Sukkot 5784
Temple Emanu El of Westfield, NJ
We opened our service this morning singing The Byrd’s interpretation of the words of Kohelet – “Turn, Turn, Turn.” There are several reasons given for selecting Kohelet as the special reading on Sukkot. One of them is from a 14th century Spanish commentator called Avudraham. He suggested that the generally downbeat message of Solomon acts to temper the otherwise joyous and festive nature of the holiday. Another connection is in the common message of cycles.
Had the sky been clear last night we’d have seen a full moon. The Jewish calendar progresses from the new moon on the 1st of day of the Hebrew month of Tishre to the full moon on the night of the 15th. So, over the past 15 days we’ve progressed from the new moon on Rosh Hashanah to the full moon of Sukkot. Some observers point to this as a kind of completion – a move from no moonlight to full moonlight.
The full moon of Tishrei, specifically, suggests another kind of completion, another cycle. It occurs very near the autumnal equinox. And when we reach Sukkot, we’ve moved 180 degrees from the full moon of Nisan, which is the first day of Pesach, which is very near the Spring equinox. So, in that period, our days seem to have made a journey from a balance of light and darkness at Pesach through half a year of imbalance, and back to closure, or to balance again, at Sukkot.
And, of course, Pesach and Sukkot are both harvest festivals and harvests mark the natural completions of cycles of growth. At Pesach, some crops are still being planted and tended. At Sukkot, though, the full agricultural year [in the land of Israel] had ended. The crops were in, the new rains were expected, and it was generally a time of plenty. The conditions were right for a prolonged celebration.
Among all of our special days and times, it is Sukkot that is specifically called zman simchatenu – as we’ve recited in our prayers this morning – the time of our happiness. And its preeminence among the festivals is signaled by one of the names we call it, HaChag, just “The Festival.” If you said “The Festival,” everyone would know what you meant.
It is interesting that a celebration that is rooted in so many kinds of completions, and in demonstrations of abundance, is observed with outward indications of insecurity and impermanence.
We are told that we are to dwell in huts, in sukkot, for the full duration of the festival. Some say that those huts should have only three unbroken sides, which would make them pretty open to the weather. But all agree that at least the roofing material had to be open enough to see some of the sky and stars. So, at the time of plenty and of completion the people had to make themselves subject to some level of discomfort and to the unpredictability of the weather.
Sukkot during the time of the Second Temple was a big party, with a lot of eating and drinking and a lot of pomp and circumstance in the Temple. 13 bulls were sacrificed on the first day alone and 70 bulls in all – along with a lot of smaller animals – over the course of the holiday.
There was also a daily water offering, that was only made during Sukkot. On all other days, only wine was used in the sacrificial offerings in the Temple, but during Sukkot both wine and water were offered. The Talmud tells us that this was done to invoke God’s blessing on the year’s rainfall, since the rainy season was about to begin, and Israel depended so greatly on rainfall as a water source. The name of the ceremony was Simchat Beit HaSho’evah, The Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing. So intense were the festivities associated with the water drawing that the Sages in the Mishnah say, “Whoever did not see the rejoicing of the Beit HaSho’evah, never saw rejoicing in his lifetime.” (M. Sukkot 5:1)
It’s interesting then that over the course of Sukkot, the number of major sacrifices declines every day. On the first day, 13 bulls were sacrificed, on the second, 12, and so on. But on Hanukkah, for example, we begin the lighting of the menorah with one candle and add one each night. That is based on the teaching of Rabbi Hillel in the Talmud (B. Shabbat 21:b) that in matters of holiness we should always increase. But that is not the practice during Sukkot – they started with the largest number and decreased. So, if the sacrifices on the first days of the holiday were demonstrations of confidence and plenty, a decreasing pattern might be seen as an expression of some insecurity about that. The prudent course might be to begin the festivities with a great show of confidence, but to temper that as the holiday progressed.
We heard the cantor chant some of the beautiful but haunting words of Kohelet, just now. And the themes of that book also include expressions of insecurity. In fact, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called the book an extended meditation on impermanence and mortality.
The name that Solomon gives himself in the book … Kohelet … comes from the Hebrew kahal, meaning assembly or congregation or community. In this book, written in the last years of his life, he is not writing as a king. He is, it seems, identifying himself with all of those in the community. Here he is one human being among all humans, sharing the destiny of all humans, and contemplating the common end of all humans.
He looks back on all of his accomplishments. He remembers his victories and catalogues his possessions. And he realizes that all of those things – all of those victories, all of those wives, and horses, and gold, and monuments – are as hevel. The most famous verse in Kohelet is Havel havelim amar Kohelet, ha’col havel.
The translators of the King James Version rendered that word … hevel … as “vanity.” “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity,” the KJV has it.
The Jewish Publication Society translation of hevel is futility. JPS has, “Utter futility, said Kohelet, utter futility, all is futility.”
But the primary meaning of the Hebrew hevel – the first definition in the dictionary – is “breath” or “vapor.” The secondary meanings include “insubstantial” and “evanescent.” In the context of Solomon’s looking back on his life, the secondary definitions do seem to fit well.
Even for the powerful King, only havel havelim, or the most insubstantial, or the shallowest of breaths, separates life from death.
In most of this book Solomon seems depressed. His health is failing, his spirits are low, he looks around and observes “all the happenings beneath the sun,” and he realizes that all is hevel. All is fleeting, insubstantial, no weightier than the shallowest of breaths.
He set his mind to appraise wisdom, he says, – and found “as wisdom grows, vexation grows.”
He says that he found that revelry was mad, and merriment had no value.
He found that the pleasures of the flesh held no enjoyment.
He realized that while man is given the urge to expand, to amass wealth and power, and accomplishments, even so, the end of all of those was also hevel. Looking around himself he finds: “Better is a poor but wise youth than an old king who no longer has the sense to heed warnings.”
But even as he acknowledges the essential impermanence of all things – and most of his text is certainly that meditation on mortality that Rabbi Sacks describes – he was ultimately able to find meaning.
He can find happiness, even knowing that it is transitory, in the simplest of things.
11:7 “How sweet is the light, what a delight for the eyes to behold is the sun.”
The powerful king feels the sun on his face and the sweetness of the clear morning air. And he says:
“The sum of the matter, (Sof Davar) when all is said and done is, revere God and observe God’s commandments. For this applies to all mankind.”
What is there to be done about the impermanence of life? Solomon, speaking as Kohelet says – nothing. There is nothing to be done. Nothing can change the mortality that all humans face.
Enjoy what you can of life, he counsels, but revere and obey God. The conclusion of the long meditation of Kohelet is just that: we should trust God and live properly, because to trust in God and live on the basis of that trust gives meaning to life.
A meaning that he does not find in a life without that trust.
Chag Sameach.
CRL 9/30/2023