The book of Jonah has my favorite ending of any book of the Bible: “…and lots of cows / livestock as well?” (chapter 4, verse 11). Such a perfectly odd place to end! When the book is read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, a few verses from Micah chapter seven are tacked on to the end. All about forgiveness, they are on theme, but I can imagine the choice also arose from some discomfort around ending on the cows thing.
These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of Jonah. Not about the fabulously random last line, but the context that precedes it, the ideas that animate it, and what it means to yearn.
The root of my spiritual life, my prayer life, is gratitude. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t do anything to “deserve” being born. I didn’t exist, and then one day, I did. I was also born into a world where 99.99% of everything was already here. I didn’t need to create trees, or develop agriculture, or build infrastructure, or invent a lineage to be part of. It was all already here, through no fault of my own. This, Rabbi Shai Held reminds us, is grace. We did nothing, as individuals or as a collective, to “earn” creation, or to be created. In response to this brilliant fact, the primary posture of Jewish prayer is gratitude. For waking up in the morning, for the space I inhabit, for my body and my breath, with every little step of the morning, I am invited by the prayer book, through the words of my spiritual ancestors, to be grateful for it all. I earned none of it, and yet, am gifted all of it.
Seeing the earth as a gift, rather than a resource, changes our relationship with it from one of extraction to one of awe and stewardship. In a culture and politics of extreme entitlement, this feels real and extremely urgent.
This path of gratitude laid out by the prayer book has had a profoundly positive impact on my life. I remember when it happened: I was on a dance trip to Cuba in the summer of 2019. After two days of community, expression, and joy, I was sitting in an azure pool looking out onto the palm trees and colorful houses of Havana, when a still, small voice came to me and said, “You know all those lessons you teach your students, about gratitude, and awe, and love? What if it was for you, too? Not just something you can teach, but something you can live?”
That moment really changed me. I started taking gratitude seriously, not as an abstract idea, but as a practice. My life became more vibrant and full; I became happier and more grounded, all because the words of the prayer book had become practices to help me on my journey. Prayer was finally making sense.
Except the parts that weren’t.
Because I knew that prayer isn’t only about gratitude. A lot of it is about asking for help, desiring a better world, and yearning. Yearning for closeness with the Divine, a yearning that verges on sensual, or romantic. The author of Yedid Nefesh, the prayer-poem that begins Kabbalat Shabbat, writes “My soul is sick for your love.” There is a deep desire there, for intimacy with the Holy One. While I could appreciate the beautiful poetry and the desire to be close to holiness, I felt little personal connection to these prayers. A rabbi-friend, in a conversation years ago, said that for her the root of prayer was yearning, and was stunned when I told her that I “didn’t do yearning.” She was puzzled: how could I have a spiritual prayer-life without yearning?
I was also puzzled. My spiritual life was animated by gratitude. How could yearning exist alongside it?
This challenge came into focus for me a few months ago, when a dear friend said that I “deserve” to find a loving partner in my life. Single for a decade, she had listened to all my dating misadventures and wished for a caring person to find me. But I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hear it. It was that word, “deserve.” Sure, a loving partner would be nice, but I have a wonderful family and so many sweet friends. I have the trees and the stars and the ocean and fresh peaches and sunsets, none of which I did anything to earn. To feel like I also “deserve” a loving partner, to yearn for such a partner, felt like a rejection of all the gifts I have already received. To yearn, one must feel like what they have isn’t enough. How dare I ask for something more when I already have so much? Wouldn’t that make me ungrateful and “entitled,” the opposite of what I strive to be? Wouldn’t I be just like Jonah at the end of his book?
I explained it in exasperated tones to my friend: g?d creates a plant to provide shade for Jonah, but then g?d causes a worm to eat the plant the next day. Jonah wails and is furious, and g?d asks him how it can be that he “Cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight?” (Jonah 4:10) g?d is using this as a metaphor for caring about the people (and cows!) of the city of Nineveh, but for me, it was about that entitlement. If I ask for love, I told my friend, if I state aloud that I want something more than I have, how am I any better than Jonah? If Jonah didn’t “deserve” that plant, then how could I “deserve” love?
After saying that all out loud, we were both quiet for a moment. I could see the hurt on her face, and realized, wow – that was very harsh. “You are nothing like Jonah and his plant,” she said. “Can you have some compassion on yourself for wanting the most basic of human needs – connection and care?” I sat with her words. I wasn’t quite there yet, but it started pulling at some threads for me.
I remembered that years ago, I heard an online lecture at a mindfulness gathering about desire. If the root of a desire is a yearning for connection, the teacher said, then it can be considered a spiritual and sacred desire. I remembered another teaching of Rabbi Shai Held: that to believe the world could be better than it is right now is a radical act of faith. And I remembered something I teach my own students, that Jewish practice invites us to hold two truths at once: that the world is a beautiful, miraculous place, and that the world is fundamentally broken and in need of repair. How challenging, to hold both ideas as true, and yet how important, and how real. Could I do this for my own life? Hold in one hand how grateful I am for all the gifts in my life, and in the other, hold how much more I still long for?
These days, I am working on yearning, giving voice to the part of me that says “This is not enough,” that knows that deeper, sweeter connection is possible, for my own life and for the world at large. I’m trying to see myself less like Jonah with his plant and more like the author of Yedid Nefesh. It feels apropos, as we move from the harsh judgment of Tisha B’Av through the month of Elul, our time to prepare for the days of Awe with compassion, and yes, yearning – knowing that life could be different, and then working to make it so. And I’m inspired by the words that actually end the reading of Jonah on Yom Kippur, from Micah chapter seven: “You do not maintain anger forever, for you delight in love.” If the Holy One delights in love, then why can’t I? I’ll try, I’ll try, I’ll try.