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Wintering with Kohelet

Dr. Erica Brown

raditionally, we read Kohelet on A few years ago, trying to make my own like bright sunlight reflected on a field of
Sukkot when the air is crisp, the peace with the winter months, I read frost. Spring will be here soon enough.
harvest is done, and the leaves Wintering by the English writer Katherine Mature students of Kohelet appreciate that
Tare falling. But in my mind, May. “In our relentlessly busy contempo- the book is read in the fall because, on
Kohelet will always be a decidedly wintry rary world,” May wrote, “we are forever some level, it is the book that best prepares
book. Giving biblical books a season pro- trying to defer the onset of winter.” But us for life’s winters. Eric Wilson in Against
vides a different kind of framing. Like examining countries and cultures that Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, warns of
winter, the day in Kohelet is short. The are better prepared for the season so she the dangers of shallow happiness: “To
night is long and falls quickly. Sometimes could embrace it, May resolved to open desire only happiness in a world undoubt-
there is never light: her mind to winter’s many gifts. “A sharp edly tragic is to become inauthentic.”
“Though it [the stillborn] comes into futil- wintering,” she writes, “would do us good.” The capacity to see beauty in the winter
ity and departs into darkness, and its very By this, May means that, “If happiness is of life, the kind Kohelet offers, is to render
name is covered with darkness, though it a skill, then sadness is, too.” That’s a skill the entire range of human experience
has never seen or experienced the sun, Kohelet teaches with his disillusioned cri- worthwhile: “Then the L-rd your G-d will
it is better off than he – yes, even if the tique of the vanities of the world: work, open up your heart and the hearts of your
other lived a thousand years twice over money, and even wisdom. Rather than offspring to love Hashem your G-d with all
but never had his fill of enjoyment! For avoid pain, he leans into it with boyish your heart and soul, in order that you may
are not both of them bound for the same curiosity and occasional cynicism. His live” (Devarim 30:6). It is the circumcised
place?” (Kohelet 6:4–6). voice is canonized because it is authentic heart – the one that is imperfect, vulner-
In chapter twelve, the author, in his twi- to the unvarnished human experience. able, and broken – that truly enables us
light years, looks back with longing as the Kohelet’s sharpness makes his many to live.
sights and sounds of everyday activities verses praising happiness all the sweeter.
dim: “And the doors to the street are shut These verses appear throughout the book
– with the noise of the hand mill growing like little intentional epaulets that break
fainter, and the song of the bird feebler, the misery of the book’s existential cloak.
and all the strains of music dying down” As the Solomonic old preacher famously
(12:4). A funeral procession passes by on says, there is a season for everything,
the street: “…Man sets out for his eternal and, “A time for every experience under
abode, with mourners all around in the heaven.” Even in the depths of winter,
street” (12:5). Scholars call the metaphor there are glimpses of summer. There is a
“the ruined estate.” You could also call it thaw that makes the darkness tolerable. Dr. Erica Brown
winter. The momentary relief of food and drink is the Vice Provost for Values and Leadership
at Yeshiva University and the founding
Soon the night will be permanent: “So is repeated in isolated verses and, for the director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks/
appreciate your vigor in the days of your last time, appears in chapter nine: “Go, eat Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership.
youth, before those days of sorrow come your bread in gladness, and drink your She has written or co-authored 15 books on
and those years arrive of which you will wine in joy; for your action was long ago the Hebrew Bible, spirituality, and leadership
say, ‘I have no pleasure in them;’ before approved by G-d” (9:7). Give yourself per- and has been published in many popular
sun and light and moon and stars grow mission to detest life at times and to enjoy newspapers and journals. Her latest book
dark, and the clouds come back again after life because its transitory pain should not is Kohelet and the Search for Meaning
the rain” (12:1–2). The sunshine is quickly be ignored and because transitory joy (Maggid, 2023). She currently serves as
a community scholar for Congregation
eclipsed. If Kohelet were a color, it might should not be devalued. Temporal enjoy- Etz Chaim in Livingston, New Jersey.
be the color of storm clouds in February. ment is a respite because it is so short-lived,

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