>> Sharon Horowitz: Welcome to the Library of Congress. Thank you all for coming. My name is Sharon Horowitz. I'm a Reference Librarian in the Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division. This is the Hebraic Section's fourth program this year. Recordings of two of the previous programs can be found on the Hebraic Section website, under the heading Webcasts. These recordings include a lecture about Yiddish in America by Professor Lawrence Strauss and The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19, a lecture by Dr. Jeremy Brown. First, a word about the Hebraic section. The systematic development of Hebraica in the National Library began in 1912, when a Jewish philanthropist named Jacob Schiff bought a collection of 10,000 Hebrew books, pamphlets, and manuscripts assembled by book collector Ephraim Denhardt and gave it to the Library of Congress. Some highlights of the Hebraic section collection include 230 recently digitized Hebrew manuscripts and extensive range of periodicals, both popular and scholarly. 900 Hebrew and Yiddish Yizkor books, which are Holocaust memorial books written by survivors of Jewish towns destroyed by the Nazis and of great interest to genealogists, and 1300 original Yiddish play scripts submitted for copyright in the early 20th century. 77 of these are digitized. Our work includes selecting books to add to the collection, lending books to other institutions via interlibrary loan, responding to requests for information both online and in person from members of Congress, students and professors, as well as the general public. Two of our missions are to preserve and publicize our collections. One way we do this is by sponsoring programs like this one. And now, a word about today's speakers. Professor Menachem Fisch is the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and philosophy of science and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University. Debra Band is a scholar and an artist. In her illuminated manuscripts, she draws upon her love of both the manuscript arts and the Jewish textual tradition. They will be speaking about their recently published book, "Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living." One reviewer characterized the book's combination of a unique philosophical analysis, together with the beautiful illuminations as a feast for the eyes, the mind and the heart. I think that after today's presentation, you will agree. And now please join me in welcoming our speakers. Thank you. [Applause] >> Menahem Fisch: Thank you, Sharon Horowitz, for your introduction and for making this event happen. And thank you, Debra, for a roller coaster of more than three years work on the Bible's most intriguing text and the adventure of working on this text across the boundaries between the very different media in which we work. Bringing together a philosophical reading and, as Debra will describe in detail a visionary midrash, a visual midrash was quite the adventure. And it's an honor and a pleasure to be here in this fabulous building and fabulous hall. R.B.Y Scott's memorable Anchor Bible Volume deems Qohelet to be the strangest book in the Bible whose presence in it is the most inexplicable. Qohelet, as many of you know acknowledges there being one God in heaven, creator and judge of all, but makes no mention at all of divine covenant, divine law, divine revelation. From which Alan Mittleman in a recent book concludes that if Qohelet knows of divine revelation at all, he brackets its importance or relevance. Now I read Qohelet not as a religious thinker, ignorant or indifferent to divine revelation, but as grappling with the religious problem that he believes must be addressed before we can begin to heed to God's words. A deeply religious, yet to coin a term, a term, a pre revelatory discourse, if you wish. Any serious reading of Qohelet must be clear about its overall premise and subsequent question both posed for the first time in verses two and three of the book, and repeated throughout. The premise is that all but all is hevel. A term, I shall leave at the moment untranslated. A word repeated five times at that one opening verse. The question. What yitaron... Another word I'll leave untranslated for the moment. Has man of all his labor wherein he labors under the sun? If all is hevel, whatever that means. What yitaron, whatever that means, can any human endeavor boast to have under the sun? Of the two terms, yitaron is the more straightforward. taken invariably as profit, advantage or value. But the question of yitaron changes significantly according to how one understands the term hevel. Following the Latin vanitas most read hevel as meaninglessness, futility, even absurdity, which renders Qohelet's question largely rhetorical. If anything we can ever think or do amounts to nothingness. What value indeed can undertakings ever boast. Qohelet hence read by many as proving the worthlessness of serious human effort and as advocating, say, on the basis of chapter 9 taking pleasure in life while one can, while at the same time, on the basis of chapter 12, fearing God and obeying his command. If the two things can be done together, even the best of such readings leave much of the text unattended. The curious change of tone at the beginning of chapter 3, the Sober counsels of chapters 6 and 7, the political musings of chapter 4, the wise farmer of 11, and much more. I reed Qohelet's hevel premise differently. The term is indeed employed in the Bible to denote meaningless and futility. However, only with respect to idolatry and idolatrous. Hevel [Inaudible] we say in [Inaudible] But when applied to human life, the term hevel is employed more literally to connote a mist like temporality, which is neither necessarily meaningless nor futile. And because applied in Qohelet both to the