Sukkot 2013 and Deuteronomy Cycle 6 V'Zot Haberachah

Sukkot and V'Zot Haberachah

This week we experience Sukkoth and the parasha V’Zot Haberachah, the final parashah of Deuteronomy.  We think of the sacred writing of Kohelet (or Eccliasteses). We think of the death of Moses.

There’s the blur of life and death, the coming and going of all of us, the coming connection of the end and the beginning, the breathing in and out of Torah and the world. And we have a choice. We can see this blur as futile and nothing but a way to hide from the incessant stings of the mundane. We can see religion and God and all of it as an escape. Or we can see it all as a blessing,

 In other words, we can either embrace the rush, the shock of passing years, our losing sight, our widening perception, our work, our bills, our storms and sunny days, our inheritance of hatred, blindness, waste and broken dreams. Or we can (as a second choice) shun it and in so doing create an impermeable barrier between the spiritual and the world this minute.

The second choice is very tempting and is often an interpretation of Kohelet. The world is futile, we read in some translations, our only hope is to achieve the heightened realms, reject the contamination all around us. Rashi says that whenever scripture begins with “the words of” there will follow a reproof.  In that case, according to Rashi, all of Kohelet is aimed to scold and to uncover the problems of mankind.  Another fact is that the word “chaval” is mentioned seven times in the beginning.  According to some rabbis, the interpretation here is that even creation by God in Bereshith was the height of futility and vanity. In fact, we are looking at the superlative. "Chaval" is compared to “song of songs” and “holy and holies” except it’s the other side of the coin. Everything (we read) is a blessing backfired, a blessing without substance.

This would all provide a very convincing angle on Kohelet if we all didn’t know that we are a rabbinic culture and the rabbis of Talmud continually emphasize faith and love. Why would they canonize a writing they believed to support a complete lack of faith? Sometimes if I look at Kohelet literally I think of the kids chant: Nobody likes me. Everyone hates me. I think I’ll go eat worms. I also think of the private school kids I grew up with. They were never satisfied.   

No, there’s got to be more to Kohelet then this.  Rabbi Hayyim Angel of Yeshivah University says this: Kohelet never abandons his beliefs nor his normative sense of what all God-fearing people should do; yet he also never abandons nor solves his questions and his struggles with human existence. By presenting this process through a personal account with inspired wisdom, he becomes the teacher of every thinking religious individual.

Even with that point of view though we are bringing light to what would otherwise be a very negative vision of God’s creation. The interpretation of Rabbi Hayyim itself is a blessing on the work of Kohelet itself.

There seems to be no way around one major tenet of existence that we have seen time and time again in Torah: The only way to holiness is through our humanity, through the seeming absurdity of our lives. We need to work through it and even honor our perspective of struggle as a holy path.

Moses is the extreme example of this kind of divine behavior.  After forty years of wandering and leadership and hard inner work and outer struggle he must die before he reaches the holy land. While each of us (in our own perspective) does struggle, the experience of Moses is the superlative of that struggle. It’s also the superlative of the non-arrival.

Or is it? Moses after all by merging the Kohelet experience with his divine transmission is the only one who will ever see God face to face. Holy land or no holy land therefore, Moses does arrive but it’s not at a place that can be pointed at on the mundane level.

Moses, even at the extreme of supposed futility (he has worked so hard to get somewhere and doesn't get there) is blessed and blesses others.

I think we need to keep this is mind when we study Kohelet.  Clearly, we are being asked by the rabbis to bless ourselves and our path, not to get stuck on it, not to use it to avoid the mitzvoth or the words of Torah, but to bless ourselves as we raise our humanity to a divine level.
 

This reminds me of one moment just yesterday. I was in a public place, somewhere I really did not want to be. It was necessary though: part of the red tape and the mundane necessities of life. A woman had a tiny infant. She needed to re-set the material she was using to carry the baby. It's one of those things we see these days so that the baby can be close to the mother's chest. She asked me to hold the infant so she could do so. I agreed and there in the place (that I would have happily left if I could)  I held this new life, 6 weeks old. I felt that God's face was as close as He could be.