Ecclesiastes

One week ago, on the holy day of Yom Kippur, Jews prayed that they be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.  How odd that one week later, on the harvest festival of Sukkot, the biblical book of Ecclesiastes is read in which a disheartened author questions life’s significance.  “I thought the dead more fortunate than the living.  Better off than either is he who has not yet been.”  Last week we prayed for life.  This week we ask, “Why?”

Koheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, raises fundamental existential questions. What is the point of our lives?  What is purpose of human events?  Like many of the modern existentialists, Koheleth finds no obvious answer.  To him the world appears stale and unalterable.  “There is nothing new under the sun.”  He comes to doubt the divine attributes of justice and mercy in a world where those who are evil prosper and those who are righteous suffer.  He finds nothing of substance in the pursuit of knowledge, power, wealth or pleasure.  All is for naught.  The wise and the foolish, man and animal, share the common fate of death.  Better never to have been born.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  This familiar refrain, from the poetic English of the King James Bible, echoes throughout Ecclesiastes.  However, a more accurate translation of the Hebrew word hevel is not vanity, but breath or vapor.  “A breath of breaths.  All is but a breath.”  Ecclesiastes is not about vanity.  It’s about the elusive and illusory nature of our lives.  All is transient, like a breath exhaled, visible momentarily and then gone.

Despite doubt and disillusionment, Koheleth teaches a pragmatic philosophy of happiness.  Know that the cycle of life and death is inescapable, “a time to be born and a time to die.”  Therefore, understand and accept that which is inevitable.  Don’t pursue what is futile, because that leads to despair.  Instead, savor if you can the good fortune that comes during the brief span of life.  Live life in moderation.  “Do not be over-scrupulous.  Do not be wicked either.”  There is solace in the words of Koheleth, reassuring us that we don’t have to be perfect.  “There is no man so righteous that he always does what is best and never makes a mistake.”  Enjoy youth, appreciate good health, and rejoice in life’s bounty.  Seek companionship and “enjoy life with the woman you love all the fleeting days of your life.”

Why is Ecclesiastes read during the joyous harvest holiday of Sukkoth?  Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Days of Awe, have just passed.  Perhaps Ecclesiastes marks the beginning of a new spiritual cycle.  Yom Kippur and Sukkoth. . . “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”  A time to repent and a time to question.  A time for faith and a time for doubt.