Benjamin Kerstein accepts the usual translation of "hevel" as "vanity," and calls Kohelet the Rabbi of Enlightened Despair in an essay that teases out of the book's most well-known passages a portrait of a man so jaded from an over-rich life that he does not flinch from looking into the void. He is the polar opposite of the unalloyed innocent joy of Sukkot, when we are reborn.

Thus the season continues its manic-depressive character, where we rejoice at the birthday of the world yet recite a list of horrible deaths, where we sing jaunty songs about a loving God yet wear our kittels and call out in despair for reprieve from a harsh judgement, where we are commanded to be joyful for seven days but somewhere during that time read this ode to futility. This kind of double consciousness is exemplified by the Talmudic suggestion that we should keep a scrap of paper in each pocket, one saying "I am nothing but dust" and the other "For me the world was created."

In his small book The Way of Solomon, Rabbi Rami Shapiro translates it as "emptiness," "moments," and "breath," and claims that Kohelet was actually Judaism's version of Lao Tze.

This interpretation is in tune with Sukkot's emphasis on impermanence. Throughout this lengthy season of self-doubt and self-examination (which really began with the 17th of Tammuz), we gradually let go of our sturdy psychological edifaces, and enter a wilderness of uncertainty where we let go of old patterns of behavior but have not yet taken ownership of new ones. During this liminal time our emotions naturally swing from optimism to despair. Sukkot tells us that in the past we were nomads in the wilderness, and we not only lived through it, but were protected by God and taught new ways (in the giving of the Torah on Sinai, which we celebrate at the very end of this holiday season).

The message of Sukkot is that even without permanence and control we can be happy. Kohelet reminds us not to expect much permanence and control once we leave the wilderness and return to our mundane lives. And to remember while we plan and build with our new consciousness, that we are but dust.

Yehuda Amichai:

A man in his life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

Just because Kohelet is serious doesn't mean one can't have fun with it.

Futility of futilities,” Sarah Rivkah bas Leah Rochel said. “All is futile.”

What profit does a balabusta have for all her labor, which she toils in the supermarket and in the kitchen?

A table of guests comes and a table of guests goes, but Yom Tov endures almost forever. And the sun rises and the sun sets — then it is Yom Tov again. All the guests flow into the sukkah, yet the sukkah is not full until we invite the ushpizin (seven souls). (Could have fooled me; there is hardly room to put the soup.)

. . . . Whatever has been cooked is what will be served, and whatever was forgotten in the back of the refrigerator will not be served. There are no new recipes beneath the sun (except at Susan’s house — she has more than 100 cookbooks, and even uses them). Sometimes there is a salad of which one says, “Look! This is new!” Yet it is simply arugula with mustard vinaigrette, and it has already existed in the ages before us.

. . . . Then I looked at all the things that I had done and the energy I had expended in doing them; it was clear that was all madness and folly, . . . . Everything has its season, and there is a time for everything under the heavens:

A time to plan menus, and a time to shop.
A time to cook, and a time to set the table.
A time to put children in time out, and a time to heal.
A time to bake cakes and a time to eat.
A time to shop again, and a time to pray for parking.
A time to chop vegetables, and a time to borrow two onions from your neighbor.
A time to serve guests, and a time to clean up.
A time to feel exhausted ... is a good time to stay silent.