“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit has man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?” These words of disenchantment open the book of Ecclesiastes, which Jews read this Saturday during the weeklong holiday of Sukkot.
Everything has an appointed season, but what makes this biblical book fitting to study on this holiday? Sukkot is known as the “time of our happiness,” a festival where God commands Jews to “have nothing but joy.” Yet Ecclesiastes seems to brim with dour messages.
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