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Join a live recording of Madlik disruptive Torah on Clubhouse with Geoffrey Stern, Rabbi Adam Mintz and Rabbi Avraham Bronstein  as we use the book of Kohelet to explore the fundamental difference between the Torah given at Sinai and the Wisdom literature we share with our ancient Near Eastern neighbors. We explore the difference between linear and cyclical time and we wonder why we need a healthy dose of common sense, living in the moment and even cynicism after the Jewish New Year. Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/348859  Transcript: Geoffrey Stern  00:00 So welcome to Madlik disruptive Torah every week at four o'clock on clubhouse eastern time, we have a half an hour discussion of the Parsha. And by disruptive we mean we look at things maybe from a slightly different angle and hopefully help our participants look at it slightly differently as well. And this week is no exception. So Rabbi Adam challenged me last week to talk about Kohelet Ecclesiastes and that is what we're going to do. And we're going to start with the first verse because in that first verse is so much of what is to follow, and it raises so many questions about authorship and about the  sense of the message. So this is how it begins The words of Kohelet, Son of David king in Jerusalem. utter futility, said Kohelet, utter futility, all is futile." And of course, the Hebrew is "haval havalim" And that translation of utter futility, or "vanity all is vanity" is from the King James Bible, and probably we've all absorbed it. So the question that really comes up is Who was this guy? Kohelet? Was it a real person? Or is it a nom de plume for the writer? And then of course, the other question is, what does it mean that all of life is vanity? So why don't I start right there and open up to the discussion of what are you guys thoughts on who is Kohelet what is Kohelet? Avraham? Why don't you store   Avraham Bronstein  01:45 The words after Kohelt are "Ben David Melech Yerushalyim". So whoever Kohelet is, he's the son of David king in Jerusalem. That kind of narrows it down. That's why the tradition is that the author King Solomon.   Geoffrey Stern  02:00 So I think you're absolutely right. Of course, we're all called B'nai Yisrael And Yisrael is not my actual father. So that's not totally true, in terms of necessarily making it Shlomo. And then I mentioned a second ago that we all read "Vanity of Vanities", and that comes from the King James Bible. And I hardly doubt that King James translated the Bible. But what he did was he financed a group of people to translate the Bible. So all of a sudden, we have a lot of complication, when it says, somebody wrote a book, did he actually write it? Or did he support it? And when it says, We are a child, does it mean a follower? Does it mean an actual child? Rabbi, Adam, where do you come in on this?   Adam Mintz  02:50 So there are a couple things. First of all, I want to bring everyone's attention, there's an amazing English translation of the Bible, written by a professor from Berkeley by the name of Robert Alter, and generally he's good, and his introductions to Kohelet is especially good. The first thing he says is what Geoffrey says. And that is Kohelet Ben David doesn't mean that he's the son of David doesn't have to be Solomon. And it means that he came from the Davidic family. Now, that's one thing. So we could be many generations later. And the scholars all think it was later. The other thing is, and I think this is interesting to consider when you write a book, and there's some kind of competition, whether or not your book is going to be included in the Bible. You very often want to give yourself some credibility. It might be to give yourself some credibility. You say, I'm William Shakespeare, I wrote this play. Like it was 500 years ago. I don't know if William Shakespeare wrote it, or William Shakespeare didn't write. But if I say that I'm William Shakespeare, then I give myself credibility. So it is possible that the author of go hell it is not indeed the son of David or a descendant of David. But he knew that if he wanted to get his book into the Bible, he needed to call himself a son of David. That's a little cynical, but I think it's something to consider.   Geoffrey Stern  04:31 Well, it gets but it does get even better because it's not as though he said my name is Shlomo. Like he did for the Song of Songs that he said Shir HaShirim asher l'Shlomo" he took on a Nom de plume, and he engendered this whole conversation that we're talking about him so it is kind of fun that way.   Adam Mintz  04:55 Not only a name that we've never heard before, but the structure Kohelet is a very funny structure. That's not the way you say it. If the word Kohelet means the one who gathers people, there's a way to say that in Hebrew "make'el" "he gathers people"  Kohelet is a very strange form of the term to gather people. So Geoffrey, it's almost as if he chose a name for himself, a Nom de plume and it's not even real, meaning that he just chose a name for himself. So I think that's interesting. "vanities of vanities" of course, the King James made that famous. Alter points out and this has been pointed out by many, many people, the word has really means breath. And "hevel havalim hakol hevel" really means that everything is no more than breath. The same way when you breathe in the cold, and you can see your breath, but it's really nothing. That's what life is have, "hevel havalim amar Kohelet" All life is like that. It's like the breath that looks like it's something but it's really nothing.   