Will Anyone Remember Me?
Sukkot, 5764
Here is a simple exercise. Who knows the name of their grandmother’s grandmother?
Hardly anyone knows the name. It’s a depressing exercise because it reminds us of the
futility of our lives. Our very existence will not even be remembered by our closest
blood relatives.
Says Kohelet matter of factly, “ein zircon le-rishonim ve-gam le-achronim she-yi-hiyu lo
yehiyeh lahem zichron im she-yi-hiyu le-achronah, there is no recollection of the earliest
generations and even the later generations will not be remembered by those who come at
the very end.”
According to Kohelet: It’s that simple. No matter what we do we will not be
remembered. Some of you might be thinking. I’ll get around Kohelet. I’ll accomplish
something really great which will make people remember me. Or, I’ll put my name on a
building or a project which will be an eternal reminder of who I am.
That’s a possibility. But the overwhelming probability is that it won’t work. Even if
your name beats the odds and is remembered chances are it will just become a trivia
question. There will be no real remembrance of your life.
For example, who was Major Deegan? And who is the Puck Building named after?
(OK: William F. Deegan (1882-1923), was a major in World War I. After the war, he
spent most of his political career in the Bronx where he eventually became president to
the Bronx Chamber of Commerce in the 1920's. Puck was a magazine at the turn of the
twentieth century, housed in the building now known as the Puck building.)
But Kohelet also teaches: “Tov la-lechet el beit avel mi-lalechet el beit mishteh ba-asher
hu sof kol ha-adam ve-hachai yiten el libbo. It is better for one to go to the house of
mourning than to go to a house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living
will lay it to heart.”
In order to live properly, argues Kohelet, one must wrestle with the reality of death on an
ongoing basis. One must recognize what Kohelet is trying to teach us by reminding us
that there will be no remembrance of our lives. He’s not just trying to depress us. He has
a point.
What is his point?
Before we understand his point, let’s look at one of the many texts in the Jewish tradition
that contradict what Kohelet is teaching. For example, why do we sit in a sukkah? The
Torah says, “ba-sukkot teshvu shivat yamim…le-man yedu doroteichemki ba-sukkot
hoshavti et benei yisrael be-hotsi-i otam me-erets mitsrayim, sit in a sukkah for seven
days, so that future generations will know that I allowed the Jewish people to dwell in
sukkot when I led them out of Egypt.”
We are commanded to dwell in sukkot in order to keep alive the memory of past
generations who dwelt in sukkot; we are trying to maintain a remembrance of God’s
relationship with previous generations.
Individual people will not be remembered by future generations. But communities and
previous generations, they will be remembered.
So Kohelet is correct because he refers to us as individuals. No matter how long we live
or how many children we have, we will not be remembered. But as a community we will
be remembered.
As Avishai Margalit, Professor of Philosophy at Hebrew University writes in his work
The Ethics of Memory: “Do we expect our community…to remember us after we are
dead? We do not expect to be remembered individually by the nation…. [But] ‘we’ is an
enduring body that will survive after our personal death. We shall not be remembered
personally, but we shall be remembered by taking part in events that will be remembered
for their significance in the life of the collective.”
We can only expect to have a legacy by joining a community. If we contribute to a
community, if we participate, if we join, then our impact will last generations and
generations.
The mandate of Sukkot is to remember the generation that left Egypt. But it is also to
remind us that if we want to have real impact and a real remembrance then we too have to
join with a community of meaning in order to build a community of memory.
The symbol of communal strength and individual weakness is the symbol that dominates
sukkot. For example, look at the arbah minim (four species). If we take the lulav or
etrog, individually—without the accompanying species--it has absolutely no halakhic
value. Only when we bundle the arbah minim together do each of them have any value.
Take the physical structure of the sukkah itself. It is a temporary dwelling meant to
remind us that our own homes are not as secure as we would like think they are. It forces
us to dwell in the open together with our neighbors. We are unable hide behind our own
private walls. Instead, we must live as a community, reminding us that our future fate is
only as a community, not as individuals.
Even the intricate halakhot of the sukkah reflect this idea.
The sukkah must be covered with skach. Skach tsarich she-yiheyeh tsomeach min haarets ve-talush. Skach needs to come from something alive, it needs to have grown from
the ground. But it also must be removed from the ground. It needs to have at one time
been alive, but now it has been removed from the source of its life. We take something
that is alive and cut it down. We say that as an independent object it is of no value to the
sukkah. Only when it is bundled tightly together with the other skach—also dead
foliage—does it take on great halakhic value.
The sukkah as a whole thus stands as a large commentary on how to live our lives. We
must balance our lives between the fragility of life of and the inevitability of death.
Its no accident that it is customary to read Kohelet on sukkot, for the mandate of the
sukkah is in many ways an answer to the challenge of Kohelet.
Kohelet questions the value of life. For what is the point of life, if no one will remember
anything that we do.
The name Kohelet itself answers that challenge. Who was Kohelet? “Divrei Kohelet ben
david, hayyiti melekh be-yirushalayim. These are the words of Kohelet son of David, I
was King in Jerusalem.” Kohelet was written by the great Shlomo ha-Melekh (King
Solomon). But he doesn’t use his own name; instead he uses the name Kohelet. Kohelt
comes from the word kahal meaning congregation. Shlomo is teaching us that as great as
he was, as successful and wise as he was, the only lasting memory is through the
congregation. So he removes his name for the name Kohelet.
The holiday of Sukkot comes and charges us with a mission. Our mission is to join a
community, to work with a community, to dream with a community, and to live with a
community.
If we do so, we will not only be creating a great life for ourselves, we will also be
creating an eternal legacy.