Evil will not win inside my heart

September 17, 2026 levtaylor

In the old Looney Tunes cartoons, when a character faced a dilemma, two little figures would pop up on each shoulder. So, Buggs Bunny, deciding what to do, would look on his right shoulder and see a rabbit that looked just like him, only with a white dressing gown over his body, a pair of wings protruding from his shoulder blades, and a halo above his head. Then, on the other side, there’d be a little bunny on the left shoulder, this time with a pitchfork in hand, a pointed tail, a long cloak, and horns sticking out of his head.

The shoulder angel and the shoulder devil. The angel told him what the right thing to do was, while the devil told him what the fun thing to do was.

In Judaism, these little inner voices have a name. We call them the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov.

The yetzer hatov is the inclination to do good. It’s the voice inside us that tells us what we ought to do, even when it’s not easy. It’s the part of us that wants to be kind, humble, compassionate, generous, and forgiving.

The yetzer hara is the inclination to do evil. It’s the part of us that feels envious, haughty, angry, selfish, and cruel.

We all have the two within us, and there’s no point denying it. Some might like to pretend that they’re saintly through and through, but if they’re only lying to themselves. Because the force that’s responsible for kidding us that we’re better than we are? It’s that pesky yetzer hara.

There are those who want others to think they’re wholly wicked, too. Maybe because they’ve been told they’re bad so often they actually believe it. Or maybe because that hard exterior of callous selfishness gives them an armour against a world they don’t trust. But there’s plenty of good within them, and they know it’s there.

An abstract painting featuring a distorted figure with a dark head tilted back against a textured light background, evoking a sense of somber contemplation. — *Zoran Music, Head*

Not only do we have both a yetzer hara and a yetzer hatov, we need both.

According to the midrash, at the time of creation God put inside us the good inclination and the evil one, and God said that both were very good.

Without the yetzer hatov, the good inclination, the voice of conscience, society would fall apart. We’d never be able to look after each other, trust each other, build community together. We need a sense of altruism to survive.

And we need the yetzer hara too. We need that wicked inclination inside us.

The midrash says: “The evil inclination is a very good thing, for without it, nobody would ever build a house, get married, give birth, or do business.”

The yetzer hara is a motivator. Without a bit of fear, you can’t protect yourself. Without a bit of jealousy, you can’t achieve anything. Without a bit of lust, you won’t find a partner.

So God made us, deliberately, with all our qualities, including anger, apathy, cowardice, aggression, recklessness, and indecisiveness. We are supposed to have these qualities in order that we can be fully human. God looks at all of it – the whole person – and says: this is very good.

But, although we must have a wicked inclination, we can never give in to the yetzer hara. The yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara may always be in battle within our hearts, but it is our responsibility to make sure that the best within us wins.

Have both, love both, but let your better self lead. Isn’t that why we come here on Yom Kippur at all: to become better human beings?

We must have a yetzer hara, but we cannot let it win.

In the Talmud, Rav Asi says: when you first allow the yetzer hara to take hold, it’s as fine as the thread of a spider web, but if you grant it any quarter, it will grow as thick as a wagon rope.

Rava says: the yetzer hara might at first look like a traveller in the distance, then it feels like a guest at your door, but before you know it, the wicked inclination has taken over your whole house!

Don’t we already know that to be true? A little fear can feel a long way off, but anxiety can take control of the whole body. A little bitterness might feel like only a drop in the ocean, but in no time that can turn into all-consuming rage.

So, what can we do with this yetzer hara that is both so necessary and so poisonous?

Well, the wise King Solomon treated the yetzer hara as an enemy that he needed to befriend. He said, if you want to conquer an enemy, feed it when it’s hungry and, when it’s thirsty, give it something to drink. Then, says Solomon, it will be reconciled with you.

So, according to this reasoning, we need to understand the wicked inclination inside ourselves. I should be curious about my yetzer hara, and find out what it really needs. But only so that I can govern it, not so that it will conquer me.

