Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot - 'Kohelet - Sunlight and Shade'
בס"ד
This is dedicated to my maternal grandmother Chaya Rivka bat R’ Kalman Bienenzucht whose yartzheit was on Shabbat
A few
weeks' ago, The Beatles' Abbey Road album returned to #1 in the pop album
charts (UK) and one of the best songs on the album is "Here Comes the
Sun" by George Harrison.
(1) A
sukkah which is more than twenty cubits high is not valid. Rabbi Judah
validates it. One which is not ten handbreadths high, or which does not have
three walls, or which has more sun than
shade, is not valid....
The Gemara
(Sukkah 22b) raises an interesting question - what if there equal amounts of
sunshine and shade - will the Sukkah be kosher?
It replies
with the answer, that it all depends on which angle you view both the sunlight
and shade.
In the case
where you look at the schach and see them being equal, then the sukkah would be
pasul (i.e. non-kosher) but if you look at the ratio on the ground, where the
beams of sunlight have diffused through the cracks in the schach and therefore
appear equal to the amount of shade, then we allow the sukkah and say that the
schach is "sufficiently dense" and the shade therefore exceeds the
sunlight.
I think
this is an important lesson for all of us.
When we
judge a situation, we need to take in all the points of view before making a
decision about how to act. It would be easy to automatically disqualify the
sukkah if you thought that there was an equal amount of shade - but look at the
roof and then the ground and make your decision.
Rabbi Sacks
in his Sukkot machzor writes that "The book of Kohelet - 'Ecclesiastes'
that we read today is one of the most controversial in the entire Tanach. Its
literal translation (from the Greek) is "one who addresses an
assembly" - 'kehillah' and its inclusion as part of the canon was highly
debated.
(1) The
words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Kohelet was
none other than Solomon, reputedly, the wisest of men.Yet, reading the book,
the Rabbis were struck by what they perceived as being anything but wise, due
to its contradictory statements
The Gemara
relates that Rabbi Tanḥum delivered an entire homily touching upon both aggadic
and halakhic materials surrounding this question. He began and said: You, King Solomon,
where is your wisdom, where is your understanding? Not only do your statements
contradict the statements of your father
David, but your statements even contradict
each other. Your father David said: “it is not the dead who praise the Lord....”
(Psalms 115:17); and you said: “I
thought the dead more fortunate, who have died already, than the living who yet
live” - is it better to be alive than dead? Kohelet seems to answer both
'yes and no'!"
Reading
through the book, one is initially struck by its depressing, bleak tone and
"almost nihilistic" nature - written by a man in his twilight years
who appears to be disillusioned and sceptical about the ability of people to
change the world.
Yet - there
is one word that appears no less than seventeen times in this book. A word that
appears only once in each of the first four books of the Torah and 12 times in
Devarim.
The word is
Simcha - "joy".
Some
examples:
(15) I
therefore praised enjoyment. For the
only good a man can have under the sun is to eat and drink and enjoy himself. That
much can accompany him, in exchange for his wealth, through the days of life
that God has granted him under the sun.
(7) Go, eat
your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action was long ago approved by God. (8) Let your
clothes always be freshly washed, and your head never lack ointment. (9) Enjoy happiness with a woman you love
all the fleeting days of life that have been granted to you under the sun—all
your fleeting days. For that alone is what you can get out of life and out of
the means you acquire under the sun.
(7) How
sweet is the light, what a delight for the eyes to behold the sun! (8) Even if
a man lives many years, let him enjoy
himself in all of them, remembering how many the days of darkness are going to
be. The only future is nothingness!
Kohelet
seems to be reminding us that, even when things look bleak and unremitting, joy
can be found, somehow.
It is a
challenging book to comprehend, which needs more than the few cursory words I
have quoted here - but I think that the message it conveys is that, at this
time, during the festival of Sukkot the only chag which is referred to as -
Zman Simchateinu - the time of our joy - one should always take the time to
look beyond the exterior, to understand the mechanics of what is taking place
beneath - had the Rabbis not taken this point of view, it is very possible that
the majesty and beauty of Kohelet would have been lost to us, in a similar way
that the Book of Maccabees suffered as a result of not being included in the
final canon of the Tanach.
I remember
a TV advert for 'The Guardian' where a skinhead ran towards a well dressed man
and violently grabbed him. One's initial reaction was to automatically side
with the hapless gentleman until you saw the rest of the ad where it showed how
the skinhead" had pulled the man out of the way of some scaffolding which
fell and shed its heavy load - the result of which would have probably killed
him.
The
narration read "an event seen from one point of view gives one impression.
Seen from another point of view, it gives quite a different impression. But
it's only when you get the whole picture, you can fully understand what's going
on"
Coming from
the Guardian, that's quite ironic. But nevertheless, its message has always
stuck with me.
In
conclusion, let us consider how fortunate we are to be able to celebrate these
festivals together, here, in a country that has protected us for so many years.
In light of
the terrible attacks that our people have been subjected to, over the last year
- not least the latest in Germany just over a week ago - it is easy to become disillusioned
and pessimistic - but we should also try to look at the big picture and
remember how blessed we are to be able to worship freely, compared with the
struggles our ancestors faced.
Sukkot, our
Zman Simchateinu should remind us that, like the book of Kohelet, even when all
seems lost - a chink of joy can pierce the gloom if we let it through.
As we leave
our sukkot and enter into the spirit of Shmini Atzeret and ultimately Simchat
Torah - we do so, with the hope that the joy we experienced together will light
the long winter nights.
"Sun,
sun, sun - here it comes".
Shabbat
Shalom and Chag Sameach.
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