I was moved to make a very brief comment before cantillating Jonah, yesterday … more or less the following.
There are three general sins mentioned in the scriptural readings for Yom Kippur. The first is seen in the mentioning of the sons of Aharon who brought their own sacrifices … “strange fires” … into the Mishkon and were consumed by flame. Were they guilty of an offense against their Father … gratuitously bypassing his authority or were they killed for breaching the laws of their God? Who knows … vifful vus? …
The second class of sins relate to who you can and cannot bed … Siblings, Fathers, Mothers, Aunts and Uncles … other men if you’re a man … combo’s … like Mothers and their Daughters are prohibited, as well. One can fret over the reasons for incest taboos but they’re read outloud, too.
The third one, though, is more timely: Jonah’s sin. It would be facile, as it is with the sons of Aharon, to attribute Jonah’s sin as his failure to carry out the will of God. It has long been my sense, though, that this last sin mentioned in the readings of Yom Kippur … just before N’ilas Sha’ar … נעילת שערי תשובה … just before the closing of the Gates of Repentence … is the sin of unbridled tribalism. Jonah refused to go and advocate for the enemy’s need to repent to God. God, through the parable of the Kikayon, the Gourd that Jonah neither planted nor toiled over, tells Jonah that the Other and even the Other’s beasts are Creations of the One and Only God that Jonah worshipped and that to think otherwise is perfidious.
Three Sins … I, myself, think the Last is the most diabolical and life in the Era of Trump demonstrates that without much doubt. I will say Kaddish this Shabbos for the Kurds that fall to the chauvinistic madness and lack of concern and decency and empathy of the Putz who knows better than all the Generals and all the Gods.