The Crisis of Kohelet

When we encounter the book of Kohelet(Ecclesiastes), we encounter an author in crisis. Kohelet son of David is unable to see any meaning in life. What is the nature of this personal crisis? How has the King come to this bleak outlook? Let's approach Kohelet through the lens of modern Tanach study and Psychoanalytic theory and see if we can gain some insight into these questions.

Contradictory Voices

Our sages found the book of Kohelet(Ecclesiastes) to be problematic, and considered omitting it from the Tanach, as the Gemara relates:

Rav Yehuda, son of Rav Shmuel bar Sheilat, said in the name of Rav: The Sages sought to suppress the book of Ecclesiastes (and declare it apocryphal) because its statements contradict one other. And why did they not suppress it? Because its beginning consists of matters of Torah and its end consists of matters of Torah.(Shabbat 30b).

How are we to understand the many internal contradictions in this book and what do they mean?

Yoel Bin-Nun and Yaakov Meidan present a novel approach to this question in their book "Ani Kohelet"(pub. 2017). The theory is that the book of Kohelet is a dialectic between four different "Personalities", from within the head of  a single author:

1. Practical Personality- a man of action and achievement
2. Hedonic Personality- out to enjoy all life has to offer
3. Wise Personality- a master of wisdom
4. Pious Personality- Godfearing man

This theory of different sub-personalities also explains the name of the book's mysterious author:

"The words of Kohelet son of David, king in Jerusalem."

Who is this Kohelet son of David who is mentioned nowhere else in Tanach? Our sages identify him as King Shlomo, but why the pseudonym?

Bin-Nun and Meidan read the name Kohelet as rooted in "Makhelah"--the Hebrew word for a "Choir". Shlomo refers to himself by this name as a reference to the choir of different voices in his head who engage in this poetic dialog. From this perspective, the Book of Kohelet reads almost like a Greek Play, performed by distinct characters, each singing their parts in dialog with one another.

Shlomo chooses to use a pseudonym due to the deeply personal nature of sharing his inner conflict.

Psychosynthesis

According to Bin-Nun and Meidan, the book of Kohelet records the conflict between the many sub-personalities in King Shlomo head. This literary theory reflects a popular psychanalytical model of personality.

Freud and Jung

Psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung developed the idea that Human personality can be understood as as an amalgam of various sub-personalities. A person strives to integrate these personalities and reach a state of equilibrium between them.  Jordan Peterson points out that, as challenges are encountered, the sub-personalities clash and each one "tries to make their case". As such, these sub-personalities are most apparent at times of crisis. This process of Psychosynthesis is actually adaptive and looks something like this:

1. Equilibrium- subject has a well-integrated personality
2. Crisis- breaks the equilibrium. One of the subject's sub-personalities has an extreme reaction to the crisis
3. Psychosynthesis- Subject thinks obsessively about the crisis, how he failed to anticipate it, how he failed in handling it, what he should do about it moving forward. Each sub-personality has a take and they argue with one another whose approach is correct. This can take days, weeks, months, or even years as the subject subconsciously seeks a satisfactory solution
4. Re-Integration- subject has "solved" the situation and now has an approach for dealing with it in the future.  A new equilibrium has been reached and they have grown as a person. 

King Shlomo's Crisis

This model of Crisis, Psychosynthesis, and Reintegration fits well with the description of Kohelet as a dialog between sub-personalities who reach a resolution in the end. That said, one cannot help but wonder what was the crisis that triggered the whole process. No external danger is mentioned, so it seems that we are dealing with an Existential Crisis.

Existential Crisis- in existentialism, a crucial stage or turning point at which an individual is faced with finding meaning and purpose in life and taking responsibility for their choices(from American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology)

I would speculate that Shlomo finds himself in a whopping Midlife Crisis. He has been incredibly successful: ruling over a stable kingdom, building God's temple, amassing a personal fortune, and having fathered numerous children with his many wives. At this point, the incredibly ambitious Shlomo looks forward to his next achievement and finds... nothing of significance. He has been spectacularly successful, but has already accomplished all of his greatest achievements. Looking forward, Shlomo sees only lesser goals and his own mortality looming.

