha-chet)

2. Remorse/regret over the action, including evaluation of the negative impact this action had on others (charata)

3. Confession (verbally), making the action concrete in your own mind (vidui)

4. Restitution where possible for any harm you purposely or inadvertently caused (peiraon)

5. Returning to the same or similiar circumstances and not participating in the behavior/action again. (azivat ha-chet)

Rabbi Arthur Green, These Are The Words, from YK Readings, p. 267

[Jonah is a] great paradigm of teshuvah...God teaches the prophet Jonah not to by cynical, to always maintain faith in the possibility of human transformation, just as God does. The prophet, who had longed for God to destroy the wicked city of Nineveh, is reminded that the city contains "more than a hundred thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left and much cattle (Jonah 4:11). Most sinners are like fools or children, not knowing right from left, no more guilty than cattle. Their Creator does not want to destroy them, but to see them transform their lives by turning to God.

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, Yom Kippur Readings, p. 284

On Yom Kippur, we recognize our aloneness and seek to repair our relationships to others...We try to make the old new, not to discard it. We go back to go forward. By repairing the breach between ourselves and the Divine Other, we can also begin to repair the many breaches between ourselves and The myriads of people with whom we have relationships.

The tradition recognizes the difficulty of this process [of reexamination of our self-definition and our relationship to the rest of the world] and sets aside the day of Yom Kippur specifically and this whole period more generally to force us to focus on a subject we prefer to avoid. All of us are like Jonah, ready to flee to some exotic Tarshish rather than face the reality of who we are and, even more threatening, the possibility that we could become different.

Fearing teshuvah and changes in others, [Jonah] fears change in himself and flees the truth, only to find it at least for a moment in the dark depths of the whale.

Rabbi Kerry M Olitzky, Yom Kippur Readings, p. 270

It's ironic. Sometimes we fear success even more than we fear failure. Jonah did. He had the unique honor of being the only prophet in teh Bible to whom the people really listened. Yet he ran! He was angry. He wanted the people to be punished. Why? Because he lacked compassion for others. And himself. Fearing Change in others, he also feared change in himself.

The Prayer Before the Prayer, Desmond and Mpho Tutu

I want to be willing to let go, to forgive.

But dare not ask for the will to forgive,

in case you give it to me

And I am not yet ready.

I am not yet ready for my heart to soften.

I am not yet ready to be vulnerable again.

Not yet ready to see that there is humanity in my tormentor’s eyes

Or that the one who hurt me may also have cried

I am not yet ready for the journey.

I am not yet interested in the path

I am at the prayer before the prayer of forgiveness

Grant me the will to want to forgive.

Grant it to me not yet but soon

Can I even form the words?

Forgive me? Dare I even look?

Do I dare to see the hurt I have caused:

I can glimpse all the shattered pieces of that fragile thing

That soul trying to rise on the broken wings of hope

But only out of the corner of my eye.

I am afraid of it.

And if I am afraid to see

How can I not be afraid to say: Forgive me?

Is there a place where we can meet?

You and me

The place in the middle where we straddle the lines

Where you are right and I am right too.

And both of us are wrong and wronged

Can we meet there?

And look for the place where the path begins

The path that ends when we forgive.