Reviewing: “The Koren Tanakh Graphic Novel: Yona,” by Jordan Gorfinkel, David Sacks, Larisa Kerzhner and Avi Blyer. Koren Publishers. 136 pages. 2024. ISBN-13: 978-9657767832.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that our annual exposure to Sefer Yona may be a bit underwhelming.
We hear the sefer read in shul late in the afternoon on Yom Kippur, after we’ve been fasting for over 21 hours and davening, and sitting and standing and sitting and standing, for perhaps 10 of those hours.
For most of us, we’re probably not in the best frame of mind to appreciate the depth, nuance, challenging narrative, evident questions and moral imperatives that the sefer offers. And that’s a real shame because this succinct and moving tale has a lot to tell us.
What can we do to inspire ourselves to see more of the drama and mystery of this pivotal story, even as we struggle to stay focused in the last leg of our Yom Kippur marathon?
Koren Publishers has just provided an exciting new resource to address that question.
The Koren Tanakh Graphic Novel: Yona offers over 100 pages of breathtaking artwork relating to the story in the sefer,
accompanied by the entire text of Sefer Yona in Hebrew and English intermingled within the artwork. It also includes three brief prologues, from sources in our mesorah, that provide illuminating background to the story of Yona.
Yet the The Koren Tanakh Graphic Novel is not merely a translation and artistic rendition. The book has a full page bibliography with a myriad of sources, including 11 sources in the Gemara, nine midrashic sources, eight commentaries by Chazal, and dozens of contemporary publications. You can see these sources reflected in the graphic novel, as it subtly conveys the nuance of the commentaries in the artwork.
As one example—some commentators assert, based on the wording of the sefer, that Yona was initially swallowed by one fish that afforded him ample space to move around and to actually view the depths of the ocean. But later he was spit out by that fish and swallowed by a smaller fish that had no room for him to move; it was this second, cramped experience that prompted Yona to pray to Hashem for release. You can see allusions to the two fish and Yona’s movement from one to the other on pages 46-47.
Another example—a few commentators suggest that the sailors on the ship were reluctant to actually toss Yona overboard and actually experimented by holding him over the side of the boat and dipping him in the ocean. They saw that when he was immersed, the currents calmed down and when they pulled him out, they raged again. Only after a few such test runs did the sailors actually push Yona into the sea (depicted on p. 32).
I found this book to be thoroughly enjoyable and a fresh new look, informed by a wealth of sources, at a story I’ve known for decades. I wholeheartedly recommend the Tanakh Graphic Novel and I’m confident that it’ll give your Yom Kippur afternoon a fresh dose of energy and enthusiasm.
Harry Glazer is the Middlesex County Editor of The Jewish Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and he welcomes reader feedback.
