Every Day is New Under the Sun

Wendy Zierler

These are difficult times. They have been difficult for months, actually, for a few years now. It’s tiring. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. 

When difficulties and problems persist and efforts to solve them are thwarted; when corrupt people continue to get ahead, while honest, hard-working folks get shafted; when good people suffer while evil people prosper, we tend to lose faith in the good. We get cynical and nihilistic, believing that nothing new can ever happen to make things better, to help improve our world. In the words of Kohelet, an author who’s been around the block and has become sick and tired with what he has seen,

Utter futility!—said Koheleth—Utter futility! All is futile! (Kohelet 1:2)
Only that shall happen which has happened, only that [shall] occur which has occurred;
there is nothing new beneath the sun! (Kohelet 1:9)

Wise Kohelet keeps driving home this message until almost the very end, going so far, in the third-to-last verse of the book, to warn against the writing of books – the very thing that he himself has been doing!

And then comes the abrupt shift of the last two verses. After all the handwringing about how life is mere vapor, and there is nothing new under the sun and no point to human striving, Kohelet admonishes his readers, after all is said and done, to “revere God and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind: that God will call every creature to account for everything unknown, be it good or bad (Kohelet 12:13-14).

Kohelet was the last megilah we read before October 7. Since then, I have been in a Kohelet state of mind, perhaps even more now, since a year has passed.

With all this on my mind, I recently turned to Lea Goldberg’s modern poetic midrash on Kohelet, a 3-part cycle called “Shirei Sof Ha-Derekh,” first published in Devar Ha-Po’elet  (The Word of the Female Worker) in 1954. It is no overstatement to say that this poem is one of her most beloved works, set to innumerable different melodies by Israeli and American Jewish musicians. 

This three-part poem can be read not just as a midrash on Kohelet – especially the verse about there being nothing new under the sun – but as a midrash on a particular midrash from Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:1:10, about the authorial origin of three biblical books Shir Ha-Shirim, Mishlei, and Kohelet:

Rabbi Ḥiyya the Great taught: It was only in Solomon’s old age that the Divine Presence rested upon him and he composed three books: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and [The] Song of Songs. Rabbi Yonatan said: He wrote [The] Song of Songs first, then Proverbs, and then Ecclesiastes. And he derived it from the way of the world. When a person is young, he says words of song; when he matures, he says words of proverbs; when he grows old, he speaks of [how the pleasures of the world are] vanities.

According to well-known tradition, cited here in the name of R. Hiyya Bar Abba, King Solomon composed Shir Ha-Shirim, Mishlei, and Kohelet, but that the divine spirit rested upon him only in his old age. Presumably it was then that he wrote all three of these scriptural books. Rabbi Yonatan differs from this view, arguing on the basis of what he calls “derekh eretz” (the natural way of the world), that Solomon wrote each of these books but at different points along the path of his life.  He wrote Shir Ha-Shirim when he was young, as it is the natural way of things for young people to sing (love or happy) songs. He wrote the proverbs of Mishlei when he was middle-aged, because that is the stage of life when people, having gained some wisdom and maturity, have the capacity to offer wise epigrams. And finally, it is natural for old people, confronting their mortality, to conclude that everything is pointless and mere vapor, hence old Solomon’s composition of Kohelet.

Goldberg’s “Shirei Sof Ha-Derekh” directly takes up Rabbi Yonatan’s notion of “derekh eretz,” depicting  in a compressed and economical manner the philosophical attitudes about life that are characteristic of each stage of a man’s life. (I say a man’s life because Lea Goldberg, a woman poet, chooses specifically to gender it that way, referring, in masculine grammatical gender, to a “na’ar,” an “elem,” “a gever,” and a “zaken.”) Note that she adds a fourth character or stage to the tripartite taxonomy of approaches represented by the midrash cited above. In Shir Ha-Shirim fashion, the na’ar thinks life is lovely. In Mishlei’s proverbial fashion, the elem thinks living is hard, and that we need proverbial direction. The middle-aged gever thinks life, like the book of Kohelet itself, is long, perhaps pointless.

Lea Goldberg’s zaken, however, demonstrates a different approach than nihilistic Kohelet. Instead of expatiating on the futility of life, the zaken takes the opportunity of his old age to sit by the side of the roadway, to look back, and around, and listen. And in this pose, he hears the voice, wisdom, and questions of a (femininely gendered) bird who reminds him about the various stages of his thinking, and how, in middle age, he became convinced that “there was nothing new under the sun.” But now, in looking at the sun of his life setting, the bird teaches the zaken that he should recognize that every day under the sun is precious as if it were his last, that every new day presents new opportunities. The feminine bird, who is mezameret (sings), and thus might be seen as standing in for the voice of the meshoreret (female poet), argues back against each of the discrete masculine viewpoints, and suggests another way. 

Inspired by the wisdom of the songbird, the third poem in the cycle – which I read as the poet’s rejoinder to the last two verses of Kohelet – is a prayer rather than an admonition. It is a prayer for the ability to pray: to use all of our senses and facilities to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for this world, for the beauty of creation, for our capacity to work; and to strive, perceive beauty, gain knowledge; to hold out hope for this world, even to fail – all the things that Kohelet goes on and on about so skeptically.  It is a prayer that teaches and reminds us of the purpose of what we do every morning in starting our day with prayer. Written by a female poet in direct response to the masculine wisdom of tradition, it also serves as a welcome and deserving addition to the weekday siddur, a means of addressing the fact that the traditional siddur includes not a single prayer written by a woman. In fact, it has already become a staple of Liberal siddurim and prayer services in Israel and America. 

These are difficult times. It’s been a year now since October 7, and there is no end in sight to the troubles. And I don’t know about you, but it’s tiring. I’m tired. But somehow, I read a poem like Goldberg’s “Shirei Sof Ha-Derekh” and I feel renewed in my determination not to allow each day to resemble yesterday or the day before, but to believe in our capacity to pray, feel, appreciate, imagine, improve, and bring about a better tomorrow.