If I’m feeling angry, that’s teaching me something about my boundaries, and I may need to enforce them. If I’m feeling afraid, that’s teaching me something about threats, and I should assess them. If I’m feeling jealous, that’s teaching me something about what I desire, so I can work out if it’s something worth pursuing.

We are living in uncertain times. Many people feel poorer and more vulnerable. These are exactly the conditions in which the yetzer hara thrives. Sadly, we see it everywhere.

Talking with leaders from other faiths, I know how much they feel this pain in their communities. I have more in common with Progressives of every other faith than I do with reactionaries who happen to be Jewish.

There are those in every religion who wish to take society back a hundred years; undo the rights of women; force gays and lesbians back into the closet; and cast trans people out from public life. There are those who believe that God loves only them; plays favourites; wants to see them take over the world; blesses every bomb they drop and cheers on every war.

Then, there are those of us, hanging on still in every religious movement, who know that God wants us to take the gentle path; find inroads towards peace; and live in harmony with nature. We, who uphold the rights of the vulnerable and seek justice for the oppressed.

Christian friends have shared their abject horror at seeing crucifixes paraded on white nationalist marches and fascists claiming Jesus as their own. Muslim colleagues describe their deep anger at how their faith is warped by chauvinists to control and destroy. Hindus express their anguish at how Hindutva extremists have ramped up ethnic tension.

And we Jews cannot claim any exemption from this problem. We know full well that there are Jews who use our history, our traditions and our religion, to carry out the most heinous abuses. We know that, in this climate of ignorance and fear, anyone can be seduced by the ugly rhetoric of hatred.

A few years ago, Rabbi Robyn Ashworth Steen wrote:

“There are extremist voices among us, or perhaps even within us, that only speak in the language of revenge and of winners and losers. They would have us believe that there are sides, that some blood runs redder and thicker than others. Those voices whisper to us, luring us into their web. They would laugh at the idea that people are ultimately good.”

The extremist voice Rabbi Robyn named now feels increasingly loud. In all religions, we are facing a battle for our very soul.

Two years ago, an Oscar-winning film came out that portrayed this battle playing out in the Catholic Church. Based on a book by Robert Harris, Conclave depicts rival factions and personalities jostling for power after the death of a Pope.

The conservative Catholics want a more robust, masculine, traditional Church to combat the onset of modernity. The liberals want to carry on the deceased Pope’s programme of modernisation and social justice.

The film compellingly portrays the conflict between the two tendencies in religions. At least, we liberals think it does.

The climax of the film occurs when, all of a sudden, an Islamist terrorist sets off a bomb in the Vatican and the Cardinals have to be raced off to a safe room.

There, the conservative Cardinal reveals his true colours. He says it’s time for the Church to declare a holy war against those human animals.

At this point, a new Cardinal who hitherto had not spoken, gets up. He says, defiantly:

A cardinal wearing a red cape and a cross stands with a solemn expression in a dimly lit auditorium, with other attendees seated in the background. — *Cardinal Benitez in Conclave (2024), Edward Berger*

“My brother cardinal, with respect, what do you know about war? I carried out my ministry in the Congo, in Baghdad and Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christian and Muslim. When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we’re fighting? You think it’s those deluded men who’ve carried out these terrible acts today? The thing you’re fighting is here… inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now, if we speak of “sides” instead of speaking for every man and woman.”

This spiritual war, depicted for Catholics, is happening for us too. There is a battle for the Jewish soul, but it is not between the Orthodox and the Progressives, nor liberal and traditional, nor left and right. It is inside the heart of every Jew.

This year, I have felt that spiritual battle in my own heart more intensely than any time I can remember. I do my best to be calm, lighthearted, generous, and joyous, because I know those are the traits God most needs me to bring into the world. But in my heart, I have often been feeling scared, defensive, angry, and confused.

Technological progress outpaced me when I was only a teenager, and now there are algorithms that threaten to destroy the planet. Corporations are plundering the reservoirs of drinkable water to fuel their machines, while churning out toxic gases into the atmosphere.

