Parshat Hashavua Study Center

Bar-Ilan University

Parshat Hashavua Study Center Sukkot 5776/September 28-October 4, 2015

This series of faculty lectures on the weekly Parsha is made possible by the Department of Basic Jewish Studies, the Paul and Helene Shulman Basic Jewish Studies Center, the Office of the Campus Rabbi, Bar- Ilan University's International Center for Jewish Identity and the Computer Center Staff at Bar-Ilan University.

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For inquiries, contact Avi Woolf at: [email protected].

What we should learn from Ecclesiastes

By Daniel Shmueli*

The book of Ecclesiastes, read on the intermediate Sabbath of the festival of Sukkot, is ascribed to King Solomon on the basis of its content and explicit assertion: “I, Kohelet, was king in Jerusalem over Israel” (Eccles. 1:12). The book is characterized by bleak descriptions of life, soul-reckoning, and the sayings of someone who ostensibly finds no real point in life and sums life up with the words encapsulating the principle message of the book: “Utter futility!—said Kohelet—Utter futility! All is futile!” (Eccles. 1:2).

If such things had been said by the average man on the street we would not ascribe them much importance and would say they were written by someone on the brink of despair, someone who had not found what to do in life and had not realized himself and therefore said such things out of bitterness. But when these things are uttered by King Solomon— said to have been the wisest of men, extraordinarily wealthy and known for his righteousness, and even privileged to have built the Temple—then it is surprising. Since

* Daniel Shmueli, Synagogue Commemorating the Victims of the Helicopter Disaster. these things were said by him, clearly they contain a lesson learned by him who had experienced almost everything. To fully appreciate the significance of this, we must follow the narrative of the book and discover the central message in the thought of Kohelet.

Who was Solomon?

King Solomon himself attests that he was greater than all the kings who preceded him, and the emphasis placed on this in Ecclesiastes make the central message even more poignant and forceful (Eccles. 2:4-10):

I multiplied my possessions. I built myself houses and I planted vineyards. I laid out gardens and groves, in which I planted every kind of fruit tree. I constructed pools of water…I bought male and female slaves, and I acquired stewards. I also acquired more cattle, both herds and flocks, than all who were before me in Jerusalem. I further amassed silver and gold… and I got myself male and female singers, as well as the luxuries of commoners—coffers and coffers of them…and denied myself no enjoyment.

So we see that Solomon was extremely wealthy and wanted for nothing. He attests that he fully enjoyed every opportunity and all that any man could long for. What is more, the lessons are spoken by a person who in his life knew joy and knew how to derive pleasure from what he had. With all this, the poignant question arises: to what end is it all, and what will be in the future? Indeed, after reaching the pinnacle, beyond which one can go no higher, comes the fall (Eccles. 2:17-18):

And so I loathed life. For I was distressed by all that goes on under the sun, because everything is futile and pursuit of wind. So, too, I loathed all the wealth that I was gaining under the sun. For I shall leave it to the man who will succeed me.

These words sharpen the principal paradox in what he says. It turns out that fully realizing one’s objective in life makes life void of all meaning and content. A person who fulfills himself, who has achieved all his goals or who has no goal, feels empty and is seized by despair. Hence the disagreement about how one should approach the book of Ecclesiastes, to the extent that some Sages wished to sequester it, as we read in Tractate Shabbat (30b):

“ The Sages wished to hide the book of Ecclesiastes, because its words are self- contradictory; yet why did they not hide it? Because its beginning is religious teaching and its end is religious teaching.”

This statement leads us to understand that Ecclesiastes contains a message which is constructed from the book as a whole, and that is how this book should be examined. The goal and its attainment

In considering the book as a whole, one must distinguish between the process of fulfilling one’s expectations and their fulfillment. When a person has objectives in life that have not yet been attained and the person acts in the light of these objectives, striving to attain them, then the person is filled with satisfaction and joy. But when the expectations are fulfilled, then the person has a sense of emptiness and utter lack, and all that the person has achieved does not satisfy him or her.

The sense of emptiness leads to the person despairing and despising the life loved brief moments before, so much so that all the person’s wealth and achievements seem meaningless in his eyes. Moreover, suddenly the person discovers that all the toiling invested in achieving these goals was spent in vain, and all the satisfaction experienced thus far from the effort invested becomes an impediment: “and I despised life.”

We learn from this that someone who lacks a goal and meaning in life essentially lacks everything, despite all that he or she might have. The unattained goal, the striving towards a specific purpose is what gives flavor to what we do in life; but once the goal is achieved, especially a material goal, no zest remains to what has been achieved, unless one has a more sublime goal.

Therefore, in order that we not be seized by despair, we must always set ourselves goals and would do well to place at the pinnacle of our aspirations a goal that, even if never achieved, will always motivate us to strive for it. What is the sublime goal that has the power to give meaning to life and make a person content, happy and not despairing?

Kohelet answers from the heights of his experience with the saying: “To the man, namely, who pleases Him He has given the wisdom of shrewdness to enjoy himself; and to him who displeases, He has given the urge to gather and amass” (Eccles. 2:26). In other words, the sublime objective is found in wisdom and knowledge which lead to true spiritual happiness; whereas fulfilling material aspirations to gather and amass all that one can is the root of evil, the essence of sin and despair.

