Sukkot & Kohelet

In the Talmud, there are various criteria for distinguishing an adult, who is subject to formal responsibility, from a child, who is exempt from it. These criteria vary from context to context, since adulthood cannot be univocally constituted. Nevertheless, the earliest religious responsibility placed on any Jewish child is to dwell in the sukkah…In fact, Shammai the Elder even required infants to dwell in the Sukkah.

David Novak (Contemporary)

One who uses his (active) learning to absolve him from doing Mitzvot (I am learning and I do not have to stop learning in order to build a Sukkah or take a lulav…), Whoever says so is severely condemned.

Sifra (3^rd Century?)

Sukkot observances in general are related to the Clouds of Glory…Just as these Clouds caused Israel to be set apart and elevated physically, they likewise were responsible for the transmission of the essence of Illumination that made them unique…It was through these Clouds that Israel attained the high level that was meant for them. The result of this was then transmitted to every Jew for all generations. This is the Light of holiness; transmitted by God…The Light of God also shines over Israel and engulfs them in such a manner when they take the Lulav…

Moshe Chayim Luzzatto (18^th Century)

The purpose of the Israelite experience in the wilderness was to free them from overrating and worshipping the human skills and ingenuity used in “bread getting.” The message to be conveyed by the sukkah to us and to future generations is the story of a wilderness filled with God’s providence and loving care, a “wilderness made habitable by God’s care and providence”…the Clouds of Glory beneath whose protecting cover God sheltered our ancestors in the wilderness…The coverings of the Sukkah are improvisations; they do not represent normal conditions but bear the imprint of an improvised dwelling, of a temporary situation…So we must, once each year, precisely during the harvest season, go back in time to the complete antithesis of our present lives; to the life we led in the wilderness…but where…we lived without a care, lacking for nothing because we lived under God’s protection.

Samson Raphael Hirsch (19^th Century)

I feel adamantly that this book is a document of the greatest and most profound faith, faith which is not dependent on the conditions in which man finds himself or man’s fate in the world – faith “for its own sake,”…as one who believes in God, he accepts upon himself the worship of God, not as a means to support his existence, but as the purpose for human existence…Ecclesiastes appears to us as a nihilist; he does not find in human existence and in the entire world anything which is “good” or “an advantage” for man, for all is vanity…But the major idea is how Ecclesiastes relates to the fear of God. The megilla contains numerous verses which portray the greater worth of those who fear God and “that it will be will with them.”…The superiority of the wise man is that he is wise, and that he is on a higher level than the fool.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (20^th Century)