I love some parts of the Tanach (Old Testament) more than others. I particularly love Sefer Qohelet. This book is called “Ecclesiastes” in English, which is itself taken from the Greek translated name of the book from the Septuagint, but “Qohelet” is a much more significant name, meaning something like “preacher”, or “agitator”, and that definitely sums up the mood of the author's narrative.
That the author's content is counter-intuitive at times is an understatement. He goes from recognition of injustice, to despairing at this injustice, to resignation in exhaustion on thinking of it, and then back around again. In his resignation, he often takes comfort in the realization that someday Elohim will judge the world and that these injustices will thus someday be met with a full redress, yet he then concludes that this too is a useless way of thinking. Why is that? I think it's because he recognizes that just shrugging off care about present injustices in the world by relying exclusively on Elohim's future judgement is not only a cop-out, but also in a sense makes one a passive party to the injustices. It opens that individual up to judgement. At the same time, the author knows that life was meant to be enjoyed, not constantly lamented... that there has to be time set aside for earnest protest, and yet time set aside to enjoy one's own life and the fruits of his labor, all of which have been literally created for enjoyment.
And that's what I love about this book, that its message is in the form of both an internal and external struggle to balance the need to address the injustice of the world with a desire to live life to the fullest. In its many sub-conclusions in its seemingly circular reasoning, it both requires us to speak up and out, to ”preach” or “agitate” against injustices in the world, to represent the victims of injustice and misfortune. And yet, it also allows us not to despair, permitting us to still enjoy life, even while living in an unjust world. The writer of the scroll lays on us the work of righting wrongs, yet ultimately concludes that we cannot become slaves to that work. He tasks us with the healing the world, yet he refuses to treat life as one big hospital.
In his ultimate conclusion, the author expresses that obedience to and loving respect of YHWH is the whole “duty of man”, and that in particular is off-putting to many, especially overly critical readers who greatly prefer to see the book as one big existential crisis that eschews hope and embraces existential isolation as an inescapable reality, and/or wish it to be an example of a pre-modern portrayal of atheistic or agnostic thinking. But the author clearly never intended to leave the book as a meaningless rant about meaninglessness, nor was he teetering towards atheism in any sense. Rather, he is ultimately attempting to work out the details of how to be free in an unfree world by expressing his anguish in arriving at a balance. Having said that, he also didn't intend this final exhortation to obey and love YHWH to be one big statement of obligation. The author isn't looking for another form of slavery to ideas. In the context of the words of the entire scroll that precedes it, his conclusion is expressed not primarily as a strict obligation, but as the ultimate means of both arresting injustice and attaining satisfaction and happiness at the very core of life. Connection to Elohim is a source of justice, life, and happiness, not a path to emptiness. Justice, life and happiness are in fact Elohim's primary values.
I know all too well this inner struggle between the “glass half full” and “glass half empty” sides of a personality. It is my personal form of mania. Qohelet is basically a permission slip to care about injustice AND enjoy life at the same time. It expresses that this doesn’t have to be a struggle as the two concerns are not mutually exclusive. At the same time, the core of its position is one of an optimism that is uncrushable, even by crushing pessimism.
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