Sometimes we think our lives are standing on solid ground, only to discover that the ground beneath us can change. On Yom Kippur, the story of Jonah reminds us that life is like a stormy sea, and that Torah and mitzvot give us the vessel we need not only to survive, but to help others reach their destination.
The Ground that Disappeared
Imagine buying a house for $500,000. You are not buying it to make a quick deal. You are retiring from work, looking for a beautiful place near the ocean, and telling yourself, “One day we will move here and live here permanently.”
That is exactly what happened to Michael McDaniel. In 2011, after retiring from the Navy, he bought a house in North Carolina for about $500,000. The house was close to the Atlantic Ocean. When he bought it, there were about 250 feet of sand dunes between the house and the ocean.
For years, everything looked fine. In fact, the house even became an excellent investment. Just two years ago, the property was worth nearly $1 million.
Then something changed. The house did not change. The ocean changed.
The beach began to disappear. Year after year, the waves carried away more sand. The dunes gradually disappeared. The distance between the house and the ocean grew smaller and smaller. And today? The house is no longer fit to live in.
A house bought for $500,000, and worth nearly $1 million only two years ago, now stands in danger of collapsing into the ocean.
The homeowner does not even have a simple solution. If he wants to move the house to a safer location, it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. If he wants to demolish the house himself, that too could cost tens of thousands of dollars. But if he simply waits for the house to fall into the ocean, his insurance may pay him.
An absurd situation has been created: financially, it makes more sense to wait for the house to collapse than to save it.
And that is exactly what is happening today along the coast of North Carolina. Houses that were 4 blocks away from the ocean in 1980, on beautiful green yards, are now surrounded by sand and water and one after the other, they collapse into the ocean.
Richard Foreman is another homeowner in a similar situation. His house was once a desirable vacation home. Today, there is not even a way to get inside. The stairs that once led to the house were washed away by the sea long ago. The house is still standing on pillars about 20 feet high, but the water has already reached beneath it.
At low tide, the ocean reaches the place where the driveway to the house once stood. At high tide, water flows underneath the entire house. Foreman knows that the house is going to collapse. Four neighboring houses have already fallen into the ocean over the past two years.
And the problem is not limited to these two houses.
More than one hundred houses on the islands of North Carolina are at risk from erosion and rising sea levels over the next decade. And this is not only a North Carolina story. In different places across the United States, people are trying to deal with the same problem. Some places are building seawalls. Some are bringing new sand onto the beaches.
In Dare County, North Carolina, for example, a project costing about $15 million is planned, in which more than two million cubic yards of sand will be placed in front of the most threatened homes.
But even here there is a problem. The sand brought in during the previous project lasted less than three years. A climate scientist explains it in a very simple sentence: “You buy sand to buy time.”
But you cannot buy time without asking: What will we do when the time runs out? For years, people thought their house was something permanent. They bought a house. They paid a mortgage. They renovated, painted, and invested their savings. And they thought: This is my home. But suddenly they discover that there are things they cannot control.
Jonah and the Stormy Sea
And when we think about this house, about the ocean that kept coming closer and the waves that kept taking more and more of the beach, we naturally arrive at the story of Jonah the prophet.
On Yom Kippur, during Mincha, we read a special Haftarah about Jonah: a ship, the sea, waves, and a storm.
And the Rebbe takes this story and reveals that it is not merely a story that happened thousands of years ago. It is a story about every one of us.
Jonah’s sea is also the sea of our lives, and Jonah’s ship teaches us how our soul can sail through the “many waters” of this world.
The story of the Book of Jonah takes place during the period of the First Temple, in the eighth century BCE. Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet who lived during the period of the Kingdom of Israel. The city of Nineveh was the capital of the enormous and powerful Assyrian Empire, and G-d sent Jonah to Nineveh with a special message.
Jonah did not want to fulfill the mission. He fled to Jaffa, boarded a ship traveling to Tarshish, and then a great storm arose in the middle of the sea, until Jonah said to the sailors, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea, because this great storm that is upon you, is because of me.
The question is: What is the message for us in 2026?
The Rebbe explains in a talk, “What should be learned from the event of Jonah regarding the service of man is explained in the Zohar that ‘Jonah who went down into the ship is the soul of man that descended into this world,’ and the idea is this: The entire descent of the soul into this lower world is like descending into a stormy sea, since the many distractions of the affairs of this world are like ‘many waters,’ and not merely many waters, but waves of the sea, which roar and rage, and so on. And in order to make the journey through this stormy sea, one needs ‘ships,’ which refers to all matters of Torah and its mitzvot, which are like ships through which one crosses the stormy sea, until reaching the desired destination.”
The Baal Shem Tov interprets the verse, “Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their work in many waters,” and explains that “those who go down to the sea” are the souls that descend to become clothed in a body.
There are souls that are fortunate to have a ship, a protective environment of Torah and mitzvot, and there are those who fall into an environment without the protection of Torah and mitzvot.
The Rebbe continues and says that “those who go down to the sea” refers to the soul that is above, “hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory,” descending “from a high roof into a deep pit” until it becomes clothed in a physical body in this material world, which is like a “sea” containing “many waters.” One must be careful not to drown in the “many waters,” and ensure that “many waters cannot extinguish the love,” the “love with which G-d loves Israel,” and the love that Israel has for G-d.
There are souls whose descent into the body, their upbringing and education, is like descending into a “ship,” which protects the person inside it from being harmed by the waters of the sea. On the contrary, through the “ship,” the soul who goes down to the sea is able to travel and reach the desired destination.
This means that this descent is for the sake of ascent, to bring about the idea of “I will dwell among them,” to make a dwelling place for G-d in the lower worlds.
But there are souls whose descent into the body is in the manner of “sorrow and anguish,” meaning that not only does the body fail to assist in fulfilling the mission in the world, but it also causes troubles and mourning, the opposite of fulfilling the mission.
And regarding this, the continuation of the verse says, “who do their work in many waters.” There are those whose mission is to engage with those who are found in the “many waters,” to help and assist them, so that not only will they not drown in the waters of the sea, but they will become proper “those who go down to the sea.”
And here the Rebbe explains that there are three types of people in the service of G-d: someone who is drowning and cannot even save himself, someone who takes care only of himself and saves only himself, and someone who becomes one of “those who do their work in many waters,” jumping into the stormy sea to help and assist another person who is drowning.
The Rebbe says:
“There are three types among the Jewish people: There are those who can take care of themselves. There are those who cannot even take care of themselves, and certainly cannot assist another person. And there are those who can not only take care of themselves and fulfill their mission concerning themselves, but whose mission is also to be ‘those who do their work in many waters,’ to help those who may drown in the ‘many waters.’”
At first glance, each person could decide for himself which category he belongs to: whether he is among those whose descent into the sea is one of trouble, and he cannot even help himself, and certainly cannot assist his friend; or whether he is among those whose descent into the sea is in a “ship” in the literal sense, so that he travels safely and reaches his destination completely, but does not think about others.
The Rebbe teaches us that these are not three different types of people. They are three states that can exist within every one of us.
There are moments when we ourselves are drowning in the “many waters” and need someone to reach out a hand to us.
There are moments when we are inside the “ship,” protected and taking care of ourselves, but we forget to look at the people around us.
And there are moments when we become “those who do their work in many waters,” when we step outside ourselves and run to save and help someone else.
The Rebbe’s message is that we must always be among those who reach out a hand to help and bring another Jew closer.
Based on insights for life published for Yom Kippur 5787, Likutei Sichot, Volume 42, p. 159.
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