Geoffrey Stern  06:19 So we don't have a dearth of material today, that's for sure. So the word that he took forgetting about who he was, as you point out, Kohelet means to gather. It's one who assembles and even in the translation into Latin Ecclesiastes, which literally means someone who gathers an ecclesiastical court is a gathering. It's an assembling an audience. It can also mean gathering ideas, gathering truth, and different opinions. If you look at Kings 1, here it says, "Oz yikahal Shlomo", that Solomon convoked, the elders of Israel, and this is when he read, dedicated or he dedicated the temple on Sukkot time, those of us and I said this in the pre party, who remember the episode two times ago about the revolution of the Aleph Beit, we know that in the time of Sukkot, was this "VaYakel" this commandment to publicly read the book of the Torah. So I will almost venture to say my pet name for Kohelet is Mr. Sukkot, in a sense, because what he's doing is he's bringing the themes together, that we've kind of been discussing for a while, and we're going to get into how deep that is this idea of this short breath, I absolutely love Alter says it. Also, Rabbi Sacks, talks about it. And he says, everything to do with life in Judaism refers to a breath. So there's a "Neshama", which comes from the word "Linshom" to breathe. There's Nefesh. there's Ruach, which is wind. And what he says "hevel" is, is a very short breath. It's a very superficial breath. It's that breath of the fleeting breath. And what he is saying is that the sense that we're going to get from the book that follows is the fleetingness of life. But it comes at a moment where maybe that's it's all we have. And so I think all of these kind of themes come together. And if we think about Sukkot, there are so many words that have to do with in gathering. It just occurred to me You know, they always say the Eskimos have so many words for snow. Here we have Ketzir, the "hag Hakazir or the Hag Ha'assaf" these are the gathering of the crops. We have the lulav in the Etrog and the Arba minim (four species) that have to be bound together. We have the very word for moed, which is a holiday, but as "Ohel Moed" It's a tent of meeting. It's a time to come all together. So all of these concepts of binding of coming together of gathering of welcoming other thoughts all come to the fore at this moment, and that's why I say that maybe Kohelet is Mr. Sukkak.   Adam Mintz  09:41 Great. I love it. Now the question is, why is that so? Why is Sukkot the holiday of gathering?   Geoffrey Stern  09:51 so I'm going to call on Avraham before he leaves because he started talking about something that I really want to get into. He talked about the difference between cyclical time and linear time. And that short little breath. That was momentary time, where does that fit in Avraham?   Avraham Bronstein  10:12 So before I say anything I want to riff on what you were saying a second ago, that connection between Hakel and Kohelet that was great. Because if you continue in Devarim, right, what we read a few weeks ago where the mitzvah of Hakel is first kind of spoken about. The whole point is, everyone has to be there to hear the Torah being read. . "Lman yishmau ve lilmadu l'yira et hashem Elokehchem" the point ultimately, to arrive at "yira" reverence of God, which is actually the point of the entire book of Kohelet when it comes down to the very end after everything is said and done. "sof Davar HaKol Nishma" The point of Hakel is to arrive at Yira, the point of Kohelt is to arrive at the same place... a connection I never ever saw before or thought about before, but I think now is actually very compelling. So first, thank you.   Geoffrey Stern  11:09 You're welcome.   Avraham Bronstein  11:11 That's great. The second thing is to address what you just asked, maybe we can unpack this a little bit more based on what you said. But the overall sense of what Kohelet is trying to say in the first several verses, and then you get back to it again, is that everything always stays the same that people try to do things that people build things and they accumulate things that they expend effort, and they do all these different things. But ultimately, everything kind of repeats itself everything, the same generation comes generation goes nothing really changes it and to a degree. You know, you're reading this at the end of the year, when one agricultural season is ending and the next one is starting at the same time, the ingathering festival. So last year's harvest is coming in. But the farmers are all getting ready to plant next year's crop. They're already praying for rain for next year's crop. So again, your sense of time moving in a circle where you've arrived at the end but even while you're ending you're beginning again and your in the same place you were a year ago.   Geoffrey Stern  12:22 There is this sense of do Rosh Hashannah and do Yom Kippur and then "repeat". And the thing that really struck me in reading some of the thoughts of Rabbi Sacks is he also discusses the difference between happiness and joy between Osher and Simcha and he makes the difference, that Simcha like that short breath is absolutely momentary, and Osher we talk about Ashray Yoshvey vetecha... all throughout Psalms and other writings we're trying to look for a life well lived. And what he points out and again it kind of touches upon their sense of cyclical or lineal is that we land at this moment between the end of the last year and the beginning of the new and of course, for a farmer that comes where you're pulling the crops and I'm not a farmer, but I know the second you pull in the crops The next thing you do is start preparing the land for the next crop. And it's this sense of simcha is what we call it zeman simchataynu. He says that the simcha that we feel, the absolute joy, unadulterated joy that we feel is of the moment...  