Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Jonas 1:10

Secondly, the reaction of the sailors “Mah Zot Asita,” “What have you done?” (Yonah 1:10) is most instructive. As Professor Simon appropriately notes they do not say “what have you done to us?”, rather “what have you done?” An objective evaluation of our sins is that they are senseless and foolish. This is exactly what the sailors are communicating to Yonah. Yonah unfortunately does not receive their message.

We must question that seeing that purgatory, גהנם, was created specifically for sinners who had not repented, why should the people mentioned by Maimonides wind up without being aware that they have been punished for their sins? If the perfectly righteous are entitled to everlasting reward, why are not the absolutely wicked people sentenced to everlasting punishment? If the soul is totally obliterated there is obviously no way for such a sinner to experience retribution for his sins! If we were to say that the institution of gehinom was created only for the people whose lifestyle was what is called בינונים, i.e. that their accumulated merits and debits were in balance at the time they had died, it would follow that the totally wicked are better off than the people who have many merits to their credit! This is something that our intelligence cannot tolerate as being fair.
Furthermore, assuming this was really the judgment administered to the wicked, i.e. obliteration of body and soul without suffering, why did the rabbis of the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 90 not enumerate the sinners subject to the karet penalty as one of the groups which forfeits life in the hereafter?
We must understand the words in that Mishnah: “these are the people who do not have a share in the hereafter,” as referring to an individual claim to a share in the hereafter over and above the share in the hereafter which every Jew has assigned to him (as a birthright) unless he forfeits it. The people mentioned in that Mishnah do not forfeit the various outpourings of tzedakah, loving kindness from G’d’s treasuries which are dispensed to people much as alms are distributed to the poor, not as compensation for services rendered but as a demonstration of G’d’s loving kindness for mankind. If someone does not have any money and depends on being invited for the Sabbath by a neighbour, he is considered as such a person who does not receive his livelihood from G’d in is own right but only through an intermediary. Similarly, if even the souls which descend to gehinom are understood to enjoy respite from their sufferings on Sabbaths and holidays (if only to bring home to these souls that they failed to appreciate the value of these days while they were on earth), these souls are in a situation similar to the poor man we have just described. Even the souls which will never be rehabilitated in gehinom are accorded this kind of respite on the days we just mentioned.
As a result of such statements by our sages we must conclude that the concept of total obliteration of a purely spiritual soul is something that does not exist, in fact maybe inherently impossible due to the nature of such a soul. The correct interpretation of the words ונכרתה הנפש ההיא מעמיה, “this soul will be cut off from its people (Leviticus 7,20),” is that it is cut off permanently from the original place assigned to it, the place it had originated from in the “quarry” where all the souls emanate. Besides, how can we understand the karet penalty as involving the total destruction of a soul in light of the statement in the Talmud Rosh Hashanah 17 that these sinful souls are being judged in purgatory throughout the generations. Clearly the author of that statement refers to the continued existence of such souls, not their perdition. Such a continued existence would not make sense unless they had a future. Could there have been any group of people guilty of more fundamental sins than Korach and his co-conspirators who denied G’d and His prophet Moses, people who have been wiped out in this life and have not enjoyed the hereafter and yet they are suffering in gehinom, i.e. their souls continue to exist? In fact, they will be granted physical life at the time of the resurrection as we know from Sanhedrin 109 based on the verse Samuel I 2,6 מוריד שאול ויעל, “G’d who lowers to she-ol (gehinom) and raises up again.”
The word מעמיה, “from its people,” means “from the other souls of its people.” Such a soul will remain separated from the people it has once belonged to. The very word ונכרתה, “to be cut off,” implies that the severing is one which is final, absolute. Just as a branch is lopped off the trunk which was its source of life, so this soul is severed from the people which used to sustain it by reason of its being part of it. In spite of all this the “solitary” soul will enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah in a place other than the one originally designated for it after it has completed its period of punishment. In other words, the word מעמיה limits the period of punishment, makes it less than absolute and eternal. The above is an opinion quoted by Nachmanides [According to Rabbi Chavell, seeing that the writings of Nachmanides on our verse do not bear this out at all. Ed.]. Similarly, when the Torah speaks of “this soul will be cut off from My presence,” the reference is to the site where G’d’s Shechina usually resides. This would refer to the land of Israel, as that country is the gateway to heaven, the place from which the souls make their ascent. This is the reason that pious people are so anxious to die there and be buried there in order to facilitate the ascent of their souls.
The prophet Jonah (1,10) made this clear when he tried to escape the presence of the Shechinah in the land of Israel; by chartering a boat to take him away from there so that the Lord would not communicate with him and give him detailed instructions as to what he was to say to the people of Nineveh. We have a tradition that as a rule, prophets do not receive communications from G’d while outside the land of Israel. [A major exception was Ezekiel, whose entire prophetic career was in Babylon. Ed.]
When the Torah refers to persons who have been contaminated by ritual impurity through contact with a dead person and who enter holy precincts without the benefit of having undergone purification, the penalty is described as ונכרתה הנפש ההיא מתוך הקהל, “this person (soul) will be cut off from the community (which practices the rules of ritual purity).” Seeing that the person described saw fit to separate himself from the community, his penalty is that G’d will separate his soul from the community in question. This does not mean, however, that another location will not be assigned to this soul after it has served the penalty decreed for it. The soul in question will not wind up like that of an animal just because that person neglected purification rites before entering sacred ground.