Kohelet: An Israelite Form of Meditation

This is especially clear from its appearance in 12:8 as הַקּוֹהֶלֶת, “the Kohelet.” Personal names in Hebrew cannot be preceded by the definite article “the.”

In fact, the Mishnah teaches that the sanctity of this scroll was the subject of controversy in the second century C.E. The book was going to be excluded by the rabbis from the canon of the Tanakh. But it was saved. According to Rabbi Simeon ben Azzai on the day that they elected Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah to the high political position of patriarch of the academy, it was decided to keep Kohelet in the canon as a sacred scroll of the Tanakh (Mishnah Yadaim 3:5).

See the introduction in, Michael V. Fox, Ecclesiastes, JPS Bible Commentaries (Philadelphia: JPS, 2004), ix–xiv.

This was noted already in medieval times by the exegete R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam). See Zev Farber, “Who Said All Is Futile?” TheTorah (2014).

Editor’s note: For more on wisdom literature, see Steve Weitzman, “Was Moses Our Teacher a Good Teacher?” TheTorah (2016); Ethan Schwartz, “Torah: Deuteronomy’s Version of Wisdom for Israel,” TheTorah (2015).

The scroll verges on insulting the value of the life endeavors of many kinds of people. It is not surprising then that some rabbis wanted to prevent the scroll from entering the canon. See footnote 1.

Yoel Bin-Nun and Yaakov Medan, אני קהלת: מקהלת קולות בדמות אחת [I am Kohelet: A Chorus of Voices] (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2017).

Translations are from the NJPS unless stated otherwise.

The editor here has made use of wisdom literature tropes from multiple sources. That Ecclesiastes is a composite anthology of sources has been a view in Bible scholarship since the end of the 19th century. For a comprehensive review of the scholarship see Martin A. Shields, The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns), 2006.

Just one example shows the stark contrast between what I call the philosophical cerebral meditations of Kohelet here, and the prevalent more corporeal meditations of Eastern traditions. In Buddhist meditation tradition in a variation of the well-known corpse meditation, signifying the futility and ephemerality of life, a practitioner lies still and visualizes the disintegration of the flesh and blood of his own body, perhaps in some instances even down to it becoming a skeleton.

The phrase תחת השמש appears 29 times in Kohelet, often describing the עמל “toil” of humanity.

Robert Alter, The Wisdom Books (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 346.

One speculative thought I had is that perhaps הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים is not a mere cognitive observation about life, but rather a means for the meditation leader to instruct, “breathe” to the havelim – the meditators. Perhaps there was an ancient meditative community in Israel called the havelim, the breather-meditators.

Ultimately, if this form of meditation bears any relationship to the practices with which we are familiar, the hope may be that such meditation allows people to go beyond just freedom from suffering. Instead, the goal may be to reach forward to a state of positive compassion and maybe achieve better affective modes of consciousness, even joy.