Rav Joe's 929 Tanakh Podcast

Kohelet chapters 1 and 2: a different darkness to Eicha. Not suffering and persecution but the meaninglessness of abundance. I introduce the book and how the Sages struggled with Kohelet's proposition while Ilana uses ch.2 to think about our responsibility to future generations. In arguing for the contemporary relevance of Kohelet to our modern predicament I quote at length from Rav Soloveitchik. Here is the full piece: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Worship of the Heart, p.38 Man is bored. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on his entertainment and amusement. He pays enormous sums to anyone who can elicit a smile from him and make him forget his daily worries. What are these worries? Poverty, sickness, persecution, physical pain? None of these. His main worry is existence itself. He is dissatisfied with what he is doing, with his job, trade or profession. He hates the routine of getting up at 7, catching the 7:45 train, and arriving at the office, where one meets the same people and discusses the same affairs. He finds no joy in what he is doing; he wants to free himself from his daily obligations and activities. He resents the repetition, which is basically a natural phenomenon. He is the most miserable of creatures because he is confined to a cyclic existence which keeps on retracing its steps afresh; for he knows what he is going to do next and what is expected of him. He travels to far-off places, because he is tired of his hometown, with its familiar surroundings, and he engages in an incessant quest for new experiences and stimuli… He soon realizes that whatever he was looking for does not exist and he comes home, back to his old surroundings and duties. He chases a mirage that recedes endlessly upon his approach. https://www.sefaria.org/Ecclesiastes.1?lang=bi

In the final chapter of the book of our national lament, the acrostic is broken and we begin to move towards a brighter day. In our audio we look at how both our chapter and the midrash on Eicha move the reader from despair to hope. Text here: https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.5?lang=bii [https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.5?lang=bii]i

Eikha #4 - perhaps the most graphic and disturbing of the Eikha chapters with the most disturbing image of all as mothers cook their children. Despite the content, Rabbi Gamliel Shmalo, marshalls the scholarly work on trauma, to make the arresting claim that our chapter in fact sets forth a process of recovery from trauma essential to the survival of the Jewish people. Text here: https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.4?lang=bii [https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.4?lang=bii]

Eicha #3 - "I am the man who has seen suffering"- the epicenter of the megilla. Our audio once again focuses on a single verse which is taken by the midrash as the model for what all prophets should aspire to. Text here: https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.3?lang=bi [https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.3?lang=bi]i

Eikha #2 - the lament continues, with a prominent theme being that God Himself perpetrates this act 'in his devouring anger... Good was like the enemy. In our audio today we connect a single verse in our chapter to a parallel verse in Tehillim 48 to try and unpack how this tragedy occurred. https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.2?lang=bi [https://www.sefaria.org/Lamentations.2?lang=bi] https://929.org.il/lang/en/today [https://929.org.il/lang/en/today]