This past year, inspired by news that my mentor Rabbi Hesch Sommer had actually read the thing, I went ahead and bought a copy of the 800-page behemoth of a book Heavenly Torah by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as translated by Rabbi Gordon Tucker. I haven't gotten very far in the book. Actually, I've only read as far as the translator's acknowledgments. But one statement there really caught my attention. Rabbi Tucker writes that “much work on this translation and commentary was done over a number of summers in a very beloved setting, the ocean beach in Corolla, North Carolina. The pristine beauty of the sky and sands and the awesome power of the ocean reminded me constantly of (Rabbi) Heschel's unique understanding of the role of radical amazement in the religious consciousness.”
As many of you know, and as I have spoken of here before, my family and I spend a couple of weeks every year vacationing on the ocean beach in Corolla, North Carolina. Many a sermon has been planned out or even written there. At least one has been inspired by its surroundings. The structure of my rabbinical-school master's thesis was actually first sketched out with my toes in the sand there. Tonight's sermon too came from that place, and it was my wife who inspired it.
We were walking along the beach together when she said to me, “This is the perfect place to spend the month of Elul.” Elul is the Hebrew month that ended this evening and traditionally it is seen as preparatory for the high holidays. Beginning in Elul the shofar is sounded each day to remind us that Rosh Hashanah is approaching and with it the judgment of the heavenly court. Elul is a time of repaying debts, of fulfilling promises as yet unkept, of reflecting on our lives and where we stand with regard to our hopes and expectations.
So when Terri said that the beach there in Corolla was the perfect place to spend the month of Elul, I knew exactly what she meant. But the first thing that came to my mind when she said it were these words from ספר קהלת, the book of Ecclesiastes: all the rivers flow to the sea, and yet the sea is not filled up.
Ecclesiastes, or, to call it again by its Hebrew name Kohelet, is a strange, powerful and presciently modern book. You all know the famous opening of its third chapter: “To everything there is a season and I time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, etc.” Yet the bulk of this book is a somber reflection on man’s limitedness and the folly of so many of his efforts: הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת - “Futility of futilities, says Kohelet,” in the book’s second verse - הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל: “futility of futilities, all is futile!” That pretty much sets the tone for what follows.
Who is Kohelet? According to the text he is בֶּן־דָּוִד מֶלֶךְ בִּירוּשָׁלָם - Son of David, King in Jerusalem. Our tradition therefore identifies him as King Solomon. The name Kohelet derives from the Hebrew root that means to assemble, therefore we interpret his name to mean the one who assembled wisdom, or the one in whom wisdom was assembled - that is, King Solomon.
And to what conclusions does Solomon or Kohelet come concerning wisdom? Basically that wisdom is better than folly, but that neither wisdom nor folly stand as an enduring monument to ourselves. He writes:
I saw that there was more gain in wisdom than in folly just as there is more gain in light than in darkness. Someone who is wise has eyes in his head, while a fool goes around in darkness. But then I also knew that there is but one fate that is fated for us all. So I said to myself, since what will happen to the fool will also happen to me, why have I bothered gaining greater wisdom? And then I said to myself, “this too is futility.”
Or consider, if you will, the famous words with which the book opens:
What gain is there to a man in all the struggles that he struggles under the sun? A generation comes and a generation goes, but the earth stands forever. And the sun rises, and the sun sets, then it pants to its place and there it rises… The wind goes round and round and then to its rounding it returns. All rivers flow to the sea, and yet the sea is not filled up; to the place where the rivers flow, there they return to go … The eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which was, is that which will be, and that which was done, is that which will be done, and there is nothing entirely new under the sun. Sometime, there is something of which someone says “Look, this is new!” It has already existed in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of the earlier ones, and also, as to the later ones that will be, there will be no remembrance among those who come later still.
I need to comment here about the language. To me, this is some of the most beautiful, most powerful poetry ever written. Its even prettier in the Hebrew. Listen to just one verse: מַה־שֶּֽׁהָיָה֙ ה֣וּא שֶׁיִּֽהְיֶ֔ה וּמַה־שֶּׁנַּֽעֲשָׂ֔ה ה֖וּא שֶׁיֵּֽעָשֶׂ֑ה וְאֵ֥ין כָּל־חָדָ֖שׁ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ: One might be tempted to call it pessimistic or fatalistic. But I ask you: how can anything this beautiful be either? The word I would use to describe it is poignant. Its poignant because our lives are poignant. Within us is the God-given desire to do and achieve and distinguish ourselves, hopefully for good. Yet for all that desire, the world remains aloof and indifferent to us. Kohelet captures that poignant struggle and addresses it not with some platitude about life’s mysteries, but with the unvarnished truth visible to our eyes: that the world keeps spinning without our pushing.
Which takes me back to the beach in Corolla. We’ve been vacationing there as a family for 10 years now and I sometimes wonder why. I personally take both joy and comfort in going back to places that are familiar, so that is certainly a part of it. Then of course there is the wonderful time we have as a family which, as my children continue to grow, becomes more and more precious to me. But there are things about Corolla and the Outer Banks that are less than ideal. The twelve hour drive takes a lot out of you - especially on the way back. The restaurants there are either expensive or lousy. The sun can, at times, be brutally hot and while there is plenty of shopping, there isn’t anything to buy. And to be honest, it can get a bit boring there some times.
But then there is that beach; that astonishing, magnificent beach.
I have been to prettier beaches. The beaches in St. John seem to exist at the very edge of Paradise. But the beach at Corolla seems to exist at the very edge of the earth. If you go there early in the morning or late in the afternoon, you can sit on that beach virtually alone. It stretches out as far as the eye can see both north and south. Before you, the blue-green ocean circumscribes what seems like an entire hemisphere. When the wind blows, the waves beat down on the shore with enormous force. One cannot help but measure oneself against them as they rise up and crash down.
As you stare at the sand bar before you, it becomes increasingly alive with sideways slip of more and more sand crabs. While their bodies are often camouflaged, their pairs of Picasso-like eyes give them away. They can move with palpable caution, or dash across the sand with blinding speed.
Closer to the water, the sanderlings perform a magnificent dance. As the waves retreat, these little birds rush in to peck for their food in the still saturated sand. But they don’t like to get their feet wet so they are constantly pirouetting and running to avoid the next, oncoming wave. Their movements are beautiful and, in their own tiny way, astonishing.
For ten years now, in the rising sunshine or gathering shadows, I have sat, staring at this same, glorious scene. Only of course, it is never the same. The crabs are different crabs, the sanderlings are different sanderlings, even the ocean is a different ocean as the wind and tide stir up new waters every day. A generation comes and a generation goes, but the earth stands forever.
What makes the beach at Corolla so special to me is that I feel the presence of Kohelet when I’m there. And his presence reminds me of the poignancy of my life, and of all of our lives. Bigger than the crabs and the sanderlings, but smaller than the crashing waves, I take my place on the beach for my time. Today someone else was sitting out there. And generations from now it will be yet another person. Perhaps that person will share with others the profound feelings that place evokes in him. Perhaps they will be astonished by the freshness of his insight. You and I both know that there is nothing entirely new under the sun. But you and I will be long forgotten.
Which brings me back to Terri’s insight. “This is the perfect place to spend the month of Elul,” she said. What makes the beach at Corolla such a wonderful place to spend Elul is that it provides a quiet setting in which to look at yourself and your life plainly and quietly. This does not mean giving into despair or deciding that everything is futile. It does mean stripping away the distractions and the vanities and focusing on the few things that really are essential to our lives.
The hopeful message in all this is that our tradition demands it of us. Kohelet may have discovered that much of what we do is futile and chasing of the wind, but Judaism still insists that we account for ourselves. There’s even a prayer in our morning service that warns us against giving into despair. Sure, it says, you can see the world as futile, but never forget that we are the children of Abraham, the seed of Isaac and the congregation of Jacob. In other words, the ties that give meaning to our lives are larger and longer than our eyes are used to seeing, and so we often miss them. We are commanded to remember that when all seems futile, and to act accordingly.
Kohelet ends with these words: “The sum of the matter, when all has been considered: Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is man’s whole duty. For God will judge every deed - even everything hidden - whether good or evil.” Modern critics note that the purposefulness and piety of this final statement is in marked contrast to the rest of the book with its prominent theme of futility. They conclude, therefore, that these final words were actually a later addition to make the rest of the text acceptable as part of the biblical canon.
I disagree. Kohelet’s advice to fear God and keep His commandments is not a contradiction to his message but the actual fulfillment of it. If all is futile, then so is despair. I leave the beach at Corolla convinced that I am very small and that the world is very vast. But I leave it also with the sense of how privileged I am to be able to see it in all its vastness. The sand crabs can’t. The sanderlings can’t. The crashing waves can’t. It is I who have been given the ability to see it in perspective. And that leaves me with the faith that I am attached to something that is beyond all I can see.
For those of you who have never been, I wish you your own version of the beach at Corolla. I wish you a place that has the power to strip the vanities from your life and that gives you the chance to measure yourself against the vastness of God’s creation. I wish you the understanding of how poignant your own life is, and then I wish you the faith to find true and enduring meaning in spite of it all. May the One who fashioned the heaven and the earth and all that is therein grant this to you in His new year, and may you thus return to Him in love and in awe.
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