There is a Time for Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)

 

For the past four years, I’ve been writing (and publishing) commentaries on the great Megillot of our tradition.

They are available at www.izzun.com. Ester and Rut are complete; Song of Songs will be out in time for Pesach.

Kohelet is stunning in its refusal to hold by conventional religiosity. It’s corruscating and utterly glorious. I’m reproducing here the essay commentary to the first chapter, a reflection on the central word of the Megillah - Hevel.

As will be clear, I’ve been hugely inspired by Prof Michael Fox, of blessed memory.

The art, specially commissioned, is by Sarah Lightman.

Chapter One

Kohelet as Hevel

The Megillah opens with this brutal salvo; ‘Utter Hevel - said Kohelet - Utter Hevel. All is Hevel.’ (1:2) Twelve chapters and twenty-eight mentions of this same word later, he concludes with the slightly briefer, but no-gentler, rejoinder ‘Utter Hevel - said Kohelet - All is Hevel’ (12:8).

In Isaiah, Proverbs and Psalms, Hevel, means vapour, insubstantial and ephemeral – like Propsero’s actors, liable to melt into air, thin air. But we first meet the word as the name given to Cain’s ill-fated brother. Hevel, in Genesis, is usually translated / transliterated as Able. The English name seems so jarring and misplaced; named Able and achieving nothing. And so to Kohelet.

Michael Fox’s definition of Hevel, as it appears in Kohelet, took my breath away when I first read it. In this Megillah, he claims, it means ‘absurd. The absurd [being] a disjunction between two phenomena that are thought to be linked by a bond of harmony or causality, or that should be so linked.’ Gevalt.

On the one hand, Kohelet stubbornly expects good actions will be met by a good response and evil actions will bring evil, see 8:10-13. This is the great nexus of cause and effect that dominates Jewish, and indeed most other, ethical doctrines religious or otherwise. But, on the other hand, In my days of absurdity, I’ve seen it all; the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked thriving in their wickedness. (7:15)

In Deuteronomistic theology, there is a bridge between the good action and its reward and the evil action and its punishment. Evil action does not cause punishment directly, rather it is supposed to anger God who, in turn, is supposed to decree punishment. Kohelet knows this and expects this, but it just isn’t his experience, and he refuses to sacrifice his experience to a dogma unfit for purpose. Fox puts it this way, the ‘distortions warp the larger pattern rather than fading into it.’

Absurdity arises in the dislocation between expectation and experience. That explains why we laugh at sketches about dead parrots. But not here, here the stakes are too high. Kohelet’s absurdity threatens our entire existential condition. What is our purpose, what is moral and how do we find meaning in a world where everything is absurd?

If this absurdity gnaws at you too, dear reader, if you have the courage to look into this abyss with Nietzsche’s eagle-eyes and grasp the abyss with his eagle-claws, then this is the Megillah for you.