is that short breath, if we read the rest of Kohelet we're gonna see a sense of eat, drink and be merry type type of Simcha. It's something that's very special and distinct from that kind of linear progression of slow growth over time over maybe a lifetime that we are so accustomed to. We've binged on Judaism for the last two, three weeks, maybe even a month and a half. And this is a very special time that I think Jewish tradition kind of understood that somehow Kohelet, which is from the Wisdom literature, and we're going to get into that in a second, was able to grasp and able to convey more than traditional types of linear Torah texts that have a beginning in Eden and an end in Redemption might have is that the kind of area that you're going to be talking about a little bit. Rabbi Avraham?   14:59 A little bit. Yeah, kind of you're doing the same thing over and over again. But what are you doing a little bit differently this year as opposed to last year?   Geoffrey Stern  15:08 Interesting, I would, I would say that the argument of Kohelet is "not so different". His argument is very humbling from the perspective of someone who believes that the life of us as an individual, and life of us as a people, is a long project is a struggle has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a slow evolution, and investment. I think much of what Kohelet is about and we're not going to be able to read the book today. But stay tuned, go to synagogue and listen to it. It's literally almost a rebellion against that, or at least an alternative side of the coin, in terms of "you know what, it's just a moment and when things are good, take the good and when things are bad look forward to when the sun will shine again." What do you think, Adam?   Adam Mintz  16:06 So I wonder about a slightly different point. And that is what do you make about Kohelet come coming a week after Yom Kippur. When we take life so seriously, "mi Yichiye, Mi Yamut" who will live and who will die, who by fire, who by water, everything is very serious. And all of a sudden comes King Solomon or whoever it is; Kohelet and says haveil havalim hakol hevel. That everything is Vanity of vanities or breath or whatever the word may be. What do you make of that reading kohelet right after Yom Kippur?   Geoffrey Stern  16:51 I think that no one can say it's unintentional. That's the one thing I think I can safely say. But I do believe the intention is rather strong. And I do believe that your question is a wonderful segue into what I'd like to spend the rest or at least a large portion of the discussion discussing, which is that co Kohelet comes from Wisdom Literature. We all know that King Solomon was not referred to as a Torah scholar. He was referred to as a wise man. And that is not simply an adjective or a description. It is a trigger. In the Ancient Near East, there is much literature that is called Wisdom Literature. And those of you who know Shai Held he's a Rosh Hayeshiva at Hadar. Well, I took a course from his father at Columbia, and his name was Moshe Held, and he was an expert in Ugaritic and Akkadian and he explained what the difference is between wisdom literature and Torah, and you will listen to these three rules, and it will make you listen and read differently. When you study Kohelet, when you study Ecclesiastes, or Proverbs, or even the Song of Songs or Job. Number one, it's only about the individual, nothing to do with a nation, it's about a single person. Number two, it's unhistorical. There's no nationalism, the name of Israel is never mentioned, the only difference and I underline only, between the wisdom literature of our neighbors, the Sumerians, the Mesopotamians, and the Egyptians and us is that when they cry out to god, they might cry out to three gods, we cry out to one ... it's monotheism. But otherwise, you couldn't find something more stark, then wisdom literature as something that was shared by every nation and society in our neighborhood. It's practical, and Professor Held ends by saying that anybody, anybody who studies a book like Kohelet or Ecclesiastes and doesn't understand this difference is operating with a false eyeglass. And, unfortunately, we tend to break down that barrier and homogenize Wisdom Literature with Torah. But as you all know Torah talks about the people of Israel Torah talks about history in terms of Egypt in terms of Sinai, none of those terms would ever find themselves in wisdom literature and the real key is when we say Eitz Hayim hi L'machazikim ba"; "that it is a tree of life to those hold on to it" that comes from Proverbs. And we have homogenized that I would say kidnapped it. And we talking about Torah. But it's not about Torah. It's about Wisdom. When we read Proverbs, and we say "listen to the "Torat Imecha" listen to the Torah of your mother. It doesn't mean Torah, it means the wisdom of your mother. So Held and other scholars need us to understand. And this really relates to the question that you asked Rabbi Adam, about why are we reading this