{"id":64434,"date":"2019-10-17T14:13:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T11:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=64434"},"modified":"2019-10-18T09:17:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T06:17:19","slug":"the-timeliness-of-kohelet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-timeliness-of-kohelet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Timeliness Of Kohelet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Of all the festivals, Sukkot is surely the one that speaks most powerfully to our time. Kohelet could almost have been written in the 21st<\/sup> century. Here is the picture of ultimate success, the man who has it all \u2013 the houses, the cars, the clothes, the adoring women, the envy of others \u2013 he has pursued everything this world can offer from pleasure to possessions to power to wisdom and yet, surveying the totality of his life, he can only say, in effect, \u201cMeaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kohelet\u2019s failure to find meaning is directly related to his obsession with the \u201cMe\u201d: \u201cI built for myself. I gathered for myself. I acquired for myself.\u201d The more he pursues his desires, the emptier his life becomes. There is no more powerful critique of the consumer society, whose idol is the self, whose icon is the \u201cselfie\u201d and whose moral code is \u201cWhatever works for you.\u201d This is the society that achieved unprecedented affluence, giving people more choices than they have ever known, and yet at same time saw an unprecedented rise in alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, stress-related syndromes, depression, attempted and actual suicide. Of all things people have chosen to worship, the self is the least fulfilling. A culture of narcissism quickly gives way to loneliness and despair.<\/p>\n

In the end Kohelet finds meaning in simple things. \u201cSweet is the sleep of a labouring man.\u201d \u201cEnjoy life with the woman you love.\u201d \u201cEat, drink and enjoy the sun.\u201d That, ultimately, is the meaning of Sukkot as a whole. It is a festival of simple things. It is, Jewishly, the time we come closer to nature than any other, sitting in a hut with only leaves for a roof, and taking in our hands the unprocessed fruits and foliage of the palm branch, the citron, twigs of myrtle and leaves of willow\u2026<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to live in a palace to be surrounded by clouds of glory. What makes a hut more beautiful than a home is that when it comes to Sukkot there is no difference between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. We are all strangers on earth, temporary residents in God\u2019s almost eternal universe. And whether or not we are capable of pleasure, whether or not we have found happiness, nonetheless we can all feel joy.<\/p>\n

Sukkot is the time we ask the most profound question of what makes a life worth living. Having prayed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to be written in the Book of Life, Kohelet forces us to remember how brief life actually is, and how vulnerable. Joy, the overwhelming theme of the festival, is what we feel when we know that it is a privilege simply to be alive, inhaling the intoxicating beauty of this moment amidst the profusion of nature, the teeming diversity of life and the sense of communion with those many others who share our history and our hope.<\/p>\n

Excerpted from: http:\/\/rabbisacks.org\/sukkot-time-extract-koren-sacks-sukkot-mahzor\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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