I feel angry and afraid. Those feelings in themselves are neutral. But the yetzer hara latches onto them and says: not everyone will survive. Make sure you and yours do. Take and consume and stockpile. The yetzer hara says: the world is going to end anyway, so abandon your ideals, eat whatever you like, go wherever you like, forget about the future.

I can’t pretend I don’t have that voice inside me. So I need to understand it and bring it in line with the best within me.

If I am scared about the natural world around me being destroyed, it is because I love life. I love this planet, and the English forests, and the Welsh mountains, and the Cornish cliffs, and the Scottish Islands. I adore the Thames and all its canals and tributaries. My fear is telling me what I want to protect.

If I feel angry at corporate destruction, it is coming from a place of righteous indignation at how so few can destroy something so precious.

The yetzer hara wants me to channel that fear into despair and that anger onto my fellow human beings. But the yetzer hatov is still there, insisting that it is never too late, that there is still hope, that we can still conserve our fragile ecosystem so future generations can swim in our rivers and drink from them.

Over the course of my lifetime, ethnic tensions and racial divisions have become increasingly pronounced and volatile. This year, antisemitism came for me, my colleagues, my congregants, and the people I care about in ways I never imagined it would.

I feel scared and confused. Those feelings, in themselves, are neutral. But the yetzer hara pounces upon them and says: see, the world hates us, it always has. To everyone else, we are the eternal scapegoat, and they’ll destroy us given half the chance. Pull up the fences around the synagogue, build bigger walls around Britain, pull up the drawbridge, keep the foreigners out of Europe, and stop any incursion on our way of life.

It may surprise you to know I have these thoughts, because I certainly never let them impact how I treat others or make decisions in the synagogue. It takes an act of will, real spiritual struggle, to be hopeful and open and loving. It is a matter of determination.

My goal isn’t to avoid feeling any anger, fear, or hatred. It’s to make sure I’m ruled by something greater.

I recognise that defensive voice as the yetzer hara. If I am scared about harm coming to Jews, I need to remember it’s because I love Jews and Judaism. I love our faith, our piety, our ever-evolving culture. I love, above all, our optimism and our desire to perfect the world. If I want to preserve Jewish life, I do it best by keeping us outward-looking, justice-oriented and inclusive.

If I feel worried that the society we have built in Britain where Jews thrive is at threat, it’s a reminder of how much I love multicultural social democracy. I want to live in our shared society, with all the other faiths and communities. It’s what’s best about London, and why many of us choose to live here. I can’t defend multiculturalism from inside an ethnic enclave.

So the yetzer hatov says: get out there, build relationships, talk to people you disagree with, welcome newcomers and show them the advantages of tolerance, create cross-communal relationships, protect democracy.

The yetzer hatov says: resist the voices of hate, whether they are directed at us, or at anyone else. Because it isn’t Muslims or immigrants that undermine our democracy. It’s the logic of racism and exclusion that threatens us. We protect Jews best by living in solidarity and partnership with our neighbours.

Friends, we are gathering at a time of challenge in our country and in our world. The forces of nationalism and supremacism are gaining ground. Sometimes it feels like the Progressive voice will be lost entirely.

The countries of the world seem hellbent on a path to war and determined to build ever more hostile walls. We, who live in these countries, find ourselves increasingly pitted against one another in a climate of suspicion and aggression.

But I am not giving up.

However hopeless this world becomes, I will hold onto hope. However hateful others become, I will continue to love. And no matter what the forces of history may throw at us, I will continue to have faith.

Despite all our best efforts, we may not be able to control whether hatred and fear take over this world, this country, this society. But there is a place where I can refuse to grant hatred any quarter.

It cannot take my soul. The forces of wickedness may succeed some places, but they will not win inside my heart.

There are many battles being fought in many places. Over territory, over resources, over truth.

And there is a spiritual war taking place, inside every soul. Between love and hate. Between anger and compassion. Between welcome and fear.

