Last year while teaching Kohelet I came across a picture of a carpet page of a Bible from San'a, Yemen in 1469. The shape of the triangle and inverted triangle with the circle in the center reminded me an hourglass sand clock. Suddenly an idea started forming in my head. The chapters of Kohelet would be written in concentric circles in the center of the piece and the Song of Time which begins, "Everything has its season, and there is a time for every desire under the heaven" would frame the piece fitting in perfectly with my original thought that the shape resembled an hourglass sand clock. The result is the picture above, and below is a copy of the article I wrote for the Jewish Press several weeks ago. The painting was on the front cover (!) and my op-ed piece followed several pages in:
“What a depressing book!” is often people's response to reading Sefer Kohelet. It seems at first glance that Shlomo Hamelech, the wisest of all men, is telling us there is no purpose to all of man's efforts whether it be in the intellectual, material or social arena. However this nihilistic view often erroneously attributed to Kohelet is not only antithetical to many Jewish beliefs taught by the Torah and our Rabbis it is even contradictory to statements Kohelet himself makes. What then is the message of Sefer Kohelet? Is there a way to spin Kohelet's oft-quoted statement “Hevel Havalim hakol hevel,” “Futility of futilities, all is futile” in a positive, perhaps even inspiring light?
The word hevel appears no less than thirty eight times in the sefer and if Shlomo Hamelech is telling us all is hevel, it is imperative to properly translate this word. When studying Tanakh and trying to define a word one needs to look at the first place that word appears and translate the word based on the context. The first place the word hevel appears is in the story in Bereishit of Kayin and Hevel. Hevel is the first person to introduce mortality into the world since he is the first human to die. Hevel is therefore defined as vanity or futility since his death teaches us that nothing lasts, all is fleeting, life is like the breath released from our bodies, non-tangible, transient. However there was more to Hevel's story, than his death; there was his life. In his life he achieved something wonderful and everlasting- a relationship with God. Through his sacrifice he was granted Divine deliverance, and “God turned favorably towards Hevel.” Although Hevel's death taught us life is not eternal, his life taught us how to gain transience in this world; through developing a relationship with God. The very fact that Kohelet tells us he has “witnessed all the deeds done under the sun, and indeed, all is futile and accomplishes nothing” is meant to inspire us to live life to the utmost by filling it with spiritual endeavors and God's Torah and mitzvot which are the only pursuits that have lasting value as opposed to everything else which in Kohelet's view is equivalent to “chasing winds.”
A couple of weeks ago I was at an amusement park with my family, enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. My three year old son wanted to go an a ride called, “Turtle Whirl.” Needles to say there was a lot of whirling and spinning going on on this ride. I could barely look at it without feeling slightly ill. My husband graciously agreed to accompany my son and I happily agreed to watch from the sidelines and take pictures. However, try as I may I wasn't able to get one single picture; the ride was spinning so fast it was impossible to capture their smiling faces. Isn't life the same. How often do we have days, maybe even weeks months or years where we literally feel like we are spinning around and around, it seems impossible to even pause long enough to catch one's breath, let alone stay focused and find meaning in it all. This idea is what inspired me to create the artwork “Sovev, sovev.” In the artwork, the majority of Sefer Kohelet is written in concentric circles, a dizzying feat in it of itself! As Kohelet teaches us, life and our daily activities are cyclical, just as nature is cyclical. The sun rises, the sun set; the wind blows from east to west, and then blows back again from west to east. As the Maharal teaches, human actions mirror nature. Even the words of Kohelet seem cyclical; Shlomo walking us through his logic and analysis of human endeavors just to bring us back to the same point, “Hakol hevel- all is futile.” The challenge is through this dizzying ride of life to find meaning and perspective.
The Avudraham explains that the words of Kohelet were culled from sermons given by Shlomo Hamelech every seven years on the holiday of Sukkot when the Jews would gather in Yerushalayim to celebrate the holiday and fulfill the mitzvah of hakhel (hence one of the reasons the book is called Kohelet). Every year on Sukkot we read Kohelet not to depress us rather to inspire us to not get swallowed up in the whirlwind of life but rather to remain focused that “The sum of the matter, when all has been considered: Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole purpose of man.”
After all, if we are acutely aware that our time in this world is finite, how much more meaningful would our days be?
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