Thoughts on Kohelet

Some thoughts which pushed their way to the surface with the help of a shiur by Rav Daniel Kohn yesterday (as usual in such matters, credit is his, responsibility is mine).

"You shall rejoice in your festival...and you shall be altogether happy". Thus we are commanded regarding Sukkot. But aside from the usual questions that arise when it seems that the Torah commands an emotion, there's another more pressing questions that is all but asked by the holiday itself - what is there to be happy about?

Yes, it is true, we are finally gathering in our hard-earned harvest, for which we toiled and over which we fretted a thousand different worries during the last year agricultural year. But we can hardly help but notice that we have arrived at this auspicious moment because yet another year has passed, and, as we look at the fields around, as the plants wither, as the weather turns a colder shoulder to our hopes, as we begin to gather our lives into the structures which we call our homes but which the Psalms refer to as our tombs, we push off with only partial success the thoughts of our own passing.

This is given explicit expression in the the megillah we read on Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot - Kohelet, the book which is characterized by its repeated invocation of the vanity and futility of all of mortal man's puny efforts. So, then, what's there to be so happy about? And HOW can we rejoice with such thoughts lingering in the background?

To approach an answer, let's consider who we would be if we lived forever? Not what would life be like, but what, no, WHO would we be? If we lived forever, we could do and become anything and everything. Not only COULD we do so, we'd be nearly compelled to do so. As Kohelet teaches us, all things grow weary, and so he tried every experience available to the richest, most powerful ruler imaginable. Can you imagine remaining, say, a sociologist, or a housepainter, or sprinter FOR EVER? Now this is only in regards to our occupation, but what about, say our favorite color - for a trillion, billion years one might favor the full range of purples, but, hey, eternity stretches ahead, and you're never going to have your blue period? Or what about relationships - "till death do us part", so go the vows of the majority tradition. But if it never, ever seems like the first time, but it more and more seems like the millioneth time because it actually IS and will be forever?

No, logic, health and sanity would drive us to morph ourselves time and time again, and if memory served to remind us of what and who we've already been, we'd be compelled to wander the aisles of the convenience store of personality traits, careers, relationships, body types and what have you... FOREVER.

At this point it becomes clear that identity, that unique core of personal human consciousness, would be compromised in the severest way by life eternal. But it's not just identity but experience itself. For it is the person who experiences, who knows and processes sensory imputs, evaluates, compares, feels, connects, and incorporates. I enter each moment in the partialness of who I am, and only thus could I possible experience that subjective event of the being into which I am thrust.

Suppose I'm teaching my children to drive. Each child thrills anew at the acceleration, the response to the steering wheel, he/she is IN that experience, has never had it before. But for me, it's soooo oooldd, I don't even know what driving IS as an experience, it's an extended part of my bodily functions. Of course, I can PROJECT myself into an artificial experience, I can imagine, I can watch my child and live vicariously. But I myself barely have an experience.

Hashem must have known about this. And not only because He is omniscient. But because He "experienced" it Himself. (Warning: the following foray into speculative theology tinged with some quasi-kabbalistic terminology is undetaken with trepidation in order to make the point that emerges, and should not be taken as definitive despite the tremendous expertise I bring with me on all matters divine): Hashem chose to constrict HIs Infinite Being, an act that was at once an expression of infinite potentiality and the abandonment of that infinitude - - - in order to make room for the universe in general, and man in particular. Thus, He entered, as it were, the realms of partiality, of (self-imposed, somewhat ersatz) finitude, of experience and identity (names, qualities). Man was created to mirror those choices, chosing FROM finitude TOWARD infinitude (the tree of life). Had we chosen, paradoxically, to limit ourselves by shunning partiality (tree of knowledged, good and evil) and moved toward infinitude, we would have reconnected our "piece of G-d " ( chelek e-loah mima'al) and revealed the unity of all. But we imitated our Maker too well, chose the realm of partiallity, of identity, of experience, of self(centered)hood and, inevitiably, of sin.

That sin is exculpated on Yom Kippur as we come to experience the fleetingness of life, as our chance for an EXPERIENCE of absolution slips away with the waning day, and, in desperation born of a deep faith, we are reduced to a primal, singular cry as the gates close: Hashem hu HaE-lohim!! At that point, we are reduced to a single point of being, beyond experience, beyond identity, and, for an eternal moment, beyond time. The universe is whole, we are reconciled and pure because we derive of pure being itself. For a flickering moment.

But then...being proceeds, we have yet to earn the grace we were given a redemptive take of. We are sent back to take the next step. Hashem has chosen that His Oneness will be revealed through our partiality, and so we re-expand into dimensionality and its potential for meaning precisely by excluding something - for remaining a singularity is unbearable - "No man may see Me and live", so Hashem casts His shade over us in the protective Sukkah He has provided for us within our measure finitude, within the real of experience, of identity, of commitment, of meaning...and of death. "Here is a place with Me...and I shall shade ( vesakoti) My palm over you until My passing...." Death is the knot that ties up the whole package, that keeps the human within us, that allows US to EXPERIENCE whatsoever.

So, as we feel each peak moment slip away, let us recall that it's only because it slips away that we are even blessed to be part -PART - of the joyous dynamic whole which is life which is G-d which is joy. And, as we recognize this, let us sing and praise and never stop until we stop, as David did (Tehillim 146), "I sing for Hashem with my life, I make music for my G-d while I am yet".

I could go on. But I can't - not now. The moment has passed. Praised be Hashem.