All those voices live within us, and they must all be heard.

But only one can win. Only the voice of love. That is the only one God needs us to bring into the world.

Evil will not win inside my heart.

I will hold onto hope until the very end.

Gmar chatimah tovah. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life for good.

Colorful abstract painting featuring vibrant swirls, flowers, and textured brush strokes. — *The Inner Light, Elena Kotliarker*

social justice · spirituality · theology

One God, No Masters

August 6, 2026August 6, 2026 levtaylor

We are, all of us, sparks of the divine.

There is something within each of us that is holy.

We are more than moving limbs and functioning organs. We have a quality that cannot be reduced to DNA, or psychology, or narrative.

There is something about a person that makes them who they are: more than their physical experiences, and more than our experiences of them.

It is a feature that we can’t perceive by touch, sight or smell, but we know it is definitely there. It is the unfathomable essence within a human being that glows invisible and breathes without lungs and animates without moving.

This property cannot really be named, but it has been known in English as soul, spirit, or lifeforce; in Hebrew as neshama, ruach, nefesh.

There is something unique about life. And, if anything deserves to be called sacred, it is that.

In Judaism, we call it “the spark of the Divine.” As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die.

There have been moments in my life when I have truly felt it. When I have seen the sacred spark in myself and realised, in a way I still cannot explain, that I am made in God’s image.

There have been times when I have truly seen the sacred spark in others. Not just that another person was special or lovable, but infinite: that, qualitatively, their true essence could never be contained.

I hope you have felt this at times too, or already know it to be true, because I want to talk about how radical this concept is.

If you truly believe, as I do, that we all have sacred souls, how could it ever make sense for one person to be better than another?

In the light of God’s majesty, the divisions of gender, race, nation, and physical characteristics look like pale imitation of reality. Our bodies are real and diverse, but our spirits have a reality that is incomprehensibly more real and more diverse.

The Divine Spark within us comes from the Source of all Truth. And because God has implanted it within us, every life is equally, completely, and unassailably holy.

Every human spirit is remarkably equal. Not because each one is in some way alike, but because each one is infinitely different.

In this week’s haftarah, the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: “O Eternal God, masters other than you have ruled over us, but we only remember your Name. Those others are dead and lifeless; sunken beings who will never rise. You, O God, have wiped them out and obliterated their memory.”

Who are these other masters? And why can God destroy them so decisively?

We might be tempted to imagine this as we do the Pagan pantheon, where one god comes in and destroys the others, as the Titan Cronus usurped his father, Uranus, only in turn to be vanquished by Zeus.

But this is not a myth of many gods. In the Jewish understanding, there is only one God. So who else has ruled over us?

Midrash Tehillim says that this is referring to Nebuchadnezzar, the tyrant of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar ran colonial campaigns throughout the Middle East, suppressing all revolt, and establishing himself as sole dictator over the Levant. In 586, Nebuchadnezzar besieged and ransacked Jerusalem. He bulldozed Solomon’s Temple, conquered the Land of Israel, and carried away its leaders as captives.

According to our tradition, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that the Israelites he had imprisoned bow down to idols. They refused. Nebuchadnezzar heated a furnace to seven times its regular temperature and attempted to burn the Israelites alive. But, by a miracle, God saved them, and the three pious believers walked out from the fire unscathed.

In this understanding of the text, there is only one True Ruler, and that is God. The lords who attempt to subjugate others are men. Sure, they may be able to win some wars, defeat some people, and make some people bow down to their will. But, ultimately, they are mortal.

Their lives are nothing in the span of God’s eternity. Their empires are worthless in the expanse of God’s universe. They are lying to themselves and others that they can be anything but dust and ashes.

Only one being is immortal – that is God – and all are equal in the Eternal One’s beneficent eyes. The rulers of the world can never conquer us in a way that truly matters, because our spirits belong to something greater than their meager understanding.