human life span and to human understanding and human undertakings, I take Hevel as deeming them not only to be transient and fleeting, but to be wholly temporal and time bound. If all we can ever accomplish is forever contingently grounded in the ever changing here and now, Qohelet asks if what we consider undeniably true or good today can be denied tomorrow. If we can never be sure of what we are sure, what could ever count as an undertaking of proven worth? How under conditions of perpetual doubt, can we lead a life for whose value we can vouch? The next eight verses restate the question in terms of the despairing incongruity between what us philosophers dub ontology and epistemology. Between nature's timeless, law governed cycles and gold, and our time bound and hence wholly inadequate attempts to comprehend them in white. Doomed to live in a world we can never assuredly understand, we perceive reality as unfolding in time, while in truth there is nothing new under the sun, and memory is to no avail accruing time bound pictures can never yield a timeless portrayal. At this point, Qohelet switches from the third person to the tortured personal testimony of a profoundly religious thinker who gave his heart to seek by wisdom concerning all things under the heaven, only to find that what God has given man to be exercised by is a bad, even evil matter. And I encourage you to compare the Hebrew for those who can to the English translations. The Hebrew is far more pointed than the English renditions. inyan ra means an evil. Or bad matter. Talking of what God has given us to contend with strongly implies that the basic discrepancy between reality and how we comprehend it is not only not diminished by divine revelation, but in fact applies to it. God's two books, that of nature and that of Scripture, are authored in timeless perfection that wholly transcends the ever changing vagaries of human understanding and are hence equally ungraspable as such, by those God has made responsible for his world and the covenantal recipients of His Word. Oblivious to his standards, how can we prudently subject ourselves to God's will if we can never know it? This states an anxious and distraught Qohelet is the evil and crushing matter. We are obliged by God to respond. [Inaudible] to respond to be tortured by. In tortured realization of our total inadequacy to do so. But what causes Qohelet to realise the full horror of his predicament are his two dismally failed attempts to undermine them, to undermine it being of supreme wisdom, he states, speaking of Solomon, I set upon a keen study of human wisdom itself. In Hebrew [Inaudible] to know wisdom itself, hoping to achieve certain understanding, but only to find that even the wisest of humans is only humanly wise, and therefore incapable of surpassing reason's inherent time boundedness. Much wisdom is much anger, he explains, and he that increases knowledge increases pain. And what is unachievable by the wisest of words cannot be achieved by the best of works. Chapter two portrays Solomon's Jerusalem as a model of utilitarian morality, not the story of an immensely rich man's indulgences, but that of a king who achieved more for his people than any other. Yet even Solomon's unrivalled political achievements proved to be no less transient than his wisdom. And Qohelet's despair knows no limit, causing him at the end of chapter two to abhor life and despair of all the labors which he took under the sun. This is perhaps the darkest passage in the entire Hebrew Bible. But this is not where Qohelet's argument terminates, as many have it. This is where it begins. The contrast between the dark loathing of life at the end of chapter two and the buoyant optimism of the Song of Seasons that opens chapter 3 is dramatic. In realizing that for everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven Qohelet seems able to re-embrace life and revisit, almost verbatim, the heart gripping quandary from which he set forth, yet with no anger and no bitterness. He now sees the task. With which God has given us to contend, but no longer as a painful or evil or bad matter, no longer. And inyan ra. What I believe Qohelet realizes with a jolt that the opening of three is that although God's timeless and perfect norms are indeed humanly unknowable, to hold us accountable to standards that we are incapable of knowing would constitute a violation of God's perfect justice. Because God cannot but be aware of our inherent time boundedness, it is unthinkable that he'd hold us to his timeless standards. I hence read chapter three's opening verse. Thus, because God created us and the world in time, God will judge us not by his timeless standards, but by the time bound quality of our own time bound assessments. He does not expect us to arrive at absolute criteria for planting, building or waging war, but to do our time bound best to determine whether to plant now, or to uproot, to kill now, or to heal, to wage war now or to make peace. With a great sigh of relief, Qohelet realizes that the task we face is no longer devastating. God has given her the word given again, the world in our heart, knowing that we cannot comprehend it from the beginning to the end. We are expected to do our context dependent best to do good, not to somehow meet unknowable divine standards. Referring back to the world that we cannot fully grasp, Qohelet enables today's reader to appreciate his change of heart. The very idea of proven scientific truth, we now realize, is a conceit. Scientific laws cannot be proven. Scientists form hypotheses. They test them and replace them when they're found wanting. At its very best, science remains undetermined, tentative and fallible. Yet none would consider science to be meaningless. Absurd. Or futile. Qohelet will extend this insight to all serious human