book, it's not only reading this book, it's reading a book from a totally different tradition than the Torah tradition. And it is included in our, in our canon, we call it TaNaKh, Torah, Nevi'im veKetuvim. Ketuvim is the written books of Wisdom Literature. So they're probably accepted as different as they are because they were written in Hebrew, and they were part of our culture. But it's a stark difference. And I think I'd love to hear your comments on this. But I think what it does is it raises the stakes in your question. It's not simply Why did we pick one of the 24 books to read on Sukkot when we had other choices? It's why did we pick one of the most representative books of the common wisdom, the common practical guidelines? And yes, the cynical and I would say fatalistic viewpoint that was shared by all humanity to read after such a Jewish month?   Adam Mintz  21:52 So I just want to I want to strengthen your question. There's a rabbinic teaching in something called Masechet Sofrim that was written around the year 800. And it says that on Shabbat Hol HaMoed Pesach we read Shir HaShirim (the Song of Songs) because Shir Hashirim is about a love story. It's about spring time, it's perfect for Pesach. That we read the book of Ruth on Shavuot, because it's about acceptance of mitzvot. It's about conversion, whatever that means. And it's perfect for Shavuot.  We read Esther on Purim, we read a Eicha (Lamentations) on Tisha B'Av. What's amazing about that teaching in Masechet Sofrim is it does not mention that we read Kohelet on Sukkot. That seems to be a later tradition. That was not part of the original tradition. And it might be that there's something in that Geoffrey, it was it was more communal, the community felt after the heaviness of Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur that we needed a book like Kohelet.   Geoffrey Stern  23:10 I think so. I'd like to just for the purposes of sharing my discovery that goes back 40 years about Near Eastern Wisdom Literature, to read some parallel texts. So in Ecclesiastes 1: 2 we read "Hevel Havalim, which now we know is a short breath, a short breath, otter futility, utter futility what real value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun, one generation goes another comes, but the earth remains the same forever." Here's from The Epic of Gilgamesh, "Who my friend can scale Heaven, only the gods live forever under the sun. As for mankind numbered are their days, whatever they achieve is but the wind, even here though art afraid of death." There are stories about and parallels to this concept of riches that comes up, or even scholarly pursuits. Gilgamesh goes on, "do we build a house forever? Do we seal contracts forever? Do brothers divide shares forever, does hatred persist forever in the land. Since the days of yore, there has been no permanence, the resting of the dead how alike are they? Do they not compose a picture of death, the commoner and the noble?" These themes about the difference between us is less than what we have in common the Pauper in the king both end up in the same place, that riches won't give you anything. These are themes that are shared by all of humanity, and didn't change as a result of the revolution of the Jewish people. And if anything, if anybody knows anything, I believe in the in the past six months of Madlik, I believe that there is much that's unique about Judaism and we contributed so much. But we get to this moment. And we say, you know, it's all said and done, we've changed the way we celebrate the New Year. The other nations they make their earthly King into their ruler, we make God into our ruler we change the way we read our texts, other traditions hide it in a holy of holies. And let only the priestly caste read it. We democratize it, all of the changes that we've discussed, all of the revolutions that were led by the Hebrew project, when it's all said and done in Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashannah are all over. I think what we do is we make a an amazing stop. And we say, but at the end of the day, we're still human. At the end of the day, all we have is that short breath. And I think that, too, is an amazingly humbling, but also liberating concept. And maybe that's where the simcha comes in.   Adam Mintz  26:30 I think that's great. I think that that's really a nice, you know, a nice explanation, kind of for the evolution of Kohelet as almost a continuation of Yom Kippur. It's interesting that right after Kohelet that we have Simchat Torah which is really a celebration of the whole process, right? It's a celebration of the whole month, and that you can't have the celebration without having both Yom Kippur. And Kohelet. They're both part of the celebration, one without the other isn't good enough.   