What “Hamlet” and Ecclesiastes Have in Common

Read in many synagogues this past Shabbat, the book of Ecclesiastes consists of the reflections on life and its vicissitudes of “Kohelet the son of David”—identified traditionally as King Solomon. To Noah Millman, Kohelet’s musings on the futility of human endeavors and the ironies and absurdities of earthly existence resemble nothing so much as the soliloquies delivered by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Kohelet, Millman writes may seem like a philosopher, but in fact that’s not quite so:

Ecclesiastes . . . is a record of Kohelet’s philosophical investigations in dialogue with himself. But on closer inspection, the book is not so much a work of philosophy as a first-person account of the failure of philosophy. Kohelet is an individual striving to make some sense out of his life, only to discover that he cannot do this by philosophical means.

Millman points to numerous similarities between the play and the biblical work, such as Kohelet’s “What profit hath a man of all his labor?” and Hamlet’s “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!” But, with help of the great medieval rabbinic commentary of Rashi, Millman identifies a deeper parallel. Hamlet seeks to take revenge on his uncle for killing his father, usurping the throne, and marrying his mother. And Solomon?

Ecclesiastes appears to offer no similar family backstory for making sense of Kohelet’s misery, . . . but if we take the traditional notion that Kohelet is Solomon seriously, comparisons suddenly spring forth. Solomon, after all, was witness to an almost absurdly on-point Oedipal struggle within his own family when his half-brother, Absalom, revolted against their common father, David, and slept with David’s concubines as a way of fortifying his claim to the throne. David’s deathbed advice to Solomon was to kill the man responsible for Absalom’s death—his general, Joab. Solomon also had to commit fratricide to consolidate his power, killing Adonijah, his half-brother, who had himself crowned king first. Solomon’s struggle for the throne was fully as bloody and incestuous as the one in Elsinore, but he played the royal part that Hamlet labors to avoid.

A suggestion of Rashi provides an even more valuable interpretive lens onto the personal drama behind Kohelet’s melancholy. His commentary suggests that King Solomon foresaw the division of the kingdom under his son Rehoboam and that this was the source of Kohelet’s despair. It’s a notion that can be used to bring many of the book’s apparent contradictions into sudden focus. Why, for example, is Kohelet so persistently concerned with the possibility that someone unworthy will enjoy his wealth? With the possibility that his heirs will be fools?

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Bible, King Solomon, Rashi, William Shakespeare

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF