A Different Perspective
Several academics have expressed their opinion regarding the Cohèlet, describing it as a negative book towards life. Critics consider the author as a pessimist, often citing the well-known leitmotif ‘vanity and more vanity, everything is ephemeral, everything is in vain’.
But nothing is further from the truth. Through his famous ritornello, El Cohèlet warns us about the danger of basing our happiness on things that we traditionally consider to make us happy: money, power, having more. All this is vanity and must be put into perspective.
A Struggle Between Vanity and Joy
A reading that really does the book justice is one that balances joy with conceit. In fact, the word ‘joy’ appears as often as ‘vanity’. El Cohèlet places great value on the small joys that arise from the most concrete and basic actions of the human being, such as eating, the satisfaction of having completed a task, a job well done and gratuity.
El Cohèlet does not give up the possibility of being happy; consider that enjoying one’s actions is a wonderful gift from God. The book contains many bright and cheerful conceptions of life, which are not bad at all in an author who is often labeled as a skeptic and a pessimist.
Celebrating Joy
Precisely for this reason, the Ecclesiastes has been selected among all the canonical books to celebrate the liturgy of one of the most joyous and joyous festivals in the Jewish calendar: the Feast of Tabernacles, known as the “Station of the happiness”.