If we deeply internalised this sanctity of every life, our entire world order would seek to function. Consider what it would mean to believe in the profound equality of every soul. How could anyone take more than they need from society, or abide for anyone else to have less? Surely nobody would ever be able to kill another and there would be no more wars.

How would we have borders and checkpoints, when no human being can own the earth, because everything is God’s possession? Nobody could ever dominate or govern another.

And, in truth, if we truly got rid of all borders, states, laws, militaries, and inequalities, civilisation would fall apart. Society, as we know it, would cease to exist.

Well, good, said Rabbi Avraham Yehuda Heyn. He was one of the leading intellectuals among the Chabad Chassidim in 20th Century Ukraine. He taught that Judaism was a rejection of hierarchy, force, and inequality. We wrestle against the strong arm to make everyone strong and uproot weakness.

He outlined a view of the world that would upturn all order. Absolute equality for everyone in everything. Complete refusal to participate in states or war. The abolition of all classes, and the levelling of all people.

Avraham Yehuda Heyn was part of a cohort of rabbis from Eastern Europe, profoundly educated in Talmud, as well as the modern thought of Tolstoy, Nietzsche, and Kropotkin. There were many like him, in the 19th and 20th Centuries, who believed that the only logical conclusion to Judaism’s insistence on the sanctity of life was freedom and equality for all. In his recent book, No Masters but God, Hayyim Rothman calls this ideology of strictly Orthodox mystics “anarcho-Judaism.”

This idea may sound radical, and even intimidating. You can feel that it belongs to the heady days of a time when Jews were becoming free and anything felt possible. It belongs with the revolutionary optimism of mystics in another era. It is bold.

And yet: it is hard to honestly believe what we do – in God and the sanctity of the spirit – without arriving at some pretty bold conclusions.

Think seriously about what it would mean to say that we are all holy embers. To say that we are sparks of the divine.

As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die.

Breathe life into the flames. Give fuel to the candle. And, perhaps, something within us all, will set this world ablaze.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · spirituality

My body and my soul are always growing

July 31, 2026 levtaylor

A few years ago, I started putting on a lot of weight. I got a spare tyre around my waist and started to sag in unexpected places.

After a lifetime of enjoying a diet of junk food and fizzy drinks, my metabolism had finally caught up with me.

I felt a lot of shame about my body shape. At the time, I was midway through rabbinic College, and blessed to be surrounded by sensitive and thoughtful colleagues.

I took my worries to my classmate, David Yehuda Stern. I said: “I’m getting fat, and I don’t like it.”

He smiled lightly and shrugged. “My body’s changed too. But my body’s always been changing. It changed when I was a teenager. Why would I expect it to stop changing now?”

This is some of the best advice I’ve ever had, and I refer back to it often. This week, I texted Rabbi David Yehuda to ask if he’d be OK with me passing on these words of wisdom.

He said that, of course, he had no recollection of ever having said such a thing, but it sounded like an important message, so I should feel free to share it with you.

Having a healthy, happy relationship with my body has been one of the great challenges of my life. I sometimes joke that I’d be a lot better off if I didn’t have a physical form and could just be a concept.

But I definitely feel more at home in my skin at 37 than I did at 27, and certainly far more than I ever did at 17. I find some beauty, now, in accepting that my body, like my soul, is always growing and changing.

When I think about working on my spirit, I know that the perfected version isn’t the one that’s superficially nicest to look at. It’s the one that has lived, learned, and adapted from experience, maintaining its tenderness, while toughening its boundaries. Why should my body be any different?

The best version of my body will be the one that has fully experienced life: wrinkled from laughter; weathered from sunshine; built by adventure and experimentation; and, if I am lucky enough, blessed to reach a very old age.

Our haftarah for this week points us to a similar message of embracing our changing bodies and souls. The Prophet Isaiah preaches to us:

“Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined. Think about Abraham, your ancestor, and Sarah, who gave birth to your nation. Abraham was only one man when I called him. But when I blessed him, he became a great nation.”

