Freud suggests that there is an equally powerful response to the fleeting nature of human existence and the created world: that brevity of life does not interfere with its delights but rather amplifies them, heightening our experience and appreciation. “Transience value is scarcity value in time. Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises

Both Shakespeare and Ecclesiastes force us to ponder if it is, indeed, true that there is nothing new under the sun because, ironically, their works were radical and enduring.

In this last stage, “we find exuberant affirmations of life, and the joy and wisdom that it can bring. Kohelet has now learned, and seeks to teach, the deeper lesson of hevel: Transience as inspiration.”

Money, in their world, was an instrument to support a transformative occupation and to feed an addiction, indeed a compulsion, to live on a higher spiritual plane.

Studying Tanakh benefits from establishing a general, overall impression before reviewing exegetes.

Kohelet is the Hebrew Bible’s textual memento mori; the words are the author’s sacred canvas.

Hevel appears seventy-three times in Tanakh; thirty-eight of those instances are in Ecclesiastes, making it the work’s repeated, summative, and unavoidable drumbeat of a mantra.

Kohelet’s enduring appeal is its gift of truth-telling; it does not minimize the difficulties we face in our short lives but names them and brings us into the struggle for meaning.

Happiness is about now. Meaning is often about our reflections on the past, the commitments we make in the present, and the way that we think about and shape the future.40 Happiness, however, can never replace meaning.