A Pessimist’s Requiem
Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action as long ago approved by God. Ecclesiastes 9:7 JPS
Go – Walk the path. Take the journey. Move along. Hālak is the Hebrew term here. You are the traveler on your life’s path, and there are some good things along the way despite all the absurdities, injustices, and suffering. A man is required to enjoy those things not prohibited. Why? Because if he doesn’t, life will turn to ash and suicide will be the only answer.
“The underlying issue that Ecclesiastes addresses is the possibility of meaningfulness in life. For events to be meaningful, they would have to cohere in a comprehensible picture. Deed and consequence must correspond securely and predictably. The righteous should be rewarded, the wicked should be punished; the one who toils should get to enjoy the fruits of his work; the wise should have a life the polar opposite of the fool’s, and something should distinguish them in death.”[1]
But it doesn’t turn out that way, does it? Perhaps the greatest problem with the Tanakh is not the presence of evil but the injustice of the creation. It’s enough to make you want to quit.
Except—except there are some things, some few temporal things, that provide glimmers of hope. Moderate work, temporary enjoyment, love and friendship, gaining wisdom, reasonable righteousness, fearing God, and waiting for justice. “These are our portion and should be embraced . . .”[2] They are the stop-gap measures that forestall ending it all. Use them!
My wife thinks I’m a pessimist. She’s undoubtedly right (she usually is). But I’m a pessimist like Heschel. “Heschel is also suggesting that prophecy is based in what is a fundamentally optimistic view of the world: it is susceptible to perfection (with divine inspiration), even though it cannot be one with the transcendent realm of the Creator. Mystical/apocalyptic thought is, by contract, based in a pessimistic view of the terrestrial world, absent a connection to the divine realm. Apocalyptic thought seeks to connect to the divine realm in order to get beyond what would otherwise be an irredeemable earthly existence. And it is perhaps in this pessimism about the ability of the human world to repair itself that the potential dangers of mystical indulgence reveal themselves.”[3] So, I am an optimist in spite of my view of history. But I read Kohelet in order to avoid the “mystical indulgence” of apocalyptic thinking. Perhaps that’s what we might call “realism,” although the word packs too much modern thought into its envelope. Kohelet helps me remember not to buy the lie of “reel” life, but he also reminds me that there are moments of celebration in our journeys, and they must also be lived.
Topical Index: joy, pessimism, apocalyptic, Ecclesiastes 9:7
[1] Michael J. Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes (JPS, 2004), p. xxx.
[2] Ibid., p. xxxi.
[3] Gordon Tucker, in Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations (ed. and trans. by Gordon Tucker, Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, 2007), p. 279.
