{"id":40411,"date":"2018-09-18T00:18:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T21:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=40411"},"modified":"2018-09-18T00:33:17","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T21:33:17","slug":"jonah-the-son-of-amittai-and-les-miserables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jonah-the-son-of-amittai-and-les-miserables\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah the son of Amittai and Les Miserables"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I saw the Broadway revival of Les Miserables several years ago and was struck by a number of themes that resonated with Biblical and other Jewish texts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The theme that I want to comment on here is that captured in the person of Javert. Javert is the police captain who reappears throughout the show, primarily as the adversary of Jean Valjean, the reformed criminal turned hero. What gives Javert his power as a character is that he is not at all evil. Instead, he represents justice. He believes that sinners must be punished. This sense of justice runs up against our desire for mercy and forgiveness. The foil for Javert\u2019s character is the bishop, whose merciful lies save Valjean from prison. He is \u201crighteous,\u201d but not \u201cjust.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Javert himself ends up being the beneficiary of mercy, when Valjean spares his life. Far from liberating Javert from death, however, this act torments him. It calls his entire world view into question. He has always lived by justice, and is now forced to reckon with the fact that he has been granted mercy.<\/span><\/p>\n

He asked himself:<\/span><\/p>\n

This convict\u2026whom I have pursued\u2026and could have avenged himself\u2026in granting me life, in sparing me, what has he done? His duty? No. Something more. And I, in sparing him in my turn, what have I done? My duty? No; something more. Then there is something more than duty. Here he was startled; his balances disturbed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, Javert kills himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are precisely the themes of the biblical book of Jonah. Jonah, too, is a man of justice \u2013 \u201cthe son of Amittai,\u201d the son of truth (“emet”). Embodied in his name are values of truth, genuineness, authenticity: sinners must be punished, and mercy is not allowed. When God dispatches Jonah to the sinners in Nineveh to urge them to repent, he refuses to go. Sinners should not be urged to repent; they should be punished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jonah reluctantly makes his way to Nineveh, where he proclaims, ambiguously: \u201cIn forty days Nineveh will be overturned.\u201d As the midrash observes, \u201coverturned\u201d could be either through repentance or through destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Jonah is watching Nineveh, he is graced with a divine gift, a large leafy plant to protect him from the sun. The plant is then desiccated by a fierce hot wind, and Jonah laments the loss. Unlike Javert, Jonah needs to have the message explained to him by God. As the beneficiary of an act of grace, Jonah should now understand that the world cannot be governed by justice alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mercy, grace, and undeserved forgiveness are all needed in the imperfect world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story of Jonah son of Amittai, then, like Les Miserables is one about the tension between competing values. Yonah is the son of truth, the paragon of truthful living and the champion of behaviors having consequences, and sins having punishments.<\/span><\/p>\n

He learns from God, however, that there must be an understanding of the frailties and fallibilities of people, in order for truth to be workable in the real world.<\/span><\/p>\n

A longer version of this essay can be found at: https:\/\/blogs.timesofisrael.com\/the-value-of-truth-jonah-the-son-of-amittai-les-miserables-and-kafka\/<\/span><\/p>\n

(cover art: Jonah –\u00a0By Pieter Lastman – IAFT8IfCTfplRQ at Google Cultural Institute, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=24208288)<\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Reflection for Yom Kippur - II","main_caption":"Jonah the son of Amittai and Les Miserables","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"The world cannot be governed by justice alone","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":{"ID":40414,"id":40414,"title":"jonah mis","filename":"jonah-mis-e1537219991558.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jonah-the-son-of-amittai-and-les-miserables\/jonah-mis\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jonah-mis","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":40411,"date":"2018-09-17 21:32:17","modified":"2018-09-17 21:33:14","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1270,"height":547,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-300x129.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":129,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-768x331.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":331,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-1024x441.jpg","large-width":1024,"large-height":441,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558.jpg","1536x1536-width":1270,"1536x1536-height":547,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558.jpg","2048x2048-width":1270,"2048x2048-height":547,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-1200x517.jpg","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":517,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jonah-mis-e1537219991558-975x420.jpg","home_baner-width":975,"home_baner-height":420}},"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40415,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40411\/revisions\/40415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}