Last update - 00:00 27/09/2007
Portion of the Week / The pins in our balloon
By Benjamin Lau
According to Jewish tradition, we read the Book of Ecclesiastes on the Shabbat that falls during the Intermediary Days of Sukkot; yet the connection between Ecclesiastes and the festival is not so obvious.
Like Passover, the Festival of the Spring, and Shavuot, the Festival of the First Fruits, Sukkot has both agricultural significance and another name, the Festival of the Harvest (literally, the ingathering of the harvest). It is a time for farmers to look back at their accomplishments with a measure of pride after six months of hard work. This is why this festival is such a joyous one. However, in strident contrast, the Book of Ecclesiastes sounds notes of a distinct pessimism, its general message appearing to be: "vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (1:2). Ecclesiastes' narrator asks, "What profit hath man of all his labor ...?" (1:3) and, throughout this book, seeks an answer to the disturbing question, "For whom am I toiling? For whom am I sacrificing my strength?"
These questions undermine the holiday's festive spirit and can be the pins that will burst our balloon. Did the classic rabbinical authorities who decided that Ecclesiastes should be read on Sukkot intend to encourage a spirit of pessimism among us? The moral stance of the written and the oral Torah seeks to restrain us and curb our feeling of pride and self-satisfaction over our achievements. The pride of farmers returning from a bountiful harvest could cause them to forget their mortality and even to deify themselves. For that reason, the Torah commands us to reside in a temporary dwelling, the Sukkah. We must leave our sturdy homes in order to recognize our temporal nature and to acknowledge that all the bounty we enjoy is heaven's gift. The two instruments for arousing in us that awareness of our mortality are the Sukkah and the Book of Ecclesiastes.
The question that Ecclesiastes' narrator raises at the beginning of the book is left open until nearly the end of the text. On top of the layer of original commentary on Ecclesiastes is another layer, one that focuses on moral values and seeks to transform the sense of powerlessness that Ecclesiastes inspires into a challenge. It eschews a strictly literal interpretation of the biblical text and belongs to the genre of the derash (subjectively oriented commentary) and Hasidic exegesis. This genre tends to interpret texts in a much freer manner, with the aim of delivering new messages. One commentator associated with this type of exegesis is Rabbi Azariah Figo, who lived in Venice in the early 17th century. In one of his commentaries, he focuses on the verse, "What profit hath man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?" (Eccles. 1:3) This is the book's central question. According to the derash style of interpretation, the verse can be divided into a question ("What profit hath man of all his labor ...?") and an answer ("... which he taketh under the sun"). While we can readily understand the question, the answer is by no means clear. Is the profit of our labor simply the opportunity to toil under the sun?
However, Rabbi Figo adds another exegesis to this one, arguing that the answer must not be understood literally. The word tahat can be read not as "under" but rather as "instead" (another meaning of the word). Thus, the answer to the question "What profit hath man of all his labor ...?" is that "which he taketh under [that is, works instead of] the sun."
Here Rabbi Figo introduces a third level of derash-style exegesis to explain the meaning of toil and the function of the sun that we are obligated to replace. He introduces a new source, a passage from the Bava Batra Tractate of the Babylonian Talmud (page 16): "Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai states: 'Our Patriarch Abraham wore a precious gem around his neck. People who were ailing looked at him and were immediately healed. When Abraham left this earthly existence, God hung the gem around the neck of the sun.'" This Talmudic commentary is based on the verse in Genesis, "... and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things" (24:1).
Healing powers
Some of our sages pondered the word bakol (in all things), and each one attempted to interpret it. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai considered that the blessing Abraham received was a precious gem that he wore around his neck and which was a source of blessing. Abraham journeyed to many places and thus many people were healed. When Abraham dies, the world becomes desolate; there is no one who can now radiate a blessing to those in need of it. The blessing is transferred to the sun, which has the power to heal with its rays of light, as we read in Malachi, "... the sun of righteousness ... with healing in his wings" (4:2). We can become alienated and, with the vapor of our breath, we can cloud our world and feel that we are in the dark. Ecclesiastes asks us, "What profit hath man of all his labor ...?" Where does all our earthly activity lead to? If I am living inside my bubble, then for whom am I working so hard and for whom am I sacrificing my strength? Ecclesiastes' answer (according to Rabbi Figo's commentary) is "... which he taketh under [that is, works instead of] the sun."
We have the capacity of returning to earth the precious gem that Abraham wore around his neck and which was taken from here when he died. The profit of our toil in this earthly existence is that we have the ability to serve as a source of light, of healing, of hope. In this spirit, Deborah the Prophet ends her great poem: "... but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might" (Judges 5:31). All our toil in this world should be aimed solely at illuminating the path for those around us, at making their lot better, at becoming the sun's replacement. In the Festival of the Harvest, we no longer dwell on the past. We have done the best we could and now we can stand tall with the blessing of the harvest all around us and we can look forward with hope to the coming year.