A crucial Yom Kippur reading holds a scathing lesson on Gaza
The Book of Jonah insists we combat our instinct to withhold mercy
Jonah had compassion for the whale — but what about Nineveh? Photo by iStock by Getty Images/rudall30
Contributing Columnist Sruli Fruchter October 1, 2025
Why do we read the Book of Jonah on Yom Kippur?
Commentators — predictably — differ. But I believe one crucial reason is because of the book’s warning against dehumanizing others in the course of seeking our own redemption.
This year, the biblical text, traditionally read as the haftorah during afternoon services, must challenge us to feel true compassion for Palestinians — and wonder why so many of us have, during the past two years of war, been averse to doing so.
The Book of Jonah begins with God commanding Jonah to warn the more than 120,000 people of Nineveh to repent for “their wickedness” before divine wrath overturns the city. Jonah refuses and flees, boarding a ship with, according to one midrashic tradition, the intention of dying by suicide. He would rather die than see the idolatrous city survive.
After a series of trials, including a raging tempest and a sojourn in the belly of a great fish, Jonah finally capitulates to God and delivers God’s warning to Nineveh. But he is devastated when the city’s king subsequently proclaims a national campaign of repentance, which saves all its people. He mourns that outcome as a “great evil,” castigating God’s “grace and mercy” and “forgiveness of evil.”
The text provides no explicit reason for Jonah’s hatred toward the residents of Nineveh. Though commentaries have long sought an explanation, I believe its absence shows its irrelevance: There is never an excuse to deny God’s mercy toward other human beings.
Yom Kippur is a day as much about others as it is about ourselves. We confess our wrongdoings during prayer in the plural, as “we”; pound our chests in synchronicity; and request forgiveness directly from those we hurt. The holiday insists that teshuva, or repentance — a centerpiece of Yom Kippur — is a universal opportunity.
The end of Jonah’s story reinforces that message. After Nineveh repents, a dejected Jonah seeks shelter beneath a gourd tree that God provides. The next day, however, God sends a worm to destroy the tree, deeply grieving Jonah — a scene that sets up God’s final, fierce rebuke.
“You pitied this gourd tree, which you did not toil in, nor grow, which came and went in one night,” God says. “Should I not pity the great city of Nineveh, of more than 120,000 humans — who do not know right from left — and its many animals?”
In God’s rebuke to Jonah is an essential lesson for this Yom Kippur: To seek compassion for ourselves or those we love while denying it to others is a cruel hypocrisy.
This year, as I read the Book of Jonah in shul, I will think about the many times I have heard people who claim to defend Israel speak about civilian Palestinians in Gaza with a harshness reminiscent of Jonah’s toward Nineveh. As the war has raged onward — and starvation, destruction and suffering have devastated the strip’s innocents — many people who, like me, love Israel have indicted all the victims as guilty terrorist supporters.
Some, like Betar USA, an extreme Zionist group, have even gloated about the tragedies. “There are no innocents in Gaza,” the group has posted to its 30,000 followers on X.
Others, like Israel’s far-right ministers, have advocated for uninhibited violence. Just last Sunday, Likud minister Nissim Vaturi said, when asked about the differences between Arab terrorists and civilians, “there is no such thing.” These voices are performing an offense just like Jonah’s, by demonizing those whom they personally deem unworthy of mercy.
On Yom Kippur, a day filled with fasting, confessions and prayers for forgiveness, I hope that reading Jonah’s story will remind us that we are not the only ones asking to be saved — nor are we the only ones worthy of being saved. Palestinians are worthy of safety, security and peace. They, too, deserve not just God’s compassion, but also our own.
When we don’t see that truth in regard to civilians in Gaza, we don’t just dehumanize them; we betray the reciprocal principle of divine compassion.
The Talmud tells us that we earn God’s mercy by bestowing kindness upon others. For anyone withholding mercy, it warns, “the heavens will not bestow mercy upon them.”
After God rebukes Jonah, the story abruptly ends. Jonah’s response is never recorded. The reason, perhaps, is that God is posing the question to us: Do we expect the creator to treat the lives he created with cruelty? If not, then why do we treat them as such?
