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By Rabbi Carl M. Perkins

Kohelet at Sukkot?  Why?
Shabbat Hol Ha-Moed Sukkot
September 29 , 2007

To me, when I first reflected on Chapters 5-8 [the portion that we read this year—our practice is to read a third of the book each year], the first contrast to strike me was in the very first few lines of Chapter 5:

When you make a vow to God, don’t delay to fulfill it!
For He has no pleasure in fools; what you vow, fulfill!
It’s better not to vow at all than to vow and not fulfill.(5:3-4)

Compare that to the familiar words of the Kol Nidre, the most famous prayer in our liturgy:

May our vows not be vows; our oaths not be oaths!

If you faithfully follow Kohelet’s advice, you can come late to shul on the eve of Yom Kippur!

But as we read further, we come to see that there is an even more profound, jolting contrast between the tone set by the High Holidays and the message of Kohelet:

Sometimes God grants a man riches, property and wealth, so that
he doesn’t want for anything his appetite may crave;
But, God doesn’t permit him to enjoy it!
Instead, a stranger will enjoy it!
This is futility/frustrating (hevel) and a grievous ill. (6:2)

Or consider this:

In my own brief span of life, I have seen both of these things:
Sometimes a good person perishes in spite of his goodness
and sometimes a wicked one endures in spite of his wickedness. (7:15)

Now, this is not necessarily a denial of retributive justice, but it is certainly a far cry from:

B’rosh hashanah yikateivun, u’v’yom tsom kippur yeihateimun
(On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.)

Clearly, Kohelet has a different approach to life than the emphasis of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rather than Tzedakah, Tefillah, and Teshuvah, it’s closer to “eat, drink and be merry.” (See 5: 17: “Only this, I have found, is a real good: that one should eat and drink and get pleasure with all the gains he makes under the sun, during the numbered days of life that God has given him; for that is his portion.”)

So, if the message of the Book of Kohelet is so different from that of the Days of Awe, why do we read it so soon after Yom Kippur? How could it be that this work is appropriate for this season?

The usual reason offered for its appropriateness is: Just as Shir HaShirim (said to have been written by King Solomon in his youth) is suitable to springtime, the “young” part of the year, so too is Kohelet, said to have been written by King Solomon during his maturity and which appears to express the wisdom of old age, is appropriate to the harvest season, i.e, the end of the year.

I have a different answer. We’ve just experienced the spiritual high of Yom Kippur: a time of fasting, purification, resolution to do good and to eschew evil.

As important as it is to do all this, there is a danger in doing so, and that is that one may become too self-confident. One may become smug. One may come to believe that because one has repented, because one may indeed become a better person, things in this material, empirical world that we live in are going to turn out better. One may begin to start banking on “success” and “prosperity” and “good health” and “well being.”

And that would be mistaken. For the world doesn’t work that way. Kohelet knew that. And the rabbis knew that.

It was Antigonos Ish Soho who taught that we shouldn’t “be like servants who serve the Master in order to receive a reward; rather, [we] should be like servants who serve the Master without thinking about whether they will receive a reward.” Fundamentally, the notion of behaving well in order to receive a reward (doing good in order to do well) is an irreligious concept. The idea of expecting a reward to follow the choice to do good reflects a rather limited level of morality (according to Piaget and others). It’s forcing God’s hand in order to serve one’s own needs. The world doesn’t work that way.

Kohelet is a useful corrective. It reminds us that s’char mitzvah mitzvah—the reward for a Mitzvah must be the Mitzvah itself. The goal of living a good life must be living a good life. It cannot, it should not, be any kind of material reward in this world.

As Kohelet says in Chapter 8:

A wise man . . .will bear in mind that there is a time of doom. (5)
…There is a time for every experience, including the doom,
for a person’s calamity overwhelms him.
Indeed, he does not know what is to happen;
even when it is on the point of happening, who can tell him?
No one has authority over the lifebreath
There is no authority over the day of death, (8)

Here is the frustration that occurs in the world:

Sometimes, upright people are requited according to the conduct of scoundrels,
and sometimes scoundrels are requited according to the conduct of the upright.
I say all that is frustration. (14)

It is our fate to live in a frustrating universe. We cannot choose to be righteous only if good things happen to us. That’s not mature religiosity; it’s bargaining.

On the other hand, to decide, given the unpredictability of life, to do whatever we want—that too would hardly be a noble choice.

Kohelet reminds us in a more kindly way than Job that “no human being could ever guess what will happen.” (9:17)

There is a fundamental unpredictability in the world that we must come to grips with, if we are to face the world as mature men and women.

And what path, then, should be pursued?

Sof davar, ha-kol nishmah.
Et ha-elohim yirah, v’et mitzvotav sh’mor,
Ki zeh kol ha-adam.

The sum of the matter, when all is said and done:
Revere God and observe His commandments!
This principle applies to everyone. (12:13)

To conclude, I think that Kohelet is an excellent choice of a book to read after Yom Kippur. Indeed, it’s appropriate that we read this in the middle of Sukkot, the holiday in which, in other ways, we are reminded of the fragility of life—and yet also the ability of human beings to achieve joy and fulfillment in the midst of such vulnerability.

We leave our sturdy homes and “we eat and we drink and we make merry” in the Sukkah, symbolic of the real world we live in: a world in which a fierce wind can blow us away, and yet a world in which, nonetheless, we can sense God’s presence, love, and caring.

Mo-adim L’simcha, and Shabbat Shalom!