judgment, and attempt to determine what amounts to doing one's humanly best in that regard. Two positions Qohelet deems to be foolish, the over pious who rely passively on divine providence and retribution rather than risk erring by taking responsibility for their worlds. And the Uber rise, who haughtily deny the heavenly premise and proceed dogmatically confusing their feelings of certainty with certainty itself. Qohelet has no patience with either category of fools who keep cropping up in his text. Chapter four combats the political problem raised by the hevel premise of how to prevent society from being torn apart by its members inevitably diverse, culture specific ideas of the good. His ingenious answer is that social cooperation does not require normative consensus, and certainly not a Hobbes like surrender of one's judgment to the Leviathan. Social stability, he argues, can be achieved by agreeing that to stand together in the face of natural hazards and human menace is always preferable to standing alone, regardless of our normative differences. Chapters five and six warn first against identifying a worthy life with ardent vertical observance, and second, against gauging its worth by material gain. Qohelet understands the temptation of reducing the worthy to material worth and argues firmly against it. Qohelet embarks on his own positive account of wise human conduct with a powerful, if largely misread, image, and I urge you to compare the English to the Hebrew original. What advantage has the wise man more than the fool, he asks? The advantage a poor man has who knows how to go against life. [Speaking in foreign language] Not against the living, but against life. Critical of what life has dealt them and determined to improve it. Such poor people assume responsibility by imagining ways of improving their world, scrutinizing them critically before settling on a way forward, keenly combining value, judgment and informed speculation. They apply their standards of propriety to expose what they deem to be wrong and imagine putting right, knowing that they are liable to error and even when right. Successful, unsuccessful. But Qohelet also knows that even the wisest of poor self critics, because we use our norms to criticize, we are incapable of holding them in critical check, which is where normative diversity emerges for Qohelet as an asset. Chapter 7 is about enhancing critical self reflection by deliberately exposing oneself to similarly trying situations, to those one faces and the normative critique of others. Better to seek a good name than precious ointment, to go to houses of mourning, rather than to those of mirth, to seek the rebuke of the wise rather than the praise of fools and so forth. And it ends with a sobering realization we can talk about in discussion that even maxims considered undeniable valid, such as always to avert-- There we go. Such as always, to avoid the company of illicit women remain uncertain because they can never be applied with certainty. Chapter nine combats the only rival position Qohelet takes seriously. Benign hedonists who fully accept Qohelet's analysis yet see no sense in adopting the anxious, perpetually self-doubting life Qohelet prescribes and opt rationally to best enjoy their brief respite on earth instead, and indeed, countess Qohelet, we never know when disaster will strike, but predicting and preparing for it are two different things. Thus, Qohelet considers wise will have studied such calamities and planned for them as best as they can, and will be in a position to save the city when it is suddenly attacked. Pleasure bound societies will not only be unprepared, but will make little room for such permanently misanthropic partypoopers, wretched and rejected. They'll go unheeded. Chapters 10 and 11 set two powerful betrayals side by side. An aristophanic dystopia of a city run by fools, set against a powerful example of human wisdom at its best in the form of a Qohelet Wise farmer hedging his bets in the face of uncertainty. Qohelet to solve the problem and can declare at the end of chapter 11 in deliberate contrast to chapter-- In deliberate contrast to chapter two's dark despair. That raising our eyes from our human vantage point under the sun. Truly, the light is sweet and the pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun, no longer crushed by the unbreachable chasm between God in heaven and we upon the earth. He has come to understand that despite our hevel existence, it is possible to lead a divinely approved life, wisely led and worth living. Qohelet can finally calmly face death not as a denial of life's worth, but as a natural development, tenderly describing us as departing this world, accompanied by the equally transient, soon to be outmoded fruits of our accomplishments. Which, as you will see, Debra depicts so well. As my father, my late father, Harold Fish, aptly writes, never was there a gentler poem on the approach of death. Death becomes the beauty of a golden sunset as the dust returns to the earth and the spirit to meet its maker. In light of this reading of the books, in light of this reading the book's four last verses need not be read as a later apologetic appendage. I'll mention just one. At the end of the matter, writes Qohelet, when all is said and done, we should fear God and keep his commandments, not because we can claim to know them for certain, but because we can confidently claim to have done our humanly best to do so for now. This being the whole duty of man for which God will bring our every work into judgment, at the very end of our book of Debra and mine, when all is said and done, I briefly address Qohelet's liturgical placement. Why it is ritually read during the Festival of Tabernacles. Sukkot, deemed by the rabbis to be the most joyous of Jewish festivals. Sukkot is, of course, dedicated first and foremost to leaving our permanent dwellings and taking up residence in temporary, unstable booths. A celebration of Irish sensual temporality and transience, if you wish, and an expression of our joyful satisfaction. My rendering of the word Simha, which is the third main term of Qohelet in knowing that we can pursue divinely sanctioned lives of real value despite our thoroughgoing impermanence and hevel existence. Thank you so very much. [Applause] >> Debra Band: It's an extraordinary honor to be with you at the Library of Congress to share this project, whose seed was planted by a family tragedy 35 years ago, but has flowered in this remarkable project with Menachem. I'm deeply grateful to Sharon Horowitz for her labors organizing this session, as well as to Stephen and Sharon Lieberman for their generous support for the publication of this book as for several of my earlier works. So my first conversation with Ecclesiastes or Qohelet, Qohelete in the original Hebrew, of course, was triggered by a family tragedy during the week of Sukkot, when I was 31. The previous week, I'd heard the phone ring as I returned from the Kol Nidre services beginning Yom Kippur. Alarmingly, for she wouldn't ordinarily touch electronics on a festival. I heard my mother's voice through the answering machine. I grabbed the phone and heard her cry that my stepbrother, Jonathan, just a few months older than I. We'd been very close, lay in hospital dying from brain trauma, suffered in a traffic accident that afternoon. I managed to arrive home in Montreal in time for the funeral, and entered a maelstrom of shock and grief that I had never yet experienced. Although the near death of my second child soon after birth the previous year had been a near miss, thank God, only a near miss. One evening I returned to my parents home from the Shiva house before the others and picked Qohelet off their library bookshelf. I cannot at all remember what drew me to it, but I spent the rest of the evening circling their foyer, gripping the book, my eyes glued to Qohelet's words. Now I want you to know that before that night, I had dutifully followed the annual chanting of Qohelet, but never paid much attention to it. It seemed very remote. But now the phrase, oh, he understands how random, how arbitrary life can be reverberated in my head and never faded. Many years have passed since that night crowded as for many of us, with both intense joy and terrible grief, and throughout Qohelet has stayed with me. That first evening I absorbed some sense of his understanding that we all live subject to an inscrutable divine will, and the best we can do is to live every moment as well as deeply and intentionally as we can, while we can, for life can vanish. I'd only just begun my work in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, but my itch to explore Qohelet took hold that evening. I made a couple of false starts added over the years, but knew that Qohelet was saying something more than I was understanding. It was about 25 years until Shabbat dinner at my cousin Menachem's and his wife Hana's home during the meet. The family trip to Israel shortly after my second husband's and my wedding, when Menachem casually asked me about my plans for my next book project, I shook my head and replied that I really wanted to work on Qohelet, but had wandered into a fog bank each time I had tried. Oh, I've written on Qohelet. Let me send you the article he offered. The following week, I downloaded and devoured it, and low light suddenly pierced the mists. Menachem adventurously agreed to discuss a joint project, although he was somewhat puzzled about how one might visualize this abstract text. But that's my job. Now you might well ask. Well, very nice, but what is, after all, the point of this archaic medium altogether now in the era of nevermind printing, but the internet and AI. Let me answer this today by sharing with you the ways I approach the creation of modern Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and then showing you some of the 60 illuminations themselves, you'll see how an illuminated manuscript can do far more than enhance the aesthetics and emotions of a reader's experience, but actually interpret and amplify the subtleties of the text, its relationship to our greater world in a coherent visual midrash. Here, a leisurely, contemplative gaze at its imagery brings to human level complex ideas about Qohelet's intent, as Menachem has revealed it, and detects the reverberations of this odd but vital text across not only the Jewish culture that produced, protected and cherished it, but also across surrounding Western civilization. Okay. A painting or a sculpture for that matter, can communicate dozens of ideas instantly. And an illumination also ties us to two millennia of our history beautifully. This 1434 painting, which I'm sure many of you know, is from the hand of an artist who came out of the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Now, this painting has taught me everything I know about building the meaning of a painting. I work daily under a reproduction, and a visit with it in the National Gallery is just about my first stop on even the briefest trip to London. The religious and ethical value of every single item you see here adds up to a detailed moral and ethical marriage contract between two 15th century young people, not simply a fusion of two Florentine banking families in their Bruges branches. Just a few examples. The dog represents fidelity, the Sabbaths, the clocks, protection from the elements, the single candle glowing in the chandelier, the light of Jesus, and just above the mirror, the artist's witness, Jan van Eyck was here. Now, obviously, since I work within Jewish tradition, my imagery is entirely different from that of 15th century Christianity. Mine is based in other biblical texts, colorful exegesis from many rabbinic sources, and many avenues of Western thought and science. One of my challenges over three decades has been to develop a modern Jewish iconographic vocabulary, capable of teasing out abstract concepts in visual form. Following the lead of Van Eyck, as analyzed by Erwin Panofsky, I create disguised symbolism in a scene that usually makes logical sense, all explained in commentaries on the book. Now how do I construct my visual midrash? Moshe Halbertal has described Jewish culture as a text centered community, and my own interpretive work is nothing if not text centered. Each project begins with some years studying the chosen text, in this case Qohelet, along with its rabbinic commentaries and modern academic Bible studies. Incidentally, the Roman and Byzantine era rabbis clearly understood qohelet, but were demonstrably uncomfortable with its implications, and so my ability to rely on the early rabbinic son qohelet for imagery, as I usually would, has been limited. There are also regular discussions with my collaborators. Menahem and I worked together by Zoom. I begin each painting by writing, and as I consider each passage, many other associations spring to mind and I develop a mental picture of where I want to go. I rarely sketch these anymore. The layout happens in my mind, and then I set to work laying out texts and micrography, first proofing and then painting in gouache and finally gilding. Since one always sees a two page spread in a book, I paint both facing illuminations together. Here, I base my visual midrash of Qohelet that runs through 60 paintings on Menahem's whole premise that the human lifespan is short, and not only we, but all our discrete deeds are transient, that humans, that the human lifespan is short. I'm sorry. That nothing lasts forever and separated as we are from the divine. We cannot possibly fathom God's expectations of us. Although we know that we ultimately face divine judgment. Let me show you how this visual midrash of Qohelet works. You see here a painting of the Alhambra on its ridge in Granada. The Micrographic border surrounding the painting presents roughly the first third of Qohelet. You'll see the remainder in the next slide. So why the Alhambra? This corresponds directly to Menachem's hevel premise. Here our grandest, most exquisite monuments are ephemeral, just as our lives and deeds. And of course, Qohelet dons the cloak of the great King Solomon, kind of an avatar, as he analyzes the human condition. In the paintings ahead, I compare human life and deeds, labors as Qohelet would say, to a grand and gorgeous palace full of lives bursting with action and conversation, beauty and tragedy. Yet even this grandeur will crumble in time. This palace metaphor draws upon a tradition common in Midrash, comparing the heavens to a palace and the gardens and the human world to an orchard or garden. I extend the metaphor to human life and deeds. And what grander palace than the Alhambra, the wondrously beautiful medieval palace of the Muslim rulers of Granada. The Alhambra also hosted most of the vibrant or much of the vibrant, poetry filled court life of the medieval Spanish or Sephardic community. And yet, for all its glory, all the almost audible ghosts of the glittering and powerful people who strode its expanses, if you look into the corners of its mosaic encrusted walls, if you look at the stonework lining its garden paths, you see that even this massive glory crumbles slowly into the red dust from which it arose. The golden rim of the painting alludes to the golden bowl in the 12th chapter, not yet cracked here, and haunts the entire manuscript. So while the Alhambra provides the setting and the central metaphor, I flesh out the sense of the fragile and fugitive beauty of human experience with iconography symbolism drawn from from related biblical and other Jewish texts, from archaeology, the natural world science, and far more modern icons relating to issues that Qohelet explores. I include poetry and prose not only from the Hebrew Bible, but from across Western civilization to help reveal the enduring reality of Qohelet's thought across millennia and landscapes far from his own. An area of mist penetrates every painting, always reminding us of the ephemerality of all human deeds. I introduce all of these to conjure up a visual midrash, probing Qohelet's struggle to understand the workings of the universe, to find wisdom, what God demands of us despite our transience and vantage point under the sun. On the Hebrew page here, the philosophers I Menahem's peers through the initial letter, the plain clay jar spilling the jewels that tumble down around the words describes in a midrash quoted for each of the books attributed to Solomon, and pertaining directly to Menachem's idea of pre revelatory idea that wise King's unsealing of the wisdom of Torah. The rabbis compare the Torah to a sealed jar full of jewels, but only when opened and spilled could the riches be found. This was Solomon when he composed Qohelet, and I'll leave you to explore the meaning of the English painting in the book. The philosopher compares the immutable cycle of life to the daily journey of the sun and to the water cycle. All three, at least until recently, beyond the reach of human will and action. The mosaic repeats its own complex, man made pattern endlessly in colours that echo the sea, sky, sunlight and forests. Outside ephemeral mist, Hevel rises from the gardens below into the clouds, only to fall to land and sea as rain. The cloud of Micrographic text in the Hebrew illumination contains parts or includes passages of the 11th century Spanish-jewish philosopher and poet Solomon ibn Gabirol's neo-platonic philosophical tract in verse, The Royal Crown or [Inaudible] He incidentally lived and worked in the Alhambra for some time. The first passage ponders our inability to comprehend God's eternity. The second laments the clouds of human imperfection that obscure humanity's view of divine wisdom, likened here to light. Gazing from his high tower, the omnipotent ruler struggles to accept that he cannot rise from under the sun to perceive divine wisdom. He despairs of the ephemerality of even his rich and powerful life. The Hebrew word ani rests upon a regal carpet, while the glittering gold between the lines fit for a royal manuscript, seemed to ridicule the earth bound philosophers inability to find heavenly wisdom. The English pronoun I rests upon a clay bulla of the Judean royal seal, the balustrade upon which he rests as from the ruins of the Judean Palace at Ramat Rachel, hinting at the monumental palace that Qohelet Solomon avatar inhabits. We see a Hubble Space Telescope image-- If you look at the background, we see a Hubble Space Telescope image of the ultra deep field of space, which I have long used to symbolize God's invisible but all suffusing presence. And in this book, to allude to how every particle of our world cycles endlessly through the stars. Can one find wisdom by indulging in luxury? Qohelet sensual pleasure and pride in his material achievements are clouded by his realization that all his luxuries evaporate. In the Hebrew illumination, Qohelet gazes upon his irrigated orchards and vineyards. This Persian period philosopher would already associate water flowing in this arid land with the wisdom of Torah, a ubiquitous metaphor found throughout the prophets and writings. The cherry branches emblematic of the seat of American power here in Washington, D.C., where these illuminations were painted, progressed through their annual cycle, reminding him of the passing of generations. Despite Qohelet's pride in all the beauty that he has amassed, the drifting fog reminds him of the ephemerality of all of his wisdom here under or all of his wealth here under the sun. Okay, just a few words about these paintings of perhaps the most beloved part of Qohelet. At right, with a first verse of the chapter, the philosopher king gazes into a garden pond reflecting the deep night sky, again alluding to the golden bowl of chapter 12, and the bowl is not yet cracked. Qohelet begins to find comfort in human limitations on wisdom, as he meditates further on how every situation in life has its moment, even if that moment is unknowable to any but God. He perceives life as a stream, its beginning and end obscure, always subject to sudden turbulence. If you look at the top of the stream, you'll see that the little mosaic bears a fragment of the musical notation of what else but Pete Seeger's famous 1965 song setting. Turn. Turn. Turn. And now for something completely different. Qohelet turns to consider the foolishness of oppressors and plutocrats in the face of both human and divine authority. The Hebrew illumination presents the ancient flail and sword, while the English illumination begins with a taser, a far more modern tool of oppression. Coins spill everywhere. Again, the starlit heavens of the Hubble image, again divine intent obscured from human view by clouds of mist. Qohelent ends his warnings about irresponsible actions with his assurance that God wants humankind to live happily, taking pleasure in our work, fully enjoying its fruits throughout our days. This, he asserts, is the wisdom vouchsafed to humankind under the heavens. I'm sorry. Back still. The illuminations offer each text with a golden triangle. The Greek letter delta that signifies mathematical concepts of change. The animals surrounding the texts allude to this exhortation in the Talmudic ethical tract "Pirkei Avot: Ethics of the Fathers," which echoes Qohelet's ideas of the importance of living wisely. That is, according to our best guess of what God expects of us down here under the sun. Be bold as a leopard, as light as an eagle, as swift as a gazelle, and as brave as a lion. To do the will of your father in heaven. Qohelent warns the students to avoid hazardous behavior and instead pursue careful, wise self conduct. He contrasts two metaphorical images of women current in his day to sketch the tug of war between wisdom and foolishness. Now, this is often assumed to be a bit of misogyny, but I would suggest that the gendered language itself argues against so literal a reading. [Inaudible] wisdom. The object, of course, of Qohelet's search is, after all, a feminine word. Throughout the book of Proverbs, which is roughly contemporary with Qohelet, wisdom is characterized as a woman, a teacher, and a model for all humankind. Indeed, Proverbs ends with the famous [Inaudible] a powerful woman, as Ray Sheindlin translated for Kabbalat Shabbat book, the paean to the wise and capable mother, homemaker, and businesswoman all phases of Lady Wisdom. Conversely, Qohelent warns of the dangers of temptation by reckless illicit women, characterized in Proverbs 9:13 by the feminine gender [Inaudible] of the same word seal fool, that Qohelet continually applies to his negative role model. At left, two Micrographic texts contrast the two symbolic women. At the left of the painting, a dancing woman such as one might have seen at left of the painting. No. I'm sorry. The wise woman at far right gathers her fruit, household keys dangling from her waist. She is composed of Ezekiel and verses from Proverbs nine, all praising Lady wisdom. At the left of the painting, a dancing girl, such as one might have seen at evening entertainments in the Alhambra, rattles a tambourine. She is composed of the aria Libiamo in the first act of Verdi's La traviata, the interchange between the courtesan Violetta and Alfredo Germont, in contrast to the wise and prudent woman across the page, these soon to be lovers sing to each other about how life is all about embracing the pleasures of the moment. Now this is a good place to show you another image that appears here and in fact, on every painting. And there's a close up in the bottom left corner, you can see a small honeybee on each painting. My name, Dvora, is the Hebrew word for honeybee. And although I do indeed keep bees nowadays, since long before that, placing a bee in each painting has been my play on the medieval custom of the colophon identifying a scribe. Here Qohelent has moved on to consider the difficulties of a person of integrity serving a corrupt ruler. The illuminations offer cautionary images for both the arrogant ruler and the honest courtier. We see a painting of a marble statue of justice pulling down her blindfold and winking. In contrast, the bordering calligraphy offers the very passage "Justice, justice, you shall pursue." From Deuteronomy 16 that famously requires the ruler to pursue honest and even handed justice for all people. The English text begins with a painting that shows a crown lying in a gutter. A cautionary tale inspired by both Napoleon's remark about the crown of France lying in the gutter, and General George Patton's observation that Roman generals triumph parades. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning that all glory is fleeting. The decorative text bordering the English page illustrates the dangers attendant upon the honest courtier. With Cordelia's speech from the beginning of King Lear, where she is defending herself against her sister's hypocritical flattery. And finally Qohelet arrives at the full answer to his search for wisdom. His royal avatar gazes out at his orderly farmland and catches sight of a small but wise farmer working the land, dividing it into areas for different treatment. Some wither and some flourish. Cast thy bread upon the waters, he says. For thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and even to eight. For thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. So take your chances. Make contingency plans. Some plans will go awry, but some will flourish. This is the key to survival, to fulfillment in all your labors and to wisdom. As he muses, his hand rests beside his beloved's, while the olives symbolize both his nobility and his growing family. The pomegranate branch, their fruitfulness, and that bottle of wine his sanctification of God and his joy. Qohelet has found the elusive secret to a meaningful life beneath the unknowable heavens. We're nearing the end of Qohelet's reflections, the gentle and poetic ode to death. You may recognize the Talmudic motto, Know before whom you stand. [Inaudible] That crowns the grand portal to this palace. Just as his crown, The holy ark in synagogues across the centuries. All of the diverse and busy lives lived in this palace, whether child or adult, laborer or scholar or aristocrat. All paths lead away from the sunlit courtyard toward shadow, oblivion, and certain divine judgment. We find a fragile elderly laborer lugging a basket of grapes destined for a rich table. Pregnant women celebrating each other's joy. Children and aristocrats and then, in the distance, an old man hobbles into the inescapable misty darkness at the end of the grand halls. Even the solid stone palace itself is ephemeral. The golden bowl of the courtyard fountain not only sprays, but also leaks the water that's essential to human life. Weeds have invaded the meticulously laid courtyard tiles, and the intricate mosaics have begun to crumble. The almond tree is heavy with fragrant white blossoms, but that's likely a contemporary idiom for the white hair of old age. Nothing in the palace of human existence, even in this grandest of palaces, lasts forever. Then what does last forever if not human accomplishment? Only God. And Qohelet begins his paean to the end of human life, under the sun, by warning us to live constantly aware of the inevitability of divine judgment of our personal actions. The courtyard of this palace is filled with exhortations to live mindful of divine law. The pomegranate tree reminds the courtiers of fertility. We see pregnant women in the fruits of all of humankind's labors, but its many seeds also symbolize the 613 commandments. Midrashic associations with a pink lily at its root reminds them of the value of the Ten Commandments in the corrupt human world, and the thorny rose climbing its trunk recalls the humility of the burning bush. The grass that springs up between the courtyard tiles suggests the warning that occurs throughout biblical texts that sinners will vanish like dry grass. Think of Psalm 90. As throughout Jewish law, the water that sprays from the fountain also symbolizes the necessity of Torah to humankind throughout our lives under the sun. Far beneath the heavens, night falls over the palace of the philosopher king. The golden ball framing the scene has finally cracked. Now, shortly before painting these, I had a marvelous stroke of luck. I happened upon a book of poetry reflecting on Qohelet called Ben Qohelet, composed by the first of the two 11th century Jewish grand viziers who ruled in Granada. This was Samuel Nagy, Shmuel Hanagid. One beautiful poem surrounds a text page expressing the poet's determination to pursue life despite its transience. Soul opens inside you on beauty and then tells you to seek in the world and ignore its flaws. Heart says you'll live forever and death, as it speaks grasps you with claws. Qohelet's last words rest within fig branches. Cycling through the seasons. Throughout Jewish lore, figs embody many qualities of Israel, humankind, and the world. Here they hint at the birth and passing of generations and the goodness of divine law. The oak branch bears the acorns that are the oaks future. The image alludes to Israel's