58 | OCTOBER 13 • 2022 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

O

f all the festivals, 
Sukkot is surely 
the one that speaks 
most powerfully to our time. 
Kohelet could almost have 
been written in the 21st 
century. Here is the picture 
of ultimate 
success, the 
man who has 
it all — the 
houses, the cars, 
the clothes, 
the adoring 
women, the 
envy of others 
— he has pursued everything 
this world can offer from 
pleasure to possessions to 
power to wisdom and yet, 
surveying the totality of his 
life, he can only say, in effect, 
“Meaningless, meaningless, 
everything is meaningless.”
Kohelet’s failure to find 
meaning is directly related 
to his obsession with the “I” 
and the “Me”: “I built for 

myself. I gathered for myself. 
I acquired for myself.” 
 The more he pursues his 
desires, the emptier his life 
becomes. There is no more 
powerful critique of the 
consumer society, whose 
idol is the self, whose icon is 
the “selfie” and whose moral 
code is “Whatever works for 
you.” 
This is the society that 
achieved unprecedented 
affluence, giving people 
more choices than they 
have ever known, and 
yet, at the same time, 
saw an unprecedented 
rise in alcohol and drug 
abuse, eating disorders, 
stress-related syndromes, 
depression, attempted 
suicide and actual suicide. 
 A society of tourists, not 
pilgrims, is not one that will 
yield the sense of a life worth 
living. Of all things people 
have chosen to worship, the 

self is the least fulfilling. A 
culture of narcissism quickly 
gives way to loneliness and 
despair.
Kohelet was also, of 
course, a cosmopolitan: a 
man at home everywhere 
and therefore nowhere. This 
is the man who had 700 
wives and 300 concubines 
but, in the end, could only 
say, “More bitter than death 
is the woman.” 
It should be clear to 
anyone who reads this in the 
context of the life of King 
Solomon, the author of the 
book, that Kohelet is not 
really talking about women 
but about himself.
In the end, Kohelet finds 
meaning in simple things. 
“Sweet is the sleep of a 
laboring man.” “Enjoy life 
with the woman you love.” 
“Eat, drink and enjoy the 
sun.” That, ultimately, is 
the meaning of Sukkot as 

a whole. It is a festival of 
simple things. It is, Jewishly, 
the time we come closer to 
nature than any other, sitting 
in a hut with only leaves 
for a roof, and taking in 
our hands the unprocessed 
fruits and foliage of the palm 
branch, the citron, twigs of 
myrtle and leaves of willow. 
It is a time when we briefly 
liberate ourselves from the 
sophisticated pleasures of 
the city and the processed 
artifacts of a technological 
age, where we take time 
to recapture some of the 
innocence we had when we 
were young, when the world 
still had the radiance of 
wonder.
The power of Sukkot is 
that it takes us back to the 
most elemental roots of our 
being. You don’t need to live 
in a palace to be surrounded 
by Clouds of Glory. You 
don’t need to be gloriously 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

Sukkot 
For Our Time 