It’s an interesting formulation, to put “the rock from which you were cut” and “the quarry from which you were mined” alongside Abraham and Sarah. Why should these two concepts be parallel to one another?

In the structure of a biblical poem, which these words from Isaiah certainly are, you usually get a mirroring of similar words in succession like this. Why would Abraham be compared to a rock and Sarah to a quarry?

Our rabbis see an interesting message in the use of language. In Tractate Yevamot of the Babylonian Talmud, they see this as a commentary on the lives of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah.

Rabbi Yitzhak says this is a commentary on their infertility. Abraham and Sarah were both initially unable to conceive. In this sense, says the Talmud, they were barren like rocks and quarries.

God wanted them to pray and to grow spiritually enough before they were ready for progeny. God needed to see that their souls had grown so that their bodies could change to accommodate miracle births.

Building on this, Rabbi Ami goes even further. He says that, initially, Abraham and Sarah were tumtumim. This is a word that comes up a fair bit in rabbinic literature but a lot less so in modern medical journals. It means that, biologically, they were sexless. They had the same genitals as Action Man and Barbie: just one smooth surface.

(I checked with an obstetrician friend, who said that this was not something she had seen so far in her career. Truly special people then, were Abraham and Sarah.)

So Abraham and Sarah were not just infertile inside. Externally, to begin with, they simply didn’t have the equipment to make Isaac.

According to our rabbis, then, our ancestors went on a great journey with their bodies, spirits, and names. They began like a rock and a quarry, but gradually, over time, they eroded the hard outer layers until their bodies and souls were porous enough to receive God’s blessings. Only then did Avram become Abraham and Sarai become Sarah.

Now, most of us are not going to undergo such dramatic transitions, but there are lessons here for us all. We, like the founders of monotheism, can embrace our bodies and souls as works in progress.

In our society, that is very counter-cultural. The modern world glamourises youth and shuns any body-type that deviates from an unattainable ideal. We are taught to hate our bodies and neglect our souls.

Judaism has a different message for us entirely. When we first wake, we are supposed to thank God for our soul, which the prayer says, God is constantly creating and implanting within us.

Upon getting up, Jews are meant to thank God for our body; for all its openings and closings; for getting to breathe and have a heartbeat; to sit and stand and walk. We say to God: I am so grateful to be alive.

I can’t lie and pretend I’m good at doing this every day. I definitely can’t claim to have suddenly developed a great relationship with my body.

But the principle, taught by our text and our tefillah, has been a great relief to me. The idea, that I first learnt from my classmate, that my body has never stayed the same, gives me permission to see my body not as my enemy, but as an ever-changing vehicle for exploring the world.

My body and my soul are cherished gifts from God. May I be blessed enough to see them grow and change.

Shabbat shalom.

high holy days · sermon

What did Jonah do inside the whale?

October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 levtaylor

A simple Jew prays to God on Yom Kippur, and says “Ribon shel olamim, ruler of the Universe, I do not have much to repent of. Not compared to you. Unlike you, O God, I have not taken away children from their parents; I have not taken away parents from their children; I have not allowed disease and starvation and war. Compared to you, Holy One, I have been a saint. So, this year, I won’t be repenting. It’s your turn to repent.”

The rabbi asks him, “what were you praying there?”

He tells her all that he’s said.

She says: “You fool! You let God off too easy. You should have told God to bring about the Redemption as well.”

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt much like repenting this year. After all, what have I done, compared to the enormity of wrongs perpetrated?

I haven’t killed anyone or waged any wars. I haven’t robbed anyone or embezzled any funds. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t brazenly lied or misled. I certainly haven’t intentionally hurt anyone. I’m just not in the same league as the great sinners of our time.

And I don’t much feel like growing this year, either. Other years, I have enjoyed the stillness of Yom Kippur for reflection on being better. But I don’t feel like doing it this year.

Sure, I’m grateful for turning off my phone so I don’t have to look at all the bad news, but that’s more about self-care than self-improvement. I’m more interested in switching off from the world than in switching onto myself.