Looking at the Structure of Kohelet, in the first half of the book Shlomo finds himself pulled in four different directions:

1. Practical Personality- pulls him to gather more riches and build more palaces and gardens
2. Hedonic Personality- pulls him to enjoy his remaining days in luxury
3. The Wise Personality- pulls him to prefer a life of scholarship over a material life 
4. Pious Personality- pulls him to live piously as a humble servant of God

Shlomo recognizes the value of each of these approaches, each "In it's own season", but ultimately chooses Wisdom and Piety as the focus for his latter days. This will make a worthy legacy as a son of David and King of Jerusalem. At this point he has integrated his sub-personalities, grown as a person, and the crisis is resolved. 

The Structure of Kohelet

Kohelet(Ecclesiastes) is a difficult book to read. Most books in the Tanach are divided into distinct stories, poems, or prescriptive passages. Kohelet, on the other hand, is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, full of repetitive and and contradictory passages that make it hard to follow. As a first step to approaching this book, it may be helpful to analyse it's structure.

Kohelet divided based on Masoretic divisions

The Masoretic Structure

For a start, let's look at the breaks in the Masoretic text of Kohelet. Verse 11 ends with an Open Break and the poem "For Every Season" is also delineated with Open Breaks. There is also a break 52 verses before the end of the book. In all, these divisions give us five sections. This is not satisfactory as the bulk of the book remains in one long 118 verse section followed by a 52 verse section. Compare this with Esther whose 167 verses are broken into over 20 sections by the Masoretic breaks, making it's structure explicit.

  

Kohelet divided by Chapter

Chapter Divisions

What about the 12 chapter divisions in Kohelet? These divisions are not part of the original text(circa the 9th century BCE), but were made by Stephen Langton in the 13th century based on his understanding of the text. These divisions are generally based on textual cues, but sometimes seem disconnected from the text(for instance consider the break between Kohelet Ch. 4 and 5, when there is no discernible break on the narrative, and perhaps was added due to Langton's desire to create roughly consistent chapter sizes).

The granular Chapter Divisions can help us get an overview of the text, since they are roughly similar in size and each one's content can be summarized. That said, this structure is not fundamental since the divisions are not based on a deep textual analysis.

I am Kohelet

I recently encountered a fresh take on Kohelet in Yoel Bin-Nun and Yaakov Meidan's "Ani Kohelet"(published in Hebrew in 2017). They develop a literary theory that the book of Kohelet is a dialectic between four different "Voices", each a different perspective presented by the book's single author:

1. Wise Man- a master of wisdom
2. Practical Man- a man of action and achievement
3. Hedonic Man- out to enjoy all life has to offer
4. Pious Man- Godfearing man

"Ani Kohelet" is a collection of lectures and papers developing this approach, delineating these characters, their literary styles, and their themes. This theory quite effectively explains the book's dialectic style and resolves it's conflicts since the voices are explained as warring perspectives in the mind of the author.

Incidentally, the name "Kohelet" is explained as rooted in the word "Makhelah"--the Hebrew word for "Choir". These four arguing voices come together into a sort of choral song of multiple voices.

Structure Based on Ani Kohelet

If we map-out the passages spoken by each of the four voices(as well as a fifth voice for general narration), then a clear structure for the book emerges.

Yoel Bin-Nun divides the book into two distinct halves of similar size, with the 2nd half beginning with Chapter 7. He also divides the halves into 3 sections each, roughly along Chapter divisions, but with notable exceptions in chapers 4 and 9.

Kohelet's Structure based on "Ani Kohelet"

In the first half, the four voices are in constant, chaotic dialog with one another, with no clear winner emerging. At the beginning of Section 3, the Pious Voice opens with a significant monologue, but this is immediately undermined by the other voices. This unresolved dialog goes well with the theme of the "To Every Season" poem at the beginning of the Section 2. The Poem's meaning is that there is no ultimate perspective and that different times call for different approaches. The four voices demonstrate this principal as they refute one another's arguments, but with no clear winner emerging.

In the second section, the dialog is much more ordered. The Wise Voice has a long monologue spanning all of Section 4, and then argues with each of the other three voices individually in Section 5. In Section 6 the Wise Voice has a final monologue, but is then undermined by the Pious voice and his final monologue. Kohelet ends with the general Narrator's summary, first restating Kohelet's dilemma, then  praising Wise men and their works, and the finally arguing for Piety and the fear of God.

Insights from the Structure of Kohelet

If you would have asked me to summarize Kohelet before this analysis, I would have said that King Solomon is seeking the meaning of life and ultimately concludes that it is to live a God-Fearing life.