Geoffrey Stern  27:09 I mean, I totally agree. And it also makes us look a little bit differently at Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashannah, which actually are not really in history, either. They're really about us, as a universal people (humankind). If you think about the themes that I described before that are unique to the wisdom literature and the wisdom world. It's kind of interesting. Now when you look back, that you can see that Rosh Hashannah is actually a very universal holiday, we celebrate the birth of the world, or some say the birth of man. We we discuss who rules us and who doesn't. And then on Sukkot, even though there's an attempt to tie it into the exodus from Egypt, and it's not a great attempt, you know, everybody argues and says, Did they really the Jews really live in thatched roof structures? Or did they live in actual tents. But the point is, that there's this temptation to try to bring so called back into the other Regalim, the other pilgrimage, holidays, and make it kind of historic, but on the other hand, it's in nature, it's out of the house. I mean, you have to believe even in the days of the temple, they moved out of the temple and went into this sukkah. It literally takes what makes us human. And it brings us outside and I have to say that one idea, one thought that I had you mentioned Simchat Torah. You know, I said a second ago that in wisdom literature, when you say to "torah", you don't mean the Torah that was revealed or given at Sinai. When you say "torat immecha", you mean the wisdom of your parents, of your elders, have prior generations of lives already lived? And I wonder whether we have the license to celebrate one or the other or both torot... meaning to say this this confluence of finishing the yearly public reading of the Torah which is an amazing democratizing event. But there's also simchat torah, Simcha as described by by Rabbi Sacks which is this momentary, just take life by the coattails and laugh when you can and cry when you have to. And that torah that wisdom the simchat torah.... I really just thought about it kind of this morning when I was thinking about simchat torah.  Do we have that license? Do you give me that license? Adam,   Adam Mintz  27:10 I give you that license. I love it.   Geoffrey Stern  30:09 So it's, it's, it's really an amazing book and amazing tradition and we Jews, who always talk about how distinctive we are and how different we are ... on the culmination.... And I think you really can refer to Sukkot as a combination as a climax. And the climax of the climax again, is shmini atzeret, which again, the word ottzer means to gather in to retain, to keep everybody around. But the climax at the end of the day is when all is said and done. And now I'm gonna sound like I wrote wisdom. Sof davar Hakol nishma... what do we have, we all have the same sun and sky over us, we have the same end. It's such a universal message. And it's such an unvarnished message because if you read the wisdom literature, whether it's Jewish or Sumerian, or Mesopotamian, it doesn't pull any punches ever. You know, we can beg for our lives and for rain on Yom Kippur. And Rosh Hashannah. But when you read the wisdom literature, it makes it very clear, you can beg all you want, but the God or the gods, they act using their own logic, and all we have is just what we can grasp in a breath.   Adam Mintz  31:40 I think that's great. I think that there are so many different pieces here. I think that that's great. You know, so many Roh hashannah and Yom Kippur piece. The idea of the breath, I think Rabbi Sacks really captures so much by talking about the fact that hevel means a breath, I think that's great.   Geoffrey Stern  32:00 So I couldn't finish without going to one of my favorite folk songs of the 60s, which is Pete Seeger's Turn, turn, turn. And it probably is the first, maybe only time that a writer literally took the words of Scripture, and turned them into a hit song, and turn turn turn really just captures both in the title. And also in the lyrics. You know what we're talking about, that when all is said and done, it's just a cycle in a sense. And all we have is the ability to go one step at a time, go forward, there's a time for love. There's a time for hate. There's a time for peace. And what he added was, "I hope it's not too late". And what what I was surprised to find out is that first of all why he wrote this song, his agent told him Pete, cut out the revolutionary songs, no one wants to hear any more about changing the world. And for some reason he had in his notebook, the words of Kohelet. And he submitted them, and in his mind, Kohelet was a guy with a long beard and sandals, who was definitely a rebel rouser. But the agent said, It's from Scripture. Finally, you gave me something that I want. And a few years ago, Pete gave 45% of the royalties from the song to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. So he made a political statement. He kept 50%. And then he said, 5%, he added on because he added, "I hope it's not too late". So those were his own words. But this story gave me simcha when I read it, and it showed us how we have to take the words that we study and that we read, make them our own dance to them, clap to them. And I just want to wish everybody an amazing Simchat Torah, whatever torah you're celebrating, and that we should all savor the moment and be able to savor those small little breaths that we make. And I have to say, Rabbi, it's been a wonderful few months I reading the Torah  with you. And one of the things that I will be celebrating is our partnership here every Friday, thank you so much.   Adam Mintz  34:47 You know, what more can we say next Friday. We get together to study Bereshit. That's an amazing thing. Rabbi Avraham talked about cyclical time and linear time. What an amazing thing that we go back to the beginning isn't it?   Geoffrey Stern  35:02 We start all over Turn, turn, turn.   Adam Mintz  35:08 Shabbat shalom. We are going to post this as a podcast. And I used to end every podcast with some music so you guessed it. This week, I will add a recording of Pete Seager singing, turn, turn, turn. And let's hope it's not too late. Shabbat Shalom and Hag Samayach.