But if we ask ourselves what is preferable—a rich man who is unhappy or a man who is not wealthy but is happy—it seems we will prefer the happy person to the rich one, since riches are intended to bring happiness to man, and if they do not fulfill this purpose then they lose their value. Whereas having a sense of happiness, even if not riches, suffices to fill a person with satisfaction.

This is what distinguishes the spiritual from the material. Achieving material objectives—wealth, status, honor, and the like—comes to an end, just as any material thing does. Of all these objectives it is said: “What real value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?” (Eccles. 1:3). But with spiritual objectives, having no end, one can never reach the ultimate fulfillment and realization of the objective; for example, happiness, which can fill a person boundlessly. Spiritual objectives have the capacity to safeguard a person from despairing and despising life. What was the infinite spiritual objective attained at the end of Solomon’s personal odyssey?

“ The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere G-d and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind” (Eccles. 12:13). In other words, the spiritual goal of fearing the Lord is of its very nature unbounded, just like Divinity itself, and it is that which gives meaning to a person’s life so that all the riches and material well- being, including the physical body, are naught but vanity and pursuit of wind.

Kohelet and the festival of Sukkot—why sadness coupled with joy?

Considering how bleak the contents of this book, people have wondered why it was chosen to be read precisely on the festival of Sukkot, characterized by the commandment to rejoice.

Quite simply it can be said: that is life. Life is not all joy; it is also sorrow. Someone who has not known sadness perhaps will not know how to be happy. But even a person who experiences sorrow should understand that this is part of life. The person should probe his or her sorrow while doing soul-reckoning as Kohelet did, and thus come to true happiness. Sadness is thus a means and part of the process of building human happiness and joy. Sorrow is designed to stimulate probing and seeking that ultimately leads to discovering the truth, and in this discovery is infinite and true joy.

Just such a process King Solomon went through in his life and sought to bequeath his conclusions to subsequent generations. The biography of King Solomon, described in I Kings, is of a man who began high and mighty, with great riches, and proceeded to fall abjectly into ugly sinfulness. Thus the book of Ecclesiastes is a long confession of someone who was also acquainted with sin and who in the end did thorough soul- searching and fully repented.

Pesikta de-Rav Kahana (26) presents a midrashic explanation of Solomon’s repentance in the book of Ecclesiastes:

At that moment an angel in the form of Solomon descended and sat on his throne, while Solomon put in at all the synagogues and houses of study in Jerusalem and said to them: I, Kohelet, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And they would say to him: King Solomon is sitting on his throne and you say: I am King Solomon? And what would they do to him? They would hit him with cane and place a bowl of barley in front of him. At that moment he would say, “Utter futility!—said Kohelet—utter futility! All is futile.”

This midrash explains that the book of Ecclesiastes was written on the basis of Solomon’s personal experience as someone who had been one of the wealthiest monarchs in the world but had fallen from greatness due to his sins. It teaches that riches are not eternal and that one must know how to place bounds on one’s material aspirations and see them only as a means and never as the end.

Kohelet, who begins by saying that all is futile (Eccles. 1:2), ultimately reaches the conclusion that indeed “all is futile” (Eccles. 12:8) but that human life has meaning, as explained above: “The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere G-d and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind.”

In order to rejoice truly, as we are commanded on the festival of Sukkot, a person must base his or her happiness on deep personal experience, on study, understanding and awareness of reality, and not on frivolity. Therefore precisely on the festival of Sukkot, when people are commanded to rejoice, the book of Ecclesiastes serves to balance rejoicing with deep words and philosophy, imbuing our happiness with true meaning, as said in Shabbat 30b:

This teaches you that the Divine Presence rests [upon man] neither through gloom, nor through sloth, nor through frivolity, nor through levity, nor through talk, nor through idle chatter, save through a matter of joy in connection with a precept.

Conclusion

Contrary to what might seem upon the surface, the book of Ecclesiastes is not despairing or pessimistic, certainly not as an end in itself, but quite the opposite: the book takes us through a though process that gives reason and meaning to life by presenting the various alternatives standing before us: on one hand, material existence in which a person places himself, his needs, and realization of all his material aspirations as the supreme goal, when it appears to him that in this manner he will find happiness and spiritual elevation. But this spiritual elevation is specious, a bubble destined to burst and leave a feeling of emptiness and despair.

To reach this understanding, one must traverse the path to understanding that life without an objective is futile, and paradoxically, in order to find the purpose of one’s life it is necessary to experience how small and insignificant one is in comparison to the objective. In other words, a person must understand that his or her individual existence and satisfaction of needs are not the goal, rather a means towards the end, and then one’s personal existence takes on meaning. Out of the futility of life grows the meaning of life, and to have true, not illusory, happiness in one’s heart, in accordance with the precept of the festival, a person must complete this journey and find the purpose of his or her life; otherwise, they will not know true happiness.

Translated by Rachel Rowen