I mean, really, do I have to move? The world is changing so much, and not for the better. Shouldn’t I be allowed, as a one-off, to stop constantly evolving and just be as I am for a bit?

You know who else just wanted to stay still?

Jonah.

I think Jonah knew exactly how I am feeling now.

He was perfectly alright where he was, before God got involved and told him he needed to go and sort out all the problems of the world.

Who was Jonah in the scheme of things? He certainly was not a big player in the wrongs of the world. All of Nineveh’s sins were enormous and happening miles away. Why should he have to change himself?

So, when God called on Jonah to get up, that was already asking too much.

Jonah ran away to Tarshish. He shouted at God: “haven’t you got bigger fish to fry?”

God said: “you want to see a big fish? I’ll give you a big fish!”

One came along and swallowed him whole.

Now, all of the story before is about Jonah not wanting to move and all of the story after is about what happened after God moved him.

What happened in the whale, however, should really interest us.

This year, I feel like I’m in the whale. I am sitting in a puddle from which I feel like I cannot budge. I am stuck here and have no idea how to get out. All around me, the waves are crashing down and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

(A pedant will point out it’s not actually a whale. Technically, it’s a big fish, and the idea of it being a whale came later. But, technically, I’m not actually inside a whale at all, I’m in a synagogue, so I’m going to stick with the idea of the whale because it feels evocative.)

Now, I’m not even on the level of Jonah. My task is not nearly as big and I am not even inside a literal whale. So Jonah should be a good starting-place for my feelings of stubbornness and obstinacy.

What did Jonah do inside that whale? He despaired. He observed. He prayed. He sang. He learnt. And, eventually, he repented and grew.

So, this Yom Kippur, let’s engage with the whale. Let’s focus just on the three days Jonah spent inside the belly. Maybe we can learn from Jonah what to do when everything feels too overwhelming but we know we have to change anyway.

The second chapter of the book of Jonah is not narrative-form, like the rest of the book. Only the first verse, where Jonah gets swallowed by the whale, and the last verse, where the whale spits Jonah back out again, follow a linear storyline.

The rest of the chapter, only eleven verses long, reads more like a poem. It is a song, where each verses contains a parallel structure. It would fit just as well in the Book of Psalms, where there are similar supplications to God.

If the second chapter of Jonah is a journey, it is only a spiritual one. Jonah himself remains completely static, stuck in the belly of the beast.

His soul, on the other hand, begins in the depths of despair, goes through questioning and defeat, recognises the glory of God, and finally comes out committed to getting out there, thanking God, making offerings, and taking part in the deliverance.

This feels like the most important chapter to us, then. We are just sitting and standing in the same space. But we are expecting our souls to move.

I am feeling stuck in a world I cannot change, but I know I have to get somewhere else spiritually. We can’t just sit around here and hope to become better people. We know it needs work. But without a narrative, how do we know what to do?

Well, in the spaces left by the absence of narrative, the rabbis come up with their own stories. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer is a collection of creative writing, compiled over many generations, that retells the biblical stories. These are our midrash, and in this rabbinic fan-fiction, we get a story to go with everything that Jonah says.

From these stories, we might come up with our own meanings of what we should be doing here.

The first thing Jonah does is acknowledge where he is. He accepts that he is in the belly of the fish.

The midrash gives us a grandiose interpretation of what that looked like. It was like entering into the great synagogue: an enormous, echoey chamber. The fish’s eyes were two great windows, so that Jonah could see what was going on underwater. Inside the fish was a giant pearl, which illuminated the belly and shone out towards the sea. With a lamp and windows, Jonah had a clear vision of where he was.

What can we learn from this? We learn that we need to be honest with ourselves about where we are. The world is a bit of a mess right now, and there’s no point putting on a happy face and pretending everything is OK. Equally, we are pretty safe here. We in this room are not under attack, and the risk we would be is very low.