strength to endure despite the passing of every individual of even the Davidic kingdom itself. Isaiah prophesied that Israel would be reborn after conquest like the Terebinth, and the oak of which stumps are left even when they are felled. Its stump shall be a holy seed, like the oak seed and regenerating stump long after his own death. Qohelet's words continue to offer humankind guidance toward a realistic yet meaningful life. Thank you. [Applause] >> Sharon Horowitz: The speakers have generously agreed to take a few questions. So I'll give you a minute to think about. >> Debra Band: Yes. Oh, wait. >> What verses should we pay attention to where the English translation has not-- I don't know, captured the nuances or the subtleties of the Hebrew. >> Menahem Fisch: First of all, the word [Inaudible] in Hebrew. Which is a key word in Qohelent. It comes coupled with [Inaudible]. And I read it consistently as conveying satisfaction in doing good. The English translations have it as mirth or pleasure. There were quite a few such occurrences. For example... Instead of paying, [Inaudible] the translation will be sorrow or grief. Okay. Instead of [Inaudible] anger, it'll be something else. And you will see when Qohelet approaches that end of especially of chapter two that the Hebrew is far harsher than the english. And then that key verse about thinking about a poor man who doesn't resign to his fate, but rather takes responsibility by imagining ways his life could be different and trying to change it. The English translation, it becomes totally banal. What is the advantage of the wise man over the fool? And that is a rhetorical question. How can a poor man stand against the living or something like that? And the entire meaning is lost. Okay, but by and large, that is a function of reading Qohelet as a book of despair, as a book whose leading question is rhetorical. What worth can our work have under the heavens in conditions of hevel translated as meaningless and futility? >> Is there an English Bible version that is, you would consider the most faithful to the Hebrew, the original Hebrew? >> Menahem Fisch: Well, I tried to explain it. I mean, if you look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible, hevel is used to connote meaningless, but exclusively with regard to idolatry. But when it's employed in the Psalms with respect to the life, to human life, with respect to human life, it connotes a mist like temporality. And that gives me the license to propose the reading I have. >> Thank you very much. It's a fascinating subject. And I have a question for you both. How do you reconcile that this book was written by, I guess-- Sorry about my ignorance in that, but Qohelet was a king. He was a wealthy person. I believe, from reading, you know. So how do you reconcile the possibility of making these philosophical statements? On wisdom and. You know good things. With poverty. With poverty. With perennial poverty. With perennial financial insecurity. For a person who is very conscious of the structural barriers that the society-- You know, just right there a-- Again and again is putting on him, and that is a reality all over the world. So it's very easy to be philosophical when you have the time and the means. But for those who don't have that, how do you reconcile that? That will be my question. >> Debra Band: So we have no means of knowing exactly who Qohelet was. However, it is virtually certain that it was not actually King Solomon. This text was written during the Persian period. And as we alluded to it, the writer adopts sort of an avatar of the wealthiest, most powerful man he could have known of to reflect these thoughts. Again, we cannot know who he is, but I have a section in my introduction where I try to lay out the concerns that the writer might have dealt with living in the Persian period. And there Robert Gordis came up with an interesting sort of thought about what kind of person Qohelet might have been, that he might well have been a retired teacher in one of the wisdom academies in Jerusalem at the time that was preparing, that was preparing young men. And yes, they were men to go into the temple and Persian bureaucracies, and that he might well have been teaching, teaching these same guys who were already, you know, adult students who had been in this environment for a while. They've come back to him and he's sharing his perspective on the world. He does deal with matters of poverty and oppression consistently. He doesn't deal with them urgently from a sense that you would understand he had suffered them. It's not that immediate, but he's very cognizant. And he talks a great deal about oppression and the unfairness of poverty and the bullying of the wealthy, the bullying of the poor people by the wealth. It's absolutely all there. And he's dealing with these as instances of how do you conduct yourself in this environment? How do you conduct yourself as a person of integrity? So it's absolutely there. Aand it's not actually a king speaking. It's a philosopher who's donning the cloak of a king. So I hope that answers. Do you want to add to that? >> Menahem Fisch: The only thing I'll add is that you're absolutely right that one needs an element of leisure or time in order to conduct certainly a sustained philosophical argument as I read the book. But that leisure doesn't have to be royal, and it doesn't have to be rich. Both in the Greek tradition, later in the rabbinic tradition, the sage is not an aristocrat. In particular. Okay, but you do need that space, that peace of mind in order to-- And this is an anxious book as I read it. >> Sharon Horowitz: Any other questions? So then I'll thank you both very much for a wonderful presentation, and good luck with the rest of your book tour. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. [Applause]