After performing this analysis, however, I think that King Solomon's answer is much less black-and-white. Solomon really truly believes that each of the four perspectives herein have their "season". That said, he ultimately favours Wisdom and Piety as primary over Practicality and Hedonism.

Book Review: Vagueness Vanquished

Vagueness Vanquished: A Strategic Approach to Learning Gemara by Rabbi Peretz Segal is a 100 page handbook detailing the author's methodology for learning Talmud.

Rav Segal  gives his method the acronym StructaPoP, which has 3 phases:

1. Structure- structural analysis of the text
2. Power Questioning- to identify the problems or ambiguities within the text
3. Paradigm Shift- finding a new model for understanding the sugia

After introducing the general methodology in Chapter 1, the following 3 chapters takes us a level deeper, with how to apply it to Mishna, Gemara, and Rishonim, respectively.

I had the privilege of attending Rav Segal's classes for the better part of a year in 2003-4. The book does a good job of presenting his technique and includes a moderate dose of his wry sense of humor. I even found a new idea to adapt to my current learning: for each textual section, go back and formulate and write down a title summarizing the topic of the section. This helps me keep track of the big picture and the flow of the meta-narrative.

I recall my move from Ohr Samayach to Har Etzion in 2004. At first, immersion into the Brisker methodology was a bit of a culture shock. The style of classes, their focus and even the vocabulary were completely different. Looking back, Rav Segal's methodology has a lot to say about 1) Structure and 2) Power Questioning, but not much about 3) Paradigm Shift, except that there should be one. What sort of new paradigm should we look for? How can we find it?  In the10 out of 100  pages dedicated to Paradigm Shift in the handbook, these questions are barely addressed. If anything, one would expect this to be the largest section! Structural analysis is fundamental, as is asking good questions, but at the end of the day, it is one's final explanation of the sugya that is the result of one's learning.

The Gush's Brisker Methodology, on the other hand, is all about the Paradigm Shift. The Brisker Derech focuses on developing a library of models for explaining the sugiot of the Talmud. So, to sum up, Rav Segal's shiur gave me a great basis from which to continue in the Gush, but the difference in emphasis took me a while to process.

Bottom line, I highly recommend Vagueness Vanquished as an introduction to Talmud learning methodology. It's an easy read and the tools for approaching texts are fundamental for the aspiring lamdan.

Book Review: Wrestling Jacob

I originally heard about Shmuel Klitsner's book Wrestling Jacob on Sarah Rindner's excellent Book of Books blog. It sat on my list of books to order for a long time, but recently made the cut when I was making an Amazon order and I found a used copy on the cheap.

What you get is 180 pages of close literary reading and Modern commentary on the story of Jacob and Esau. The analysis begins with Rivka's tempestuous pregnancy, continues through to the brothers' momentous meeting upon Jacob's return to Canaan, and ends with a final exploration of parallel passages in the Torah, specifically God trying to kill Moshe at the Inn and Bilaam's encounter with the Angelic swordsman.

Klitsner's methodology is interesting. He has a long introduction detailing methodology and assumptions. It's important, so let's summarize the salient features:

• Close literary readings
• as opposed to Critical readings which put idiosyncrasies down to progressive changes/additions
• as opposed to Fundamentalist readings which explain-away ideosyncrasies
• instead, Klitsner takes idiosyncrasies/repetition as an authorial choice with a literary payload
• Bible as a "Divine Anthropology" of Jewish people
• As opposed to novels or even Greek classics which focus on Human individuality
• Subtext gives insight into authorial intent

Rabbi Klitsner

Klitsner ultimately suggests these stories have as a theme, the struggle between Human autonomy and Divine destiny. Yet he contrasts how this theme plays out in the Bible with how it plays out in Greek literature. In Greek literature, people must follow their destiny as determined by the Gods, when they break this mold, bad things happen. The Bible carries this theme in the opposite direction. Characters try to fulfill their divine destiny, but suffer when they use illicit means to achieve those ends.

This is a very Modern literary reading, with the focus being on Jacob's individual religious experience, his inner struggle, and his eventual redemption.

Bottom line, Wrestling Jacob is a great book for anyone interested in Literary Bible studies. It's a short book, but is dense with ideas, close readings, and intertextualities. Highly recommended!