So, start by taking stock of reality. Where am I? I’m in a synagogue, sitting on a comfy chair, with my feet planted on firm ground. I can see the lights of the room and smell that familiar sweet must of this religious space.

But it’s not enough to just say where we are. We need to say how we feel. That’s what Jonah does next.

He says: “I am crying out to God from my narrow-straits, please answer me.” Jonah says, “I am crying out from the belly of Hell, may God hear my voice.”

The midrash says, that’s exactly where the whale took him. It plunged him right down into the depths and showed him the gates to Hell.

So, we need to do the same. We need to ask ourselves how we are really feeling. Be honest about the frustrations and worries and anger we feel.

Next, Jonah finds a way to relate what is going on to what has gone before. In the depths of the ocean, Jonah says, he sees the billows and waves and reeds.

According to the midrash, this is because the whale took him on a tour, not just of the sea, but of Jewish history. The whale showed Jonah the foundations of the earth, deep on the ocean-floor, and reminded him that God had made the world. The fish took him to the Sea of Reeds, and showed him the flora of the spot where the Israelites had crossed out of Egypt.

Faced with adversity, we have to remember that it has happened before. Once, there was nothing, then the world came into being. Once, we were slaves, but then we were freed. Wars and persecutions and empires have all come before and, somehow, our people have survived.

We, as individuals, have also survived challenges before. How recent was the Covid pandemic? We can take pride in our own resilience at getting through such troubles before.

Knowing what had gone before, Jonah was able to feel confident that he could face what was to come. Jonah cries out: “You saved my life from the very pits, O Eternal One my God!”

The midrash says that this came when the whale took Jonah down to meet the great sea-monster of the deep, Leviathan. Jonah told that nautical dragon: “You may think you are going to swallow me up, but I carry the promise of Abraham, and I know that one day, when God chooses, it will be you who gets eaten by the righteous.”

Like Jonah, let’s look at the problems ahead of us, and say: “I have faith. I can face you.”

Next, Jonah reflects back on what he has learned. He notices: “Those who cling onto empty folly forsake their own welfare.” He had been willing to stay where he was, clinging onto old vanities, but he did so at the expense of his own soul.

So, he proclaims, instead: “I, with loud thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You, God.”

We, too, can be grateful for what we have, and take on this next year in service of our Creator.

That is the journey on which Jonah took his soul, and it is where I hope to take mine over this Day of Repentance.

I said I wanted to stay still, but stillness is not inactivity. The Rambam understood that serious thinking was the most active you could be. It connects you directly to that Most Active Intellect: the thinking, living God.

In stillness, you can nurture who you are. Jonah was stuck in an underwater pit, but that was when he got most energised. It was when he really engaged in the audit of his soul.

This year, I have spoken to friends and community members and witnessed them say things they normally would never. People who would ordinarily be very liberal, turn racist. People who are normally very peaceful, justifying violence. People who are normally pretty discerning, regurgitating conspiracy theories. People who are usually nuanced, turn to absolutist thinking.

I am not saying this with any judgement. I say it because I’ve done it too.

And when I meet this now, I try to say to myself: I know you are scared and angry, and while you are feeling scared and angry, you can hold all those feelings. You are inside the whale.

But one day, please God, you will be released from this whale, and you will have to reckon with who you became there.

Take care of your soul. It is a precious gift. Don’t let it become too cynical or warped by the horrors that surround it.

That’s my goal for this Yom Kippur: to hold my soul with gentleness, and ask it to be porous and empathic and kind.

I am here, inside the whale. I cannot change what whale I am inside. I cannot stop the waves from crashing or remake the world so it is less scary.

I can only change what I can change. And what I can change, in this moment, on this Yom Kippur, is myself. I just have to deal with who I am here and now.

So, let’s be like Jonah. Let’s accept the whale we’re in, and, yes, despair, but also observe, pray, sing, learn, repent.

And it may be that, when we finally get blown out from that great fish’s blowhole, we might still be better people than when we got